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After parting with Louis Chevrolet, William Durant worked on his various companies. Following the loss of control over General Motors, he registered the “Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware”. The new company incorporated the old Chevrolet Motor Company and functioned as a holding company for his various automobile interests.
In 1916, he pulled off a coup: he announced that Chevrolet owned a 54.5% shareholding in GM, and he took over the chairmanship of the company from Charles W. Nash, who had served at the helm of GM since 1912.
In May 1918, Durant bought up the assets of the Chevrolet Motor Company and integrated the brand into the General Motors Corporation.
The name Chevrolet had become inseparable from its bowtie logo, even if the origin of the bowtie has never been clear. In one version of the story, Chevrolet had been inspired by the pattern of the wallpaper in a Paris hotel room. His own family has always disputed this. Durant’s wife apparently saw how her husband in 1911 discovered the sign in a newspaper advertisement for a coal company. His daughter wrote in the Durant biography that her father had drawn up the logo during dinner one evening. However, it is confirmed that the bowtie logo – one of the best known logos in the USA and around the world – appeared for the first time on a vehicle in 1914.