The MoPar brand – short for MOtor PARts was founded by Chrysler in 1937 to address the need for factory original replacement parts. MoPar is the second oldest O.E.M. brand, behind GM’s A.C. Delco, which was founded in 1916. Ford Motorcraft was founded in the mid-1950s, however Ford discontinued it when they purchased Autolite. After Ford was forced to divest their interest in Autolite via the U.S. government, Ford reintroduced Motorcraft in 1972.
Prior to the MoPar brand being established, Chrysler used a logo, which featured four letters each representing a brand: Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge and Plymouth.
The first MoPar logo appeared in 1937 and would continue unchanged for the next 10-years.
The MoPar logo slightly changed in 1948 replacing "Use Chrysler Engineered" with "Use Chrysler Corporation" on the top line and dropped the "Plymouth-Dodge-DeSoto-Chrysler" lower text with "Factory Engineered and Inspected."
Other changes included using more blue as a background color.
The 1954 logo would keep its familiar "MoPar" script and red text, but it would drop the classic blue and yellow color scheme. For the first time, the Imperial brand name would appear in the logo.
The 1959 "Forward Look" logo dropped the classic "MoPar" style font and red text. The "MoPar" text would now appear in a red pennant encased in a circular ring with each of the five brands represented.
An entire new "Omega-M logo designed by George Robinson would appear. The "M" would be referred to as the "Rolling M" and remains relatively unchanged to today.
The newly refreshed logo would continue using the "Rolling M," however it would feature red, white and blue horizontal bars and for the first time, the Chrysler Pentastar appeared.
The 1985 design would keep the "Rolling M" with the "MoPar" text changing from black to blue. The red, white and blue horizontal stripes would disappear and the addition of "Chrysler Corporation Genuine Parts" would appear in a new block.
The "Rolling M" logo continued and for the first time in Mopar's history, red would not be used in the logo.
The "Rolling M" would continue as would the blue color scheme. "Chrysler Corporation" was dropped in favor or "Parts," which is redundant since MoPar itself denotes parts.
Another logo change would occur and would almost mimic the 1964-1971 logo - save for the "Rolling M" changing from red to blue and the "MoPar" font being restyled. The current logo has gone the longest without a design change.
