An old college friend of mine sent me a link to a page about the way car logos have evolved over the years. I never knew that Audi was a conglomerate of four automotive companies and that their four rings stood for each of those entities. I never knew the BMW emblem was derived from an airplane propeller in motion.

It’s interesting to note that the logo styles have somewhat come full circle: they were beveled and three-dimensional in the Art Deco era of the 1920s and 1930s, became flattened in the International Style of the 1960s and 1970s, and now they’ve gone back to the three-dimensional, beveled “hood ornaments.” Fascinating stuff.