This may already be known by a lot of you but here are a couple of interesting tidbits I recently came across.

Champion Sparkplugs were actually named after a man with the sir name of Champion. Albert Champion (a Frenchman) started racing bicycles in France and eventually moved on to cars and car racing and became a manufacturer of sparkplugs and magnetos. In the early 1900s he moved to the United States and founded the Champion Sparkplug company in Boston. In 1908 a disagreement with his backers resulted in him leaving the company and moving to Flint Michigan. In Flint he established the Champion Ignition Company.

And now the rest of the story....... after a legal dispute over the Champion Company name, Champions new company changed its name to the AC Sparkplug Company.



Growing up in the 60s I knew the story of how the band REO Speed Wagon got its name (supposedly it was taken from a slow moving truck they were following behind which happened to be a REO (actually pronounced as a word rather than the individual letters) Speed Wagon truck.

What I did not know until recently was that the REO actually stands for Ransom E Olds it’s founder and the founder of Oldsmobile.