Significance Of Fratzog Logo And What It Means For Mopar Muscle

Summary

• Mopar muscle cars are all about the badge – HEMI, SixPack, Demon, Scat Pack – they all mean something badass under the hood.
• The mysterious Fratzog logo has been appearing on Dodge cars since the ’60s, its significance and origins shrouded in secrecy.
• Dodge brings the Fratzog logo back for their electric future, symbolizing the transition to an era of powerful EV muscle cars.

One of the most important things on a Mopar muscle car, from the classic era to modern times, is the badging. A “HEMI” or “SixPack” on the car lets people know there’s something badass under the hood, while Scat Pack and Demon logos identify its performance status. There, of course, is also the Chrysler five-point Pentastar logo, which is like a Mopar stamp of approval. Then, there is the ultra-mysterious Fratzog logo, which has randomly appeared on Mopar muscle cars since the mid-1960s.

The deltoid Fratzog logo looks like some arcane symbol from a secret society and carries with it a certain amount of intrigue. Its appearance has never been fully explained, while the uneven application of it on Mopar vehicles is positively confounding. After many years of silence, the Fratzog has reappeared and has a new level of significance with the next-gen Dodge muscle cars. TopSpeed dives down the rabbit hole to unravel this mystery and find meaning for this enigmatic three-point logo.

In order to give you the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, the data used to compile this article was sourced from various manufacturer websites and other authoritative sources, including Reuters, and CNBC.

Dodge Logo History

Dodge’s current logo is two slanted stripes. Originally, the Dodge Brothers stamped their vehicles with a dual interlocking triangle that looked like a stylized Star of David. Horace and John Dodge were not Jewish, and it is believed this logo was meant to represent the Greek letter delta. Starting around 1932, Ram hood ornaments started appearing on Dodge vehicles, and not just their pickup trucks. Both the Delta and the Ram would figure prominently in future Dodge logos and branding.

Dodge Logos

• Delta Star – 1914
• Ram – 1932
• Crest – 1942
• Flookerang – 1955
• Fratzog – 1962
• Pentastar – 1981
• Ram’s Head – 1993
• Shield – 2010
• Two Lines – 2012

Looking back at the history of Dodge logos, in the early 1940s, a crest logo with four horizontal lines, and a single vertical line, topped by a knight’s head saw use on Dodge cars. In 1955, Dodge got its first goofy-named logo with the Flookerang. It was a pair of overlapping boomerangs and represented the company’s “Forward Look” design and marketing campaign. This wasn’t necessarily related to any particular model or platform but was rather a belief in futuristic design and excellence. The Flookerang was used in print ads but also found its way onto vehicles between 1957 and 1961.

The Fratzog Era

Dodge was looking to replace the Flookerang, as well as the Forward Look campaign, and commissioned a designer to come up with a new logo. The result was the Fratzog, which is a segmented deltoid, or a triple-arrowhead, depending on how it is viewed. There doesn’t seem to be any significance to the design, other than it looks cool, but it could have been a reference to the original Delta logo of the Dodge Brothers. As for its unusual moniker, the story goes that marketing wanted the designer to give this thing a name and Fratzog randomly popped out of his mouth.

Fraternizing the Fratzog

The reason why the Fratzog is so mysterious is because it was never really explained, nor was it used in print ads or catalogs. It simply started showing up on cars, starting with the 1962 Dodge Polara 500. It was used as a grille emblem, horn button, c-pillar badge, and rear decklid emblem on select Dodge vehicles from 1962-1975, but there was no rhyme nor reason for why it was used on some cars and not others. It’s on the front grille of the 1968 Charger but was never used on a Charger after that.

The Fratzog Finds New Importance

Dodge sent shockwaves through the Mopar community, and muscle car enthusiasts in general, when it announced 2023 would be the final year for gas-powered Chargers and Challengers, to be replaced with an electric vehicle. As it turns out, this wasn’t an organic move, but rather something forced upon the company by the federal government. Reuters reported that, in a nutshell, the NHTSA would have fined Stellantis, Dodge’s parent company, hundreds of millions of dollars for failing to meet fleet fuel efficiency requirements.

Since Dodge only pretty much made gas-guzzling performance vehicles, their line-up would have bankrupted the company. Government regulations basically killed off Dodge muscle cars in the early 1970s, and once again Uncle Sam forced the close out of the modern era. Dodge did what they had to do and came up with an EV, but since they are the company of Mopar performance, made the world’s first all-electric muscle car. The recently unveiled 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona is not only impressive, it’s all about the Fratzog.

Fratzog for the New Era

The Dodge Charger Daytona EV is the first car in almost fifty years to bear the Fratzog logo, and it’s not just a bit of nostalgia thrown in for effect. The Fratzog is a symbol of Dodge’s commitment to kicking ass in the EV age and defiance of arbitrary government regulations. In a 2021 CNBC interview, Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis said the Fratzog logo will be used to differentiate the EV models from the ICE vehicles, adding that it represents both the future of the company and its technological innovations.

“It damn near looks like something that Doc Brown (from
Back to the Future
) would have done. It looks very futuristic and electrified, and it’s our history, which is what we do.” – Tim Kuniskis on the Fratzog logo

Going Full Frazonic

The 2024 Charger Daytona is loaded with Fratzog logos, including an illuminated one on the center grill and all four-wheel center hubs. Then there is the curious word “Frazonic” emblazoned under the rear bumper that may have people thinking it’s some kind of second-party performance upgrade. In reality, it’s referring to the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust,” which is essentially piped engine noise, designed to replicate the sound of a Hellcat V-8 in tone and decibels.

Nobody Badges Like Mopar

Nobody had more fun during the classic muscle car era in terms of trims and badging than Dodge and Plymouth, and that extended into the modern era with Dodge performance vehicles. They didn’t just name a car the Dodge Demon, they included a little demonic imp logo to boot. The same goes for the Super Bee, which eventually got a speeding bumblebee hood decal to show off B-Body dominance. Then there were, of course, 426 Hemi and 440 SixPack emblems that were a source of pride for any Mopar muscle car owner.

Plymouth Tunes the Toons

Plymouth paid a $50,000 licensing fee to Warner Bros. Studios to use the name Road Runner on their super-speedy no-frills muscle car that debuted for the 1968 model year. Part of the licensing agreement involved using the likeness of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon characters. Both were used in promotional ads, but the Road Runner actually became a Fender decal on one of the fastest Mopars ever built. The company spent an additional $10,000 on the Road Runner’s “meep meep” horn. They additionally tried to license the Tasmanian Devil for the Duster, but negotiations fell through on that one.

Scat Pack Attack

In 1968, the Dodge marketing department came up with a package called the “Scat Pack” which was used to designate the company’s highest-performance rides. If a car couldn’t run a 14-second quarter mile, it wasn’t a Scat Pack. The name was a play on the Frank Sinatra gang known as the “Rat Pack” and was meant to convey a sense of camaraderie among their fun-to-drive muscle cars. Scat Pack cars were marked with a cool motorized bumblebee logo and a white bumblebee stripe across the back. Dodge would resurrect the Scat Pack and Super Bee packages for the modern era.

Scat Pack Cars

• Dodge Dart (1967-1971)
• Dodge Coronet (1968-1970)
• Dodge Charger (1968-1971)
• Dodge Challenger (1970-1971)
• Dodge Charger (2007-2009)
• Dodge Challenger (2014-2023)
• Dodge Charger (2014-2023)
• Dodge Last Call Cars (2023)

The Fratzog Is Now The Top Dog

It would have been cool if the Fratzog was an ancient Sumerian symbol of power or quantum physics portal to the fifth dimension, but it’s just a thing some dude came up with in the 1960s and gave a funny name to. Not everything has to have a deep meaning, and it is part of Dodge’s history, which is something the company always pays tribute to, so it is important without having a profound metaphysical backstory.

The importance is that the Fratzog is now an attitude and even a lifestyle for the future of Dodge muscle cars. It’s the driving force behind Dodge’s charge into the EV era with an emphasis on power and performance like Mopars have been since the beginning. It’s also a fun word that can be a noun (Fratzog), an adjective (Frazonic), and should be a verb (Fratzoging). Most of all, it’s an icon of possibilities in a new age of American performance muscle.