Top Gear's Top 9: weird and wonderful car bonnet ornaments

Possibly the most famous of all the bonnet ornaments (on our side of the Atlantic at least), the Jaguar Leaper was initially designed by Frederick Gordon Crosby after Sir William Lyons took offence to a particular aftermarket ornament on an SS Jaguar Saloon. It stuck around until 1951 and only got outstretched rear legs when the second gen arrived in 1955.

Ettore Bugatti’s younger brother Rembrandt (yes, his name was inspired by the Dutch painter) was a talented sculptor with a passion for animals. He was just 17 when he debuted his first sculpture at an exhibition in Milan, and in 1904 he created the brilliant dancing elephant that Ettore would eventually use as the radiator cap on the mammoth Type 41 Royale.

In the early 1900s, Childe Harold Wills was an engineer and metallurgist for Henry Ford. He also designed the original blue oval logo. Then, when he left Ford with a hefty severance package, he started his own company, Wills Sainte Claire. The cars were too complex and expensive, but the mascot was a gorgeous Canada goose in flight.

Designer John D. Wilson wanted to get some Greek mythology into Packard’s cars, so he decided that Nike (the god of victory and Zeus’ chariot driver) should sit atop the radiators. The Goddess of Speed mascot featured Nike grasping a wheel with her outstretched arms – a pose that led to the unfortunate nickname ‘donut chaser’. Doh!

The Sphinx bonnet mascot first appeared on Siddeley-Deasy cars in the 1910s, with the company slogan something along the lines of "as silent as the Sphinx". In 1919 the company became Armstrong Siddeley Motors when it was bought out by ship and aircraft manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth. That short history should explain why, in the 1950s, the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire 346 arrived with a Sphinx mascot flanked by two jet engines.

You’ll know the four-pointed star, but that’s a little bit common for this list. Luckily, Lincoln has used many different bonnet mascots over the years. We’re particular fans of both the greyhound that was commissioned by Henry Ford’s son Edsel in the 1920s and the knight’s helmet ornament that replaced it. Ford clearly liked the greyhound too, because after it was dropped by Lincoln it appeared on the Model 48 in the 1930s.

One of the few still sticking around, the Spirit of Ecstasy was first registered as intellectual property of Rolls-Royce on 6 February 1911. The flying female figurine was redesigned in 2022 to be more aerodynamic for the all-electric Spectre, but like most of these ornaments it is still made using the lost wax casting technique and each one is still finished by hand.

It’d probably be fair to say that, back in the 1920s and 30s, pedestrian safety wasn’t at the forefront of carmaker’s minds. Take Duesenberg for example – the ultra-luxurious American firm offered monstrous coachbuilt cars with straight-eight engines, then stuck a super sharp sculpture of a bird reaching out over the radiator. Ouch.

The Chieftain replaced the Torpedo as Pontiac’s smaller and slightly cheaper model in 1949, with a number of different body styles available and the questionable use of a Native American chief’s head as the bonnet ornament. At some point in the Chieftain’s life you could even get an orange plastic ornament that lit up with the headlights up front.