Chevy turns 100 | 1911-2011
Iconic brand leaves pop culture imprint

"Transformers" character Bumblebee and the Chevrolet Camaro it was inspired by are shown at the 2009 Chicago Auto Show. (General Motors)

In the 100 years that Chevrolets have roamed U.S. roads and byways, the car has been portrayed in movies, TV and music as the modest, everyman vehicle that anyone could afford, as well as a signifier of reckless speed, eternal youth and a persistent raffishness.

It might be a sleek Corvette, its shape as familiar and iconic as a Coke bottle, hurtling through a drive-fast/die-young teen movie, or a muddy Chevy truck driven by a feckless boyfriend in a country song. Or maybe it was a 1964 Impala made over into a low rider or a hip-hopper's tricked-out ride.

In any case, Chevys retain a sort of rakish allure as an affordable dream of freedom and the open road.

It wasn't intended that way by General Motors -- not at first, anyway. In the late '40s and early '50s, the automaker saw Chevrolet as an "inexpensive" (yes, they used that word in ads) family car in which Dad, Mom, junior and sis could set off for adventures across the U.S.

"They used to want to progress you through its brands, and what brand did you start with? Chevy," says University of Detroit Mercy marketing professor Mike Bernacchi.

The young would climb up the ladder of success to their final reward of a Cadillac, he says. In the case of a hard-working teacher or blue-collar worker, the Chevy was reliable everyday transportation.

Chevy on the screen
Singer Dinah Shore's smiling wholesomeness was the perfect marketing fit for Chevy when she first sang "See the USA in your Chevrolet" in 1951 (the jingle had been used as early as 1948, but once Shore sang it, she owned it).

The singer exudes the sunniest of postwar optimism when she drives a Chevy convertible around Palm Springs in a commercial -- with three hunks along for the ride. Shore's image was so tied in with Chevy that her long-running TV variety show was known as "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show."

Despite its wholesome image in advertising, Chevy was embraced by pop culture on its own messy terms. Because it was often the first car a teenager could buy or borrow, more than a few songs refer to learning about love "in the back seat of a Chevy."

In the movies, there was an even rougher edge to its image.

The Corvette, all decadent and unfamiliar curves in 1954, appears dangerous when detective Mike Hammer drives one down a rainy highway, almost hitting a hysterical young hitchhiker.

Producers were trying to give detective Hammer a younger, more upscale image by casting a younger actor to play him (Ralph Meeker) and putting him in the 'Vette, says Detroit car collector Bill Colombo. That dovetailed well with Chevy's ambitions.

"Chevrolet was actually promoting the 'Vette," Colombo says. "Because of flagging sales and loss of market to Ford's T-Bird, the Corvette was pitched to director Robert Aldrich. This helped bring Mike Hammer to a more youthful audience."

In the 1967 camp classic "Hot Rods to Hell," speed-crazed youths terrorized middle-aged dad Dana Andrews as not one, but two Chevys-- a crazy-looking, customized '61 Corvette and a menacing, black '56 Chevy Bel Air Sport Coupe -- chase his family's sedan on a desert highway.

Ironically, those mid- and late-'50s Chevys -- even the '57 Bel Air, which along with poodle skirts and Elvis, is a true rock-era icon -- were not seen as hot rods back when they were new. These were respectable to the point of dowdy, driven by families and the hard-working lower vestiges of the vast middle class. Thus they turn up in movies in the '50s and early '60s as cars driven by everyday people.

By 1973, the muscle car era was in full swing when the car-centric film "American Graffiti" was released. What once was driven by a meek wage earner had been transformed into a roaring street machine coveted by teenagers.

In that film, Ron Howard as Steve drives a massive '58 Impala. It's a '55 Chevy that Harrison Ford races against Paul Le Mat as John Milner in a "Little Deuce Coupe" Ford on the strip.

'A magical marriage'
Those 1958-64 Impalas have retained their glow over the years. Monkees singer Micky Dolenz still pines for the one that got away -- the '59 Impala Super Sport he bought when fame (and money) hit in the late '60s.

"It's the one with the fins that looks like a spaceship," Dolenz told The Detroit News in June. "If I were ever to go buy a classic car to relive my youth, that would be the one."

"Cars are cast, like actors, for what they represent symbolically," says Serena Donadoni, a Detroit film critic. "Chevrolet is a brand that never got old or was associated with older people. It had that feeling of eternal optimism, that if you got in one and drove, you'd end up somewhere better than where you were."

The ultimate expression of that automotive adventurousness in the 1960s was "Route 66," the thoughtful, weekly CBS drama that followed two young men as they drove a Corvette across the U.S. seeking adventure. The show owed a lot to Jack Kerouac's beat generation classic "On the Road," and there was a bohemian scruffiness to some of the locales and escapades the Corvette carried the two seekers into.

That raffishness was nothing that put off Chevrolet, for the company was the show's sole sponsor.

As Bernacchi points out, with "Route 66," the partnership of auto company and TV show was "a magical marriage," because there was no attempt to force an image. The Corvette already had youth and the open road in its genes, so the 'Vette was a natural.

Since its debut, the Chevelle has always been a speed star, more recently popping up in 2009's "The Fast and the Furious" film.

The image of some other Chevy models hasn't been quite as consistent. The Camaro started out as a hip, flashy player in movies like 1967's "Bullitt" and "Two-Lane Blacktop," but it started to exude a more downmarket vibe in the '80s, descending into mullet territory.

However, the much-loved muscle car has had an image reboot since the relaunched Camaro was featured heavily in the Transformers series of movies, including the bright-yellow Camaro chosen to be the main autobot, Bumblebee, in this year's "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon" film. Director Michael Bay complimented the Camaro, sighing in a GM release over its "beautiful lines and a classic, timeless look."

Also read, Part 1: Greatest hits: Chevrolet's 10 best define American automobiles. Part 2: Chevy's history is a mix of economy, luxury and power. Part 4: Celebrating Chevrolet in song.