At the end of 1887, the family moved to Beaune, a small town in the Burgundy region of France. His father taught him basic mechanical skills and stressed the importance of precision in the manufacture of machine parts, which later contributed to his skill as an engine designer.
Louis started working at the age of eleven to support his family. He found employment in the Robin bicycle workshop, where he learned the fundamentals of mechanics. He repaired coaches and bicycles, until one day he was sent to the "Hôtel de la Poste" to repair a steam-driven tricycle belonging to an American.
Chevrolet went to Paris – then the European center of automobile production. In the workshop of Darracq, Louis learnt the basics of the internal combustion engine..
In 1898, he got a job with the Mors Auto Company, and was sent to an auto dealership in Montreal, Canada, in 1899, at the age of twenty-one.
With his savings, Louis is finally able to travel to the USA. His first employer in New York is a Swiss emigrant, William Walter, who has an engineering workshop there.
A short time later, Chevrolet joined the American subsidiary of the famous automobile company, De Dion-Bouton.
As early as 1905, Louis Chevrolet was winning notice as a fearless driver of the brutally primitive racing cars of the period. He became a member of William C. Durant's famed Buick racing team in 1909. Working with a designer in a rented loft in Detroit during 1910, Louis Chevrolet began to lay out the plans for the prototype car that would bear his name.
In 1911, Chevrolet and William "Billy" Durant, the financier from Boston founded the "Chevrolet Motor Car Company" in Detroit.
In 1912, Louis Chevrolet‘s $2,150 Series C “Classic Six,” a luxurious high-performance six-cylinder model, hit the streets of Detroit. The four-cylinder "Baby Grand" and the two-seater "Royal Mail" and the "L Light Six" followed.
In 1915 Chevrolet sold his interest to Durant, who, the next year, brought the Chevrolet Motor Company into the General Motors organization. Louis moved to Indianapolis, where he and younger brothers Arthur and Gaston would become legends in the lore of Indy 500 racing.
Louis Chevrolet died on June 6, 1941, at the age of 63 at his home in Lakewood, east of Detroit – years after he had fallen seriously ill with a brain hemorrhage.
Louis Chevrolet
