50 most iconic brands that built America | The Excerpt

On the Thursday, April 16, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: American brands built who we are. As the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary, we break down USA TODAY’s 50 most iconic brands, from Motown to Harley-Davidson. Business Editor Jim Nelson and Business Reporter Ricardo Torres of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network, join The Excerpt to discuss the brands that shaped America’s identity.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

You can sip it, zip it, drive it. American brands do more than just fill our lives. They shape who we are. And as the nation marks its 250th anniversary, we decided to take a look at the brands that capture America's ingenuity and drive. From Motown to motorcycles, these names tell a uniquely American story. Narrowing it down to the 50 most iconic, that was the tough part.

Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, April 16th, 2026. Joining me to zigzag through some of the names in USA TODAY's Iconic Brands series is business editor Jim Nelson and business reporter Ricardo Torres with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA Today Network. It's so good to have you both here.

Jim Nelson:

Thanks for having us.

Dana Taylor:

Jim, at what point do you think a brand becomes more than a business and becomes part of America's identity? And being on the team that got the final say, was it easy to land on the top 50 or was that something that kept you up at night?

Jim Nelson:

Let me just say this. I've looked at the list so many times, and there are brands on the list that maybe I agree with, maybe I disagree with. There are brands that are missing that I wish were on the list. This isn't a scientific process, but it's an emotional process. Those of us who study the history of business and so forth know that there are brands that resonate so much with the American consumer that go back generations.

There's a guy in the Ford Motor Company profile that one of our Detroit writers did. Such a great piece. The story is kicked off by a guy who's a musician who wrote a song about how much he loves Fords and virtually every car that guy has owned has been a Ford. And it's that kind of resonance that I think that it's not just buying something at the store. Sometimes it's the store that makes you feel good or the brand that makes you feel like you are part of that company.

Dana Taylor:

Ricardo, you wrote about Harley-Davidson's journey from being inspired by a tricycle, it may have been a Vaudeville show, to redesigning or to designing a motorcycle. How do origin stories like that, theirs began back in 1903, tell the story of American ingenuity?

Ricardo Torres:

I think origin stories like Harley-Davidson starting in a shed in Milwaukee just shows how a good idea is really the ultimate currency that lasts throughout time. That if you have a good product, if you have a good service that people are willing to pay for, you could start it in a shed, in your basement, in a garage, and grow it to an international brand and, really, a culture. And that's what Harley-Davidson has done. The company started out of a friendship between two guys, William Harley and Arthur Davidson. They went to a Vaudeville show, where they saw a tricycle being propelled across stage on a single-cylinder engine, and they thought, huh, that's interesting. And then from there, they started experimenting, and that's how Harley-Davidson got started.

Jim Nelson:

One thing that makes Harley-Davidson so important and unique to Milwaukee, but also to the country, is it's such an American sound. You can go to other countries around the world and you can hear a Harley. You can't hear a McDonald's so much, but that Harley-Davidson sound, that potato-potato sound, as they describe it, it's everywhere. The Harley Owners Group is a robust network worldwide that does group rides and celebrations almost every year. And that's a really important part, not only of the brand, but of that company and the lifestyle.

Ricardo Torres:

And that lifestyle and that culture gets passed down generation to generation.

Dana Taylor:

Jim, let's move from two wheels to four. When we look at General Motors and Ford Motor Company, we're talking about a lot more than selling cars, right?

Jim Nelson:

We are. You're talking about, in the case of Ford, a company that redefined how manufacturing takes place. And if you read the profile of Ford, there are numbers that jump out that are just stunning, including by 1927 when they stopped making the Model T, they had sold 15 million of those vehicles, of that product. And that shows the importance of what Henry Ford and his company created at the time, a whole new way of manufacturing a product, a mass product. And there are other stories in the GM and how they've redefined and created Detroit as we know it today.

Dana Taylor:

While brands like Ford and GM represent democratization of mobility, there are iconic brands like Apple and Microsoft that represent the democratization of information, right?

Jim Nelson:

That's so true. And you just look at the power of that piece of equipment and compare it to maybe your first computer, it's absolutely astonishing what has come in 25 years or 30 years. And we all have a very powerful computer in our pocket and on our desktop. We also have a very powerful way of entertaining ourselves and maybe wasting some time too.

Dana Taylor:

Ricardo, you touched on this, but what is it about the humble beginnings of some of these brands? Of course, Harley-Davidson started in a shed. We have Apple and Microsoft who started in garages. That resonates so deeply with Americans.

Ricardo Torres:

The idea that anyone can do it, that if you have a good idea and it's something that people are willing to pay for, that idea can grow if you hustle hard enough. If you're smart with your money and how you build it up over time, that's something that I think a lot of Americans really do appreciate about the opportunities that we have here is that if you work hard enough, you hustle hard enough and people want it, you can build something.

Dana Taylor:

Jim, we're talking about well-known national brands, but they're also local brands. I live in Orlando, Florida, so I stake a claim to the Walt Disney Company. I walk around Disney World like I own the place. What are your thoughts on how these iconic American brands embed themselves into our local and regional identities?

Jim Nelson:

Well, that's something that we are going to pursue, and I think other USA TODAY sites are going to be pursuing, is looking at the iconic brands in regions of the country. In many states, there's a restaurant chain, a fast food chain called Culver's, known for burgers and custard. That chain originated in Wisconsin, and it's beloved here in Wisconsin, but it's also grown around the country. I saw one in Florida not so long ago.

But also, there are brands up here in the Upper Midwest. There's a chain of convenience stores and gas stations called QuikTrip. People go there and have their prom photos done there. People go there and see how many they can visit and post it on social media because they love the brand. They love the store and the store experience. And the company loves them back, of course.

Dana Taylor:

Ricardo, sticking with that, the culture around Harley-Davidson, of course, is global. It's massive. But does the brand feel different at home in Milwaukee?

Ricardo Torres:

I wouldn't say it feels different. What I think makes it different is it takes a piece of Milwaukee and it brings it to other parts of the world. Like Jim was saying earlier, how you could be in Europe and you could hear that engine and you know it's a Harley-Davidson, or someone can walk into the restaurant that you're in and they're wearing a Harley-Davidson jacket and it says Milwaukee, Wisconsin right there at the bottom. Harley-Davidson has a rugged blue-collar individual image, and that's an image that reflects the city of Milwaukee.

Dana Taylor:

Jim, if you had to tell the story of American resilience through a single brand, what turning points would you include? And what do you think they reveal about all of us?

Jim Nelson:

Well, a turning point for one that came to me and reading many, many of these stories, AT&T is a really good example. AT&T started as the Bell Companies, created by Alexander Graham Bell. That was the phone company. It was the biggest company in the world at one point, but it got too big and the antitrust authorities cracked down on the '70s. And now, none of us really know AT&T as the phone company. We think of it as the fiber company that serves our homes or the service that we pay for our wireless products.

So the evolution of how some of these brands have come, it's not just how it went from it was a Ford then to a Ford today, or a Harley then to a Harley today. Some of the most interesting stories are about how these companies evolved over time, and that's in a very real way how the American economy has evolved over time. We've become much more service economy and much more consumer-driven than we were maybe 50 years ago.

Dana Taylor:

Jim, I think few brands are as closely tied to the idea of American freedom as Harley-Davidson, the open road, independence, the touch of rebellion. When we look at an iconic American brand like Costco, also on the list, I like my big-box stores, do they have a secret sauce that's as easy to define?

Jim Nelson:

I think it's said in one word. It's the experience. It's the experience of going to Costco, knowing you're going to be able to buy the Kirkland line of products, and you know that that's a dependable brand. They have their own brand within a brand. But also, you know that the experience of going to a big-box Costco store, lots of samples, lots of unusual things, it's an adventure. And there's also a $1.50 hotdog deal to be found too, which how many do they sell of those? A lot because it's a thing there.

Dana Taylor:

Well, Jim, well, it's hard to argue about the brands that landed on-

Jim Nelson:

Oh, go ahead.

Dana Taylor:

... USA TODAY's list of 50 most iconic American brands. I do want to pick a fight. I want to talk about what didn't make the cut. Where are my toys?

Jim Nelson:

They're buried in there somewhere. Just look for companies that have a subsidiary that makes toys, or maybe they're in your Happy Meal at McDonald's.

Dana Taylor:

Yeah, I was thinking perhaps electric games eclipsed more traditional toys here.

Jim Nelson:

That's very much the case. But also, there's other, again, products within other products that maybe we overlook some companies. That's the fun of creating this kind of project. And my colleagues that worked on this with me, Jordan Culver from USA TODAY and Cheryl Powell from the Akron Beacon Journal, we know we didn't get this 100% right, and that's the fun of it. You get to argue about it and you get to think about what should have been on the list or shouldn't have been on the list.

Dana Taylor:

Ricardo, what surprised you the most when you were working on this project?

Ricardo Torres:

Maybe the most was Harley-Davidson's time with American Machine and Foundry. They bought Harley-Davidson in 1969, and amongst Harley-Davidson dealers and riders, it's a very mixed response. Some of them say that there's been some positive. AMF helped the company streamline production so that motorcycles could get pumped out a lot quicker, but the quality of the bike went down during that time. And also, AMF experimented with different things. For example, I talked to a Harley rider whose first Harley-Davidson was actually a snowmobile, which is insane. And one of the more interesting parts I think about that whole era was Willie G. Davidson, the grandson of one of the founders, him and about a dozen other executives in about 1980 pooled their money together and bought the company back, bringing it back under the umbrella of the family ownership. And so I think that whole saga, how it evolved and then left the family and came back, I thought was really very interesting.

Dana Taylor:

I loved your piece on Harley-Davidson.

Jim, finally, we really only scratched the surface here with the brands that made the cut. Can you give us a gem from a brand we haven't talked about?

Jim Nelson:

Right. I knew you were going to ask this, and right top of my list is Motown. I'm a big music fan and I couldn't wait to read the Motown piece, written by Detroit writer, interviewed family members and so forth. There's so many tidbits in there. And of course, so many amazing pieces of music produced by that company, which at the time was the largest manufacturer of 45 records, 45 RPM records, that were in jukeboxes worldwide.

But the most amazing tale in that piece was the number $3.19, which is the royalty check that Berry Gordy scored for the Miracles' first hit, Got A Job. He was impressed and inspired by a $3.19 royalty check to go into the record business a little harder on the production side. And look what he built, one of the most important Black-owned businesses in the country's history. Simply amazing.

Dana Taylor:

50 incredible stories, 50 iconic brands. Jim Nelson and Ricardo Torres are both with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Thank you both for taking time to join me on The Excerpt.

Jim Nelson:

Thanks for having us.

Ricardo Torres:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.