Dodge Logo: History and Meaning, From Star to Fratzog

The current Dodge logo and what it means

The Dodge logo today has two parts: a black DODGE wordmark in wide, extended letters and the Fratzog, a red-outlined emblem of three arrowheads that form a three-pointed star. This new Dodge logo launched in late 2024 and debuted on the 2025 Charger Daytona. As for meaning, the symbol has less of one than people expect: “Fratzog” is a word a designer made up, and we found no official Dodge explanation of what the shape stands for.

The shape itself is not new. Dodge first put the Fratzog on its cars in September 1962 and used it until 1976 or 1981 (sources disagree). In 2021 Dodge announced its return as the emblem for its electrified vehicles.

Which Dodge car symbol you see depends on the model year. The Dodge car logo on a 2025 Charger Daytona is the new wordmark and Fratzog. A Dodge from the 2012 to 2024 model years usually carries the striped wordmark, and most built from 1996 to 2010 wear the ram’s head.

Element	In use since	What it is
DODGE wordmark	Late 2024 (this version)	The brand name in black, extended capitals, without the red stripes of the previous logo
Fratzog emblem	1962; revived in late 2024	Three arrowhead shapes around a hollow center, now drawn as a thin red outline on black
Racing-stripe wordmark	2010 to 2024	The previous Dodge logo: DODGE followed by two red diagonal stripes. It reached grille badges with the 2012 model year, so older Dodges still wear it

The original Dodge logo: a six-pointed star, not a Star of David

The original Dodge logo was a circle holding two interlocked triangles that form a six-pointed star, with an interlocked DB monogram at the center and “Dodge Brothers Motor Vehicles” around the ring. It was the Dodge symbol on the first Dodge cars in 1914 and stayed until the 1939 models replaced it, so the Dodge original logo and the Dodge Brothers logo are the same badge.

Because the star looks like a Star of David, many people assume the brothers were Jewish. They were not: Wikipedia describes John and Horace Dodge as Methodists. The brothers never explained the design before both died in 1920, which left room for theories. Here is what the record supports, and what it doesn’t.

Documented

• A Smithsonian radiator emblem shows the physical badge: a black rim lettered “DODGE BROTHERS / DETROIT-U-S-A-”, a globe on a light-blue background, and one white and one black triangle.
• The star was last used on the 1938 cars.

Interpretation and speculation

• The Smithsonian’s reading: each triangle is “believed to represent the Greek letter delta,” so the star would stand for the two brothers, locked together to show their closeness. This is the most cited explanation, but it is still an interpretation.
• A popular story says the star was chosen to needle Henry Ford, a known anti-Semite. The Dodge Brothers Club rejects it: the Dodges and Ford were on good terms in 1914, and the six-pointed star was not yet tied so firmly to Judaism.
• Other suggestions include Solomon’s Seal and a lawman’s badge. None has documentary support.
• One suggestion for the 1939 change is that Dodge worried about how the star would be read in export markets. That is a guess, not a recorded decision.

Dodge logo history: every version since 1910

1. 1910–1914
2. 1914–1938
3. 1932–1954
4. 1941–1957
5. 1955–1962
6. 1962–1976
7. 1982–1995
8. 1993–2010
9. 2010–2024
10. 2011
11. 2024–Present

Dodge has used 11 main logos since about 1910, and several changes followed a change in owner or strategy. The table below lists all Dodge logos in order. The Dodge family owned the company until 1925, when the bank Dillon, Read & Co. bought it, and Chrysler took over in 1928. Stellantis is the parent today.

Years	Dodge logo	Where it was used	Context
c.1910–1914	DB company emblem	The parts business, before Dodge built cars	Dodge Brothers supplied parts to other automakers
1914–1938	Six-pointed DB star	Radiator badge of every Dodge Brothers car	First Dodge cars in 1914; the star outlived the 1925 and 1928 sales
1932–1954	Leaping ram	Hood ornament on Dodge cars	Adopted in the Chrysler era
1941–1957, 1976–1981	Crest with knight’s head	Badges and trim	Said to be a family crest; revived on the 1976 Aspen
1955–Sept. 1962	Forward Look	All Chrysler Corporation vehicles	A corporate mark, not a Dodge-only logo
Sept. 1962–1976 or 1981	Fratzog	Dodge cars	Dodge’s own emblem; sources disagree on the end date
1982–1995	Red Pentastar	Dodge cars and trucks	Chrysler’s corporate mark replaced the crest
1993–2010	Ram’s head	All Dodge vehicles except the Viper from 1996	A return to the ram, first on the 1993 Intrepid
2010–2024	Racing-stripe wordmark	Marketing from May 2010; grilles from 2012 models	Ram became its own brand and kept the ram’s head
From 2011	Crosshair badge	Grilles of the 2011 Charger and Durango	Filled the gap while the wordmark was for marketing only
Late 2024–present	Wordmark and revived Fratzog	2025 Charger Daytona onward	Announced in 2021 for Dodge’s electrified vehicles

c.1910–1914: the first Dodge Brothers emblem

The old Dodge logo that came before the star was an early Dodge Brothers company emblem carrying the initials D and B. A photo dated to about 1910 shows it on a gate of the Dodge Main plant. At that point the company, founded in Detroit in December 1900, was a machine shop and parts supplier, not yet a carmaker. Sources describe the frame around the letters differently, so treat the drawing below as one reconstruction.

1914–1938: the Dodge Brothers star

The six-pointed star became the first Dodge logo on a car in 1914, when the four-cylinder Model 30-35 arrived. It sat on the radiator as a round badge with the DB monogram at its center and survived both the 1925 sale and Chrysler’s 1928 takeover. It even outlived the Brothers name, which left the trucks in 1929 and the cars in 1930. The 1938 cars were the last to wear it.

1932–1954: the leaping ram hood ornament

Dodge’s first animal was a three-dimensional leaping ram, fitted to the hood for the 1932 model year. The sculpture is credited to Avard Fairbanks, a University of Michigan art professor whom Chrysler commissioned in 1931. The ram was streamlined for the 1940 models and cut back to just the head and curling horns by 1951. The 1954 cars were the last to carry it. Dodge trucks had their own ram ornament through 1950.

1941–1957 and 1976–1981: the crest and knight’s head

In 1941 Dodge added a shield-shaped crest: four horizontal bars split by a vertical bar with an O at the center, topped by a knight’s head. It is said to be the Dodge family crest, though no source confirms it. The knight’s head was dropped for 1955 and the crest lasted through 1957. A knight’s head appeared on its own in 1959. The crest came back on the 1976 Aspen and stayed until the Pentastar took over for 1982.

1955–1962: the Forward Look

For 1955 Chrysler Corporation adopted the Forward Look emblem across all its vehicles: two overlapping boomerang shapes meant to suggest space-age, rocket-propelled motion. The emblem accompanied Virgil Exner’s Forward Look styling of the same year. Dodge used it in ads, on trim, on key heads and on accessories until September 1962. Because it was a corporate mark, the same shape appeared on every Chrysler Corporation brand, not just Dodge.

1962 to 1976 or 1981: the Fratzog

The Fratzog is a “fractured” delta: three arrowhead shapes separated by thin gaps, forming a three-pointed star with a hollow center. It debuted as the Dodge symbol in September 1962 on the 1962 Polara 500 and the mid-year Custom 880. When the shape needed a name, a designer invented “Fratzog,” a word with no meaning, and it stuck. Sources disagree on when it was retired: some histories say 1976, while Wikipedia says 1981.

1982–1995: the Chrysler Pentastar

For 1982 the Pentastar replaced the crest as the Dodge logo on cars and trucks. It is a pentagon with a five-pointed star formed by the negative space inside it, and Chrysler had used it for corporate identification since late 1962. Dodge’s version was red, while Chrysler and Plymouth used blue. Dodge wore it until 1995, and the ram’s head replaced it across the range for 1996.

1993–2010: the ram’s head returns

The ram came back as a flat badge: a front-facing ram’s head with curled horns inside a shield. The first to wear it was a car, not a truck: the 1993 Intrepid, launched in late 1992. From 1996 it was the Dodge logo on every vehicle except the Viper. The idea was older: a ram’s-head hood ornament had already returned in 1973 on the Dodge Bighorn heavy-duty tractor. After 2010 the badge went to Ram.

2010–2024: the racing-stripe wordmark

On May 27, 2010, Dodge unveiled a new logo: DODGE in shiny silver letters followed by two red diagonal stripes. The company said the stripes honor the brand’s sports-car and motorsport heritage. At first the wordmark was only for marketing and did not appear on the cars; it became the Dodge car logo on grilles with the 2012 model year. From 2016 to 2024 Dodge used a flat black version with red stripes.

2011: the crosshair grille badge

While the stripe wordmark stayed in advertising, the cars needed something on the grille. For 2011 Dodge used a shield-shaped Dodge badge divided by a crosshair over the DODGE name, on models such as the Charger and Durango. It replaced the ram’s head as the Dodge logo on the vehicles themselves. This Dodge emblem is easy to miss in logo histories because it was a grille and steering-wheel badge, not a marketing logo.

Late 2024–present: the Fratzog comes back

The launch of the 2025 Charger Daytona in late 2024 gave Dodge new logo artwork built from old parts: the 1962 Fratzog, redrawn as a thin red outline on black, beside a black DODGE wordmark. Dodge had announced the revival in 2021, at a Stellantis presentation on electric vehicles, as the emblem for its electrified vehicles. A redesigned version appeared in 2022 on the Charger Daytona SRT concept.

Dodge animal logos: the ram and the Viper’s snake

The Dodge logo animal is the ram, which appeared from 1932 to 2010 in different forms. The only other animal is the snake head on the Viper, and that is a model emblem, not the brand logo. Performance badges such as Hellcat and Demon are model and trim badges too, and we could not find a reliable source describing them, so we leave them out.

Animal	Form	Where	Years
Leaping ram	Hood ornament	Dodge cars	1932–1954
Ram	Hood ornament	Dodge trucks	1940–1950
Ram’s head	Hood ornament	Dodge Bighorn tractors	From 1973
Ram’s head	Shield badge	All Dodge vehicles except the Viper	1993–2010
Viper’s head	Model emblem	Dodge Viper only	The Viper’s production run

The Dodge Viper logo

The Viper’s badge is a snake’s head, and the Viper is the one Dodge that never wore the ram’s head, even after 1996 when every other Dodge did. The Dodge Viper emblem belonged to the car rather than the brand, which is why it sits outside the main timeline. For a while the Viper also sat under SRT, which ran as its own brand from 2011 or 2012 until 2014. Every version of the snake is covered on our Dodge Viper logo page.

Dodge vs Ram logo: why the ram left Dodge

Dodge and Ram do not share a logo today. The ram’s head was Dodge’s badge on cars and trucks from 1993 to 2010. When Chrysler announced Ram as its own truck brand in late 2009, Ram kept the ram’s head and Dodge had to replace its own logo. Sources date the split itself anywhere from 2009 to 2011, but Dodge’s replacement logo arrived in May 2010.

That is the short answer to why Dodge stopped using the Ram logo. What many people still call the Dodge Ram symbol is now simply the Ram brand’s logo. Ram president Fred Diaz said Dodge needed a brand identity of its own. Dodge pickups had been called Ram since 1981, and the ram mascot goes back to the 1932 hood ornament, but no source says the ornament is why the trucks got the name.

Period	Dodge logo	Ram logo
1932–1954	Leaping ram hood ornament on Dodge cars	No separate brand; Dodge trucks had their own ram ornament through 1950
1993–2010	Ram’s head badge on Dodge cars and trucks	Ram was a Dodge truck name, wearing the same badge
From 2010	Stripe wordmark (2010), crosshair badge (2011), Fratzog (late 2024)	The ram’s head, now the logo of a separate brand

Dodge logo PNG, colors and font

The Download button above gives you the current Dodge logo as a PNG with a transparent background: the black DODGE wordmark with the red-outlined Fratzog to its right, 2,000 pixels wide. It is the same lockup as the image at the top of this page, not one of the historic versions. It works on light backgrounds; on dark ones the black letters are hard to see.

• Colors. The current Dodge logo uses black and red. Red keeps coming back on Dodge logos: the Pentastar was red from 1982, the stripes from 2010, and the Fratzog outline today, which is why Dodge is listed among our red car logos. We found no official Dodge color codes, so we don’t publish HEX values.
• Older versions. The 2010 logo came in silver with red stripes and, from 2016, in flat black with red stripes.
• Font. We could not confirm which typeface the wordmark uses, so we don’t name one.