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BUICK'S FAMOUS LOGO HONORS FOUNDER
Buick Communications - media release to commemorate 100 years of Buick (1903-2003)
by Lawrence R Gustin
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DETROIT Buick Motor Division's famous "tri-shield" emblem, basically three
shields inside a circle, can be traced directly to the ancestral coat of
arms of the automaker's Scottish founder David Dunbar Buick.
The value of the Buick logo was noted in the early 1990s in a study
commissioned by a corporate identity firm, the Schechter Group. A study of
the impact of corporate
symbols, it found that consumers' opinions can be helped or even hurt by
their
logos. It further observed that "among car marketers, GM's Buick gained an
astounding 53 percent in positive image with its tri-shield symbol." Here
is how the tri-shield was developed.
In the mid 1930s, a General Motors Styling researcher, Ralph Pew, found a
description of the ancestral arms of the Scottish Buick family then
spelled Buik in an 1851 edition of Burke's Heraldry in the Detroit Public
Library. (The reference was apparently dropped in later editions.) The
description, not accompanied by a picture, was interpreted as a red shield
with a checkered silver and azure (light purplish blue) diagonal line
running from the upper left corner to lower right, an antlered deer head
with a jagged neckline in the upper right corner of the shield and a gold
cross in the lower left corner. The cross had a hole in the center with the
red of the shield showing through.
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Buick Motor Division first used the Buick family crest as a decoration just
above the radiator grille on its 1937 models, and it was a very close
representation of the crest described in Burke's. The shield was
"modernized" (made longer top to bottom and narrower in width) in 1939. It
was modified again with classic heraldic symbols embellishing the top and
bottom of the shield for 1942. That was a short
model year because Buick stopped producing cars February 3, 1942, and then
converted to World War II military production.
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There were other changes through the years for example the crest was
widened in 1949 to blend in the emblem with hood and grille styling. But
the basic elements of the original crest were retained.
By 1960, the logo
had undergone a major revision. In place of one shield, a tri-shield
appeared, representing the three Buick models then being built LeSabre,
Invicta and Electra (all introduced as 1959 models). Again, all of the
original crest symbols and colors were retained, with the major difference
being that instead of one shield, there were now the three overlapping
shields in red, white (later silver gray) and blue.
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| In 1975, the Buick Hawk concept was initiated as part of the Skyhawk line.
It was so well received that the symbol of a hawk perched on block letters
of Buick was expanded to all car lines in 1976, though the tri-shield was
retained as Buick's primary mark. The hawk soared to popularity and a
red-tailed hawk named "Happy" was even trained to land on Buick hood
ornaments in television ads. |
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But by the late 1980s, management decided to re-emphasize the tri-shield, and so the hawk (and, not incidentally, the Buick Skyhawk car) was retired. |
| Today the tri-shield is modernized in Buick marketing and advertising,
emphasizing the outline of the original design. The buck's head and cross
are gone, the diagonal no longer checkered. With the new see-through design,
there are no longer colors in the shields. The Buick family crest, like the
Buick nameplate, keeps alive the memory of David Dunbar Buick, who started a
chain of events that gave birth to Buick Motor Co. and led to the creation
of General Motors the world's largest automaker. David Buick's memory was
also honored in 1994 when Buick executives and officials in Arbroath,
Scotland, dedicated a plaque near the site of his birth in Arbroath. |
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 David Dunbar Buick
David Buick was born in Arbroath, a fishing village on the North Sea north
of Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 17, 1854. His family (which used the
"Buik" spelling in Scotland) moved to the United States when he was two and
he grew up in Detroit. Buick, a plumbing inventor and businessman, began to
tinker with gasoline engines around 1896, and the first experimental Buick
horseless carriage was completed between 1899 and late 1900. His first
automobile-related company, Buick Auto-Vim and Power Co., was probably
formed late in 1899. That evolved into Buick Manufacturing Co. (1901 or
1902), Buick Motor Co. of Detroit in 1903 and Buick Motor Co. of Flint in
1904.
In the fall of 1903, Buick Motor Co. was purchased by directors of the Flint
Wagon
Works in Flint, Mich., 60 miles north of Detroit. The company (which still
included David Buick) began to build engines in Flint in December. In 1904,
the first 37 production Buick automobiles were built. That November, Flint
carriage maker William C. Durant, an energetic business promoter, took
control of Buick. Four years later, in 1908, he used Buick Motor Co.'s
success as the foundation for his creation of General Motors.
That year, Buick claimed to lead the country with more than 8,000 sales. By
the end of 1908, David Buick had left the company to pursue other business
interests. He apparently prospered for a number of years, but at the time of
his death in
Detroit in 1929, he was said to be in near poverty. |
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Early Buick symbols
The first widely recognized use of the Buick name was a large brass cursive
"Buick" that appeared on the mesh radiator grille of early models but
there is some confusion about how early. Of the 729 Model C Buicks built in
1905, 13 still exist and most of them are restored with that Buick script up
front. But the script does not appear in most 1905 vintage photos of those
cars. The only visible nameplate on early 1905 Buicks is "Buick Motor
Company" in block letters on the front sill plates. A block-letter "Buick"
appeared on running boards later in the year. |
| Even earlier, a design used in the only known Buick Manufacturing Co.
literature (a 1902 or '03 catalog) and in the first Buick Motor Co. catalog
(1904), depicted Uncle Sam walking astride a world globe and pulling a Buick
engine on a wheeled cart. The globe carried the slogan, "Known all over the
world," which was quite a boast at the time. |
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In 1905, the Buick catalog displayed a circular design with "Buick" in the
middle and "The Car of Quality" in the border. (Buick continued that quality
theme through the years, most recently when it began using the phrase, "The
New Symbol for Quality in America," after LeSabre and other models won
high ratings in independent customer surveys in the late 1980s and early
'90s.) |
| In 1911, an odd-looking Buick logo appeared with a giant "B" with the "uick"
inside it. About that time, the famous Buick slogan, "When
better automobiles are built, Buick will build them," also was introduced.
The slogan lasted for decades but the awkward logo was soon gone. |
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The Buick script framed inside (and overlapping) a rectangle dates to around 1913 and
appeared on the faceplate of the standard
Boyce motometer fitted to the top of the radiators of various Buicks prior
to 1927. |
| That popular logo showed up in grille designs well into the O30s.
The script was also used inside a circle with "Authorized Service" in the
border for dealerships and other service providers. |
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Other Buick icons included hood ornaments. Some collectors say the Buick
hood ornaments of the late 1920s were among the finest produced by the
Ternstedt company of Detroit. They ranged from a goddess in 1927 to a figure
8 with wings
(representing eight-cylinder power) in the early 1930s. |
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Detailed shield description
For those with particular interest in heraldry, this is how the coat of arms
of the ancient Scottish family of Buik (note spelling) was described in
Burke's Heraldry published in 1851 (which did not offer a picture):
"Gu. A bend chequy, ar. and az. betw. a Buck's head erazed in chief, and a
cross couped and pierced, or, in base."
 In 1937, this is how Buick interpreted
the above: "Gu" means gule (red), which is the color of the field. "A bend"
refers to the diagonal bend from the upper left corner to the lower right.
"Chequy" means checkered, referring to the design on the bend. "Ar." means
argent (silver) and "az." means azure (blue), giving the colors of the
checks on the bend. "Betw. a Buck's head erazed in chief, and a cross couped
and pierced, or, in base" indicates the course of the bend between the
buck's head in the upper right corner of the shield ("chief") and the cross
in the lower left corner of the shield. The term "erazed" refers to the
jagged, broken edge of the buck's neck. "Couped" refers to the smooth edges
of the cross; and "pierced" to the round perforation of it, through which
the red color of the field is shown.
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Webmasters Note:
In the 1929-1930 model year, Buick introduced an economy range under the
Marquette brand. This marketing experiment only lasted for one model range |
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Posted 04/2003 |
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