The weirdest car logos & their hidden meanings!

hi how are you mal watson here from car wow every car brand in the world has a logo we all know that don't we you know i know it everyone knows it sometimes you can actually guess what these logos mean straight away like the jaguar with its leaper the other one's called the growler like the face which i find sort of funny because it's a bit rude growler is that just me anyway now some brands just write their name on the badge and that's it you know call it a day forward spaghetti simple but others are a bit weirder and so here's my rounder but what some famous car logos actually mean and where they come from buying a new car then head to car wow and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price car wow your one-stop car buying comparison site lamborghini has an awesome logo doesn't it it's a raging ball on a gold shield doesn't get much better than that but why is it a ball well lots of lamborghinis are actually named after bolts like the miura the murcielago and the gallardo they're actually all breeds of fighting ball from spain but that's not the reason for having the ball on the logo the logo actually comes from a zodiac symbol you know like a star sign or a horoscope or that mumbo jumbo now this is because ferruccio lamborghini the man who actually started lamborghini was big into his zodiac signs for some reason and his star sign was taurus which is the sign of the ball it's quite appropriate the horoscopes ball you get the link now ferruccio decided to use it on his cars and a ball is a pretty cool animal to stick on your car isn't it better than like a sheep or pig lamborghini actually isn't the only car manufacturer to use a zodiac sign on its bonnet the other one is abbard because they have a scorpion logo and it's for the same reason the scorpio sign carlo abart who founded our bart has scorpio as his star sign so he decided to just stick it on his cars job done why not you probably recognize this logo it's obvious isn't it it's toyotas but i bet you don't know what it means got any guesses well it's actually a combination of three ovals that you can use to spell out different letters most importantly you can actually spell toyota using the toyota logo brilliant now don't believe me well here's how you do it right look the two smaller ovals make up a t see that and if you take the top off that flat oval they form look a why the big ring outside look big ring that's zero and then the vertical oval with a line through it that sort of looks like an a it's clever isn't it it's definitely smarter than just writing out your whole brand name on the bonnet like i don't know land rover looks land rover says so the bmw looks like someone just wrote bmw on a dinner plate and added some blue bits for good measure but this checkered pattern actually has a double meaning first start is the flag of bavaria which is where bmw was founded and bmw actually stands for bavaria motor works though if you're german usa vargs so it's bmv not bmw in germany now let's continue the other part of the lesson you see the checkered pattern also looks a little bit like a propeller spinning against the sky bmw actually never meant for it to mean this but they did used to make engines for aeroplanes back in the day and some people do say that it's meant to signify that but it's just a happy coincidence and some people call the logo the blue propeller as a result now you might also think that the mercedes logo is inspired by a propeller and it is sort of the three points on the famous mercedes star actually represent land sea and air now this is because darmla the company that owns mercedes and started it all used to build engines for cars ships and planes get it land c and air so that's why you get a three pointed star some people think americans are greedy and jeep actually has two logos one is just the word jeep yeah well done guys the other is two dots and seven vertical lines it's supposed to look like the grill of an old-fashioned jeep you know the one that was used in the second world war there are plenty of stories about why jeep has seven bars on its grill some people say it's because a jeep was the first car to drive on all seven continents now that might be true might be not who knows but there's another reason jeeps were originally made as military vehicles by a load of different companies even ford actually used to make jeeps back during the war so to help you tell which was which these different models from different manufacturers actually had a different number of bars on their grill at the front some had nine bars others had seven so when jeep started actually making cars with regular people to buy they chose the seven bar design probably because it just looked the best and that's how the logo ended up with seven bars simple most car logos are symmetrical the knight kind of annoys your ocd but volvo's isn't it uses a badge that looks like a circle with an arrow pointing out of it it actually resembles the male gender symbol listen let's not get into comments about all that kind of stuff here this is a car channel no need to discuss that and i'm not saying that volvo's claiming that women can't drive cars either let me explain the symbol to you before this all gets out of control you see the symbol comes from the world of alchemy now alchemy is basically a false chemistry it was back in medieval times when they tried to make gold out of stuff and instead of chemical symbols like we have today use loader symbols to represent different metals this round symbol with an arrow sticking out of it represented iron and that's what volvo chose for its first logo partly because it makes you think of things that are strong and rugged and also because iron is the main ingredient for steel which is what most cars are made of see perfect sense once it's explained back in the 1930s there were loads of different car companies in germany and it was a bit tricky to get yourself noticed like hey hi look i'm making a car as well so four car makers joined together to make themselves stronger to make one big company called auto union these companies were horse dkw wanderer and audi should be actually vanda but i'm english you obviously recognize the last one audi of course you do when this happened auto union decided it needed a logo that represented the four different car makes and it chose four interlocking rings a bit like the olympic logo but with one less ring much like a different arrangement now also union ended up getting bought by volkswagen in the 60s and volkswagen decided to change the auto union name to audi but it kept the four-ring logo now audi isn't the only car maker whose badge represents a load of companies that merge together the subaru badge is the same it's an oval with six stars laid out like a certain constellation it features one big star that represents subaru and then five smaller stars which are the five firms that merge to form fuji heavy industries which is subaru's parent company so there you go they didn't know that i didn't until i researched it this is a citroen logo now where do you think that came from maybe from a pyramid or perhaps a couple of stacked arrowheads well actually it's inspired by a special type of gear most gears have straight teeth you know like americans but they're another kind of gear with teeth that point in different directions you know like that's rich look at that yeah it's austin powers now this chevron pattern actually helps make them smoother and quieter than normal gears when they're meshing together but what the heck has that got to do with citroen you ask well the man who founded citron andre citron he owned a patent for this type of gear and when he founded the citroen car company in 1919 he decided to use the same chevron design for that company's logo and they've kept using it ever since this is the mclaren logo but back when the company first started it used to have a kiwi on its cars no not the fruits and not the antipodean person the flightless bird this is because mclaren was started by bruce mclaren and he was a racing driver from new zealand so he was a kiwi it all makes sense well how did it end up looking like this well back in the 80s the mclaren f1 team was sponsored by marlborough cigarettes naughty naughty eight now as part of this sponsorship deal which seems a bit bonkers today actually doesn't it mclaren changed its badge to just the word mclaren but it also had a checkered flag pattern made of lots of little marble logos now this got simplified a bit over the years until it was just one little arrow pointing up at the end of the word mclaren but then this got stylized to look a bit like an upside down nike swoosh mclaren says this shape is supposed to represent the vortices that come off its cars at high speed yeah i'm not buying that at all it sounds like marketing guff to me i reckon this logo actually looks a little bit like a kiwi again it will be a very squashed kiwi can you see that was it just me sticking with the animal theme lots of car companies actually use them on their logos some of these were chosen because they represent something strong like the lion on the peugeot badge but some come from a family coat of arms you know the things that knights used to paint on their shields when they went into battle you don't know do you only ask brit to know about that sometimes they were family coats of arms that car makers borrowed for instance vauxhall's griffin badge is actually taken from the coat of arms of a 13th century nobleman who once owned the land where vauxhall's factory was built on other car makers used coats of arms from a specific place such as porsche you see the porsche badge features a symbol that represents the region in germany where the first porsches were made and then there's the alfa romeo badge which borrows a coat of arms from the city of milan where the company started actually have you ever looked at the alfa romeo badge closely on one side there's a cross which is fairly normal but on the other side there's a snake with a crown eating a man it's weird that's like starting a car company and designing a logo that looks like a tiger munching on the zookeeper that's an idea maybe joe exotic should start a car company i hope you all enjoyed the video if you did please give it a like also let me know of any other car badges that you think are interesting that i've missed in the comments below now if you want to watch more videos just click on the windows there and if you click on the box there you can actually sign up to the car wow newsletter so we'll keep you up to date with all the latest car news and reviews in between these video uploads it's free to sign up to and you can cancel at any time just go check it out

Channel: carwow

Views: 534,470

Keywords: carwow, mat watson, 4k review, car review, car review 2020, car logo, car logos, car logo meanings, hidden meaning to car logos, mclaren logo, alfa romeo logo, vauxhall logo, bentley logo, bmw logo, mercedes logo, lamborghini logo, lamborghini bull, abarth scorpion, strange car logos, strangest car names

Id: s8pBlAVoqDM

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020