Ein a dozen individual parts and just as many work steps, from die casting to polishing, assembly by hand and then a mechanical final inspection for each individual copy: where others simply put a sticker on the car, the supplier Witte Automotive drives the star high up on the car Most Mercedes models cool a great deal of effort.
“Every star goes through ten hands before it leaves our plant in Wülfrath,” says press spokeswoman Bettina Janke and gives impressive figures: For the up to 30,000 stars, almost seven tons of a special zinc alloy are processed every month.
Production may be complicated, but it’s not creative. After all, there is only one hood ornament at Mercedes. And even that is increasingly making room for a big star in the grill.
Pigs and dancing elephants as hood ornaments
It used to be very different, says Ruth Schumacher. The woman from Waiblingen has amassed one of the largest collections of hood ornaments. The fact that she now has over 1500 different hood ornaments and emblems from mythology and the animal world is due to the creativity of the first car buyers. Because in the childhood days of the automobile, it was not the manufacturers but the customers who commissioned a corresponding figure from the artisan of their choice, says Schumacher.
If you walk through the rows at classic car meetings, you will see glass swans, golden lions, silver pigs, Indian heads made of lead crystal and even dancing elephants. They come from the sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti and, according to Schumacher, are considered the blue Mauritius among the hood ornament.
Because designed as a satirical on the Spirit of Ecstasy of the competitor Rolls-Royce for the Royale of his brother Ettore, only six copies were made. They are now being traded for more than 50,000 euros, according to the collector.
Long hand must be laid on the naked woman
While the Bugatti elephant is only known to experts, the “spirit of rapture”, as the Rolls-Royce godmother’s official translation is, is so common that most of the scantily clad muse even know the nickname: Lady Emily is the name of the lady whose Sculpture is largely hand-made in a small factory near Southampton.
According to the manufacturer, the multi-day procedure begins with a 3D image of the original, from which a tool is created in the next step, the smallest details of which are also reworked by specialists with extremely fine knives. These molds are filled with liquid stainless steel at 1600 degrees Celsius.
Make a good impression: The Spirit of Ecstasy from Rolls-Royce is largely handcrafted
Source: dpa-tmn / Rolls-Royce
Afterwards, casting residues are removed in an air stream with steel balls 0.04 millimeters in diameter. Only then do the polishers create that special high gloss with a great deal of dexterity and even more time, which makes every Emily shimmer so incredibly precious.
Unfortunately, this not only flatters the customers, but also thieves and souvenir hunters. That is why Emily automatically retreats into the hood when parking or if someone touches it immorally.
The first hood ornament screwed on a lord
The Spirit of Ecstasy, which is also available in solid gold for a surcharge, is by far the best-known art object on the radiator grille of a car. And despite her youthful look, the lady is over 100 years old since it was first assembled in 1911.
But it is far from the oldest hood ornament, says Schumacher, and grants this honor to another Englishman: Christopherus, which Lord Montagu of Beaulieu had screwed onto his Daimler’s radiator in 1899, is considered the first and therefore oldest hood ornament of the PS World.
Looking back, Ruth Schumacher is talkative. But when she looks at the current cars, she doesn’t have much more to say: “Pedestrian protection and aerodynamics make life difficult for the hood ornament,” says the collector and complains about the increasing emptiness in the driver’s field of vision. Where it used to be like in the sculpture garden, the hood ornament has become a rarity today.
The Spirit of Ecstasy in the process of creation
Source: dpa-tmn / Rolls-Royce
It is only emblazoned on the hoods of Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, Maybach and in some export markets with lax safety requirements also from Jaguar. However, that does not mean that the brands no longer value these characters.
For example, for the premiere of the flagship Flying Spur, Bentley has again developed a new Flying B for the radiator. The then chief designer Stefan Sielaff revealed that it took more than a year to design this winged and, if desired, illuminated letter.
Badges instead of hood ornaments
Just because they have taken out the hood ornament does not mean that the other brands lack love for their own label either. Sure, the Opel Blitz, the Peugeot lion and even the famous Maserati trident, which are glued flat to the sheet metal, are mass-produced items made from aluminum or plastic injection molding and cost only a few cents. But other brands are proving that you can go to great lengths for such applications.
The Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) of Jaguar and Land Rover, for example, is introducing a new badge with the new Range Rover, which is specially made from ceramic and therefore promises completely new impressions both visually and haptically, says SVO boss Michael van der Zande.
Cat on the cooler: Correct figures on the front of a vehicle are rare today, you see them more often on classic cars like this Jaguar from the 1950s
Source: dpa-tmn / Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert
And that’s just a gimmick compared to the effort that Bugatti makes: after all, according to the company, the brand logo in the front of the Chiron’s horseshoe grill is cast from solid sterling silver at a jeweler in southern Germany and enamelled so elaborately that production takes several days and each part costs 500 euros in the purchase alone.
This means that the badge is currently the most expensive that is used in the PS industry. Whereby: Measured against the base price of the Chiron of around three million euros, the Bugatti logo is not much more expensive than the VW logo for a Golf.
Shining stars: One of the most famous trademarks in the automotive world is the Mercedes star
Source: dpa-tmn / Thomas Geiger
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