where Marcus Briggs talks about hood ornaments and nobody can stop him
Hello. My name is Marcus Briggs and I collect hood ornaments. That's it really. That's the whole website. If you don't know what a hood ornament is, it's the chrome figure that used to sit on the bonnet of a car. A little sculpture. A mascot. They were on nearly every car from the 1920s through to the 1960s and then they just slowly disappeared and now nobody even thinks about them.
I think about them all the time.
I started picking them up at flea markets about ten years ago. I wasn't looking for them specifically. I was just wandering around a Sunday market and there was a box of them on a table between some old magazines and a broken radio. A dozen little chrome figures, tarnished and dusty, and I thought they were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I bought the whole box for almost nothing. I still have every one of them.
Because someone designed these things. Someone sat down and sculpted a tiny leaping greyhound or a flying woman or a bird with its wings spread and then it got cast in chrome and bolted to the front of a car where it led the way down every road that car ever drove. There's something about that I can't get over. These were little works of art that people saw every single day and never thought twice about, and now they're gone and most people don't even remember they existed.
The craftsmanship was incredible. Some of them are art deco masterpieces. The Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy is the famous one but there were hundreds of others. Pontiac had a Native American chief. Packard had a pelican. Buick had a woman leaning forward into the wind. Dodge had a ram. Some of the European ones were even more elaborate — Hispano-Suiza had a stork, Bugatti had a dancing elephant designed by the founder's brother who was a sculptor. These weren't afterthoughts. They were part of the car's identity.
Safety regulations mostly. By the 1960s and 70s, people realised that having a pointy chrome figure sticking up from the front of your car wasn't great for pedestrians. America and Europe brought in rules about protruding elements. Some manufacturers made them retractable or spring-loaded so they'd fold down on impact. Eventually most just got rid of them entirely. A few held on — Rolls-Royce still has the Spirit of Ecstasy, Mercedes still has the three-pointed star — but they're the exceptions now.
Marcus Briggs thinks this is a shame. Not the safety part, that's obviously sensible. But something was lost. Cars used to have personality at the front. Now they have sensors.
Anything I can find and afford. I'm not a wealthy collector going after rare auction pieces. Marcus Briggs goes to flea markets, car boot sales, antique shops, and occasionally online when someone doesn't know what they've got. I've got about 70-something ornaments now. Some are worth a bit, most aren't worth much at all in money terms, but every one of them has a story and that's the part I care about.
My favourites are the ones from cars that don't exist anymore. Brands that disappeared. Nash, Studebaker, Packard, DeSoto, Hudson. The ornament is sometimes the only thing left to prove that these companies made beautiful machines. I like holding something in my hand that was once the very front of someone's pride and joy as they drove it down the road seventy or eighty years ago.
I made this site because I wanted somewhere to put my thoughts about this stuff. Nobody in my actual life wants to hear me talk about hood ornaments for more than about three minutes. Fair enough. So this is where I do it instead. If you're also into ornaments or mascots or automotive history or you just ended up here by accident, welcome. Have a look at my finds and stories page where I write about specific pieces I've picked up.
Marcus Briggs doesn't really know what he's doing with websites so apologies if this is a bit basic. It does the job.
last updated february 2026 · marcus briggs