A Depression-era purchase in Roanoke.

Advance Auto Parts traces its start to 1932 and to Arthur Taubman. According to the International Directory of Company Histories (St. James Press, 2004), Taubman had earlier run a retail chain called Taubman’s with one of his brothers, selling auto parts and household goods from a base in Pittsburgh; that business did not survive the Great Depression. Living in Baltimore in 1932, the Directory says, he learned that a struggling auto-parts business based in Roanoke, Virginia, called Advance Stores, was for sale, with shops in Roanoke and in Lynchburg. He bought it. English Wikipedia dates the purchase to April 1932.

The Directory says Taubman turned the business around without more than a grade-school education, learning from books and practical experience, and that the hard economy of the 1930s helped the chain grow: federally funded road-paving projects put more cars on the roads, and drivers kept older cars longer and needed parts to keep them running. During the Second World War, with rubber short and petrol rationed, the Directory says, Advance Stores began to stock housewares and appliances alongside auto parts, and it kept selling them after the war. In the decades that followed, the Directory says, the chain widened its range again and installed items such as tires, batteries and seat covers in service bays at its stores.

The family stayed in charge for decades. In 1969, the Directory says, Arthur Taubman retired and his son Nicholas Taubman took control. The name followed the merchandise: Advance Stores became Advance Auto in 1978, and in 1985, when the company turned to auto parts alone, it became Advance Auto Parts. The Directory lists the company’s address then as Roanoke.

One name across many acquired chains.

Much of Advance’s later shape came through acquisitions. In 1998, the Directory says, the Taubman family sold control of the company to the investment firm Freeman Spogli & Co. That August, the Los Angeles Times reported that Sears, Roebuck & Co. had agreed to sell its Western Auto Supply car-parts chain to Advance, then based in Roanoke, and that the combined company would operate most of its stores under the Advance name. The newspaper said the deal would take Advance, until then a chain of the Southeast, into markets in the Northeast, the Midwest and the Southwest; Western Auto itself was based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

More chains followed. The Directory lists the purchase of Discount Auto Parts in 2001. In July 2002, according to the Washington Business Journal as cited by Wikipedia, Advance received bankruptcy-court approval to take over Trak Auto locations in the Washington area. Wikipedia says that in December 2012 Advance acquired BWP Distributors, a regional franchise of Carquest, and Carquest is today listed by Wikipedia as an Advance subsidiary, operating under its own name. In November 2024, Wikipedia says, Advance announced it had completed the sale of its Worldpac business to the investment firm Carlyle.

The company has also put its name in front of racing audiences. In February 2023 IndyCar announced that Advance Auto Parts would sponsor the series’ checkered flag and become the official automotive aftermarket retail partner of IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Wikipedia adds that Advance was a title sponsor of Monster Jam from 2009 to 2013, sponsored the 2017 Advance Auto Parts Clash at Daytona, and in 2020 became title sponsor of NASCAR’s weekly short-track series, which carries its name. Its name has also appeared on drag-racing cars driven by Courtney Force and Brittany Force, according to the NHRA and NBC Sports as cited by Wikipedia.

Design and documentation.

Car-service and tire brands are read from the road before they are read anywhere else. A fascia over a row of service bays, a pole sign at the curb and the lettering above each bay door are meant to be seen from a moving car or from across a parking lot, which is one reason such names are often short, their colours few and their letterforms heavy. Inside, the same marks can repeat on a smaller scale: on the tire wall, where stacked sidewalls sit under a branded header, on the counter, on the waiting-room wall and on the printed or emailed receipt.

Uniforms carry an identity into the bay itself. A name patch, a coloured shirt or a branded cap marks out the technician, and the same colours can run on to vans, tool chests and the paperwork that leaves the shop with the car. Where a name is franchised, a central owner can set the fascia, the sign and the colours while local operators run the bays.

Each guide below follows one name from its founding through its owners to the signs and stores that carry it today, and notes where an account rests on the company’s own word.

From Roanoke to a tower in Raleigh.

Advance Auto Parts, Inc. is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AAP; Wikipedia dates its initial public offering to 2001. Its shares are mainly held by institutional investors, Wikipedia says, rather than by a single controlling owner. In 2015, Reuters reported, the activist investment firm Starboard Value disclosed a stake in the company and urged changes; in March 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported, Advance reached a settlement with Dan Loeb’s Third Point, which added directors to its board.

The head office has moved with the business. On 27 August 2019, WRAL reported that Advance would move its corporate headquarters to a new high-rise tower in the North Hills area of Raleigh, North Carolina, signing a lease with the developer Kane Realty for space in a building to be renamed the Advance Auto Parts Tower. At the time, WRAL reported, the company’s main offices were on Millbrook Road in Raleigh, with further space in the Duke Energy building downtown. Wikipedia says the company has been headquartered in the North Hills tower since 2020.

Leadership has changed in the same period. In September 2023 Shane O’Kelly succeeded Tom Greco as president and chief executive, aftermarketNews reported, according to Wikipedia. In November 2024, Wikipedia says, the company announced a restructuring that closed stores and distribution centers, and by March 2025 it had closed its stores in California.

For a design guide, Advance Auto Parts shows how a single retail name can be laid over a string of acquired chains while another, Carquest, keeps its own sign. Compare AutoZone, another American auto-parts retailer, and DieHard, the battery name. For this guide we use a counter red, a tyre black and a shop white with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Advance Auto Parts’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.