The DEI Council member Vineeta Kumari and Minakshi Arora share with the biography of Louis Chevrolet.
In the United States, July is designated as National French-American Heritage Month and was established to honor the significant contributions made to the country by people of French descent. Currently, approximately 11.8 million Americans of French or French Canadian descent live and work in the United States, with about 2 million of those speaking French at home. As of the 2011 census, an additional 750,000 French-American citizens were added to those numbers due to the large creole community, whose language is based on French.
Today we would like to acknowledge the significant contribution of one such person who followed his passion and left a mark in history. On Christmas Day 1878, a boy was born in the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Jura mountains who was destined to change the world of the automobile forever. His name was Louis Chevrolet.
At the end of 1887, when Louis was just nine years old, the Chevrolets moved to Beaune in France with their five children (Alfred, Louis, Fanny, Berthe and Arthur), where the family continued to grow. After Marthe – the third daughter – Gaston appeared on the scene in 1892, the last of seven children.
While father Joseph earned his living in the clock making trade, Louis decided to become a mechanic. He found a job with the Roblin haulage contracting company that also repaired carriages and bicycles in the spring of 1896 or 1897, Louis Chevrolet was fetched from the workshop to fix the car of a guest who was staying at the “Hôtel de la Poste”. The vehicle, which created enormous excitement at the time, belonged to the American multi-millionaire, Vanderbilt. That must have been the moment that Louis Chevrolet “fell in love” twice: once with the car and once with the idea of emigrating to America.
In Beaune, Louis Chevrolet discovered another passion – racing. Around that time, the teenager competed in his first cycle races in the hills behind Beaune, winning many of them.
It was actually his “Gladiator” cycle that induced him to go to Paris at the beginning of 1899. He was given a job in the workshop of the car manufacturer Darracq (who also built the Gladiator bicycles at that time), where he learned everything there is to know about the combustion engine. It is also said that he worked with De Dion-Bouton, Hotchkiss or Mors. But one thing is certain: Louis had fallen victim to the “automobile virus”.
With the money he earned in Paris, he financed the crossing to the American continent, starting off in Canada. In Montreal, he worked as a driver and mechanic (which at that time was the same thing), only to move on a few months later to New York, again with some money in his pocket. Where his journey begins… Watch the video to know more about Louis Chevrolet and how the Chevrolet Motor Car Company was formed.
Louis Chevrolet Biography – History of Chevrolet Documentary
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