In the 1970s, GM’s most popular division crafted a slogan declaring that Chevy and the USA were one in the same: “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.”

In 1976, Chevrolet was the most popular car in the USA. It almost goes without saying. Sales at Chevy easily topped Ford by more than 200,000 vehicles, for that year at least, while dwarfing the other General Motors divisions and the entire output of the Chrysler Corporation. But that leadership came at a price: To sell all those cars, Chevy now had to offer buyers more choices.

The new car market was fragmenting, and new Chevy models were proliferating at an equal rate. The product lineup for ’76 included nine distinct car lines: Chevette, Vega, Monza, Nova, Camaro, Corvette, Chevelle, Monte Carlo, and Impala. Twenty years earlier there had been only two: Chevrolet and Corvette. As Brock Yates observed in his famous 1968 Car and Driver essay, “The Grosse Pointe Myopians,” this would prove to be a far more expensive and complicated way for the Detroit carmakers to do business.

Chevrolet truly was working to be all things to all Americans. If the carmaker had its way, every American would be driving a Chevy. And in 1974, James Hartzell, a copywriter for Campbell Ewald, the division’s longtime ad agency, created a slogan that united the brand with the very soul of the nation, if you will: “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.” Chevrolet was America, in essence.

The line, and the catchy jingle that was soon invented to go with it, generated one of the most familiar advertising campaigns in the history of the Motor City. (Its success also inspired a parallel campaign at GM in Australia: “Football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden cars.”) This 1976 commecial is a perfect representation of the message that  Chevrolet was America’s favorite car, while also managing to include all nine models. Video below.