Champion Spark Plug site (Toledo, Ohio)

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Born in 1878, Albert Champion was a world renowned bicycle and motorcycle racer when he came to American and founded Champion Ignition Company in 1905 in Boston Massachusetts and built a small factory with the financial backing of brothers Frank and Robert Stranahan. By 1908 Champion had left the company and formed another company with the same name in Flint Michigan. Following a law suit, Champion changed the name of his new company to AC Spark Plug Company.

Maintaining the right to use the Champion name and encouraged by the success of automobile manufacturing in the Midwest, the Stranahan brothers opened a second factory in Toledo in 1910 at the Snowflake Building. Shortly thereafter a new modern factory was built at the corner of Upton Avenue and Avondale Avenue and the corporate offices were relocated from Boston to Toledo. With the benefit of a contract with Henry Ford the company was producing 25,000 spark plugs by 1915. Between 1909 and 1936 Champion Spark Club and AC Spark Plug were the only major producers of spark plugs in the United States sharing 90% of the market.

With time the Toledo plant extended from Nebraska Avenue almost to Dorr Street and additional factories were established in the U.S. and overseas and the distinctive Champion Spark Plug red bow tie symbol became known worldwide. In Toledo, Champion established Brawn Drawn Steel in 1982, acquired DeVilbiss in 1987 and opened another facility in North Toledo on Enterprise Boulevard.

In 1989 the Stranahan family sold their interest and the company was acquired by Houston, Texas based Cooper Industries for $700 million. In 1991 Cooper closed the Toledo plant and another factory in Detroit to consolidate operations in Burlington Iowa and Cambridge Ohio. The older factory buildings were torn down in the early 1990s.