Chrysler Born: Walter Launches Auto Giant

Walter Chrysler had retired twice before he built the company that bore his name. A former railroad mechanic who taught himself automotive engineering by disassembling a 1908 Locomobile, Chrysler had run Buick for General Motors, quit over disagreements with Billy Durant, been lured back to rescue the failing Willys-Overland company, and then taken over the struggling Maxwell Motor Company. On June 6, 1925, he reorganized Maxwell into the Chrysler Corporation and launched a car that broke every assumption about what a mid-priced automobile could be. The Chrysler Six debuted at the 1924 New York Auto Show, a full year before the company officially existed. Maxwell’s dealers had to display it outside the show because the car lacked a manufacturer with exhibition credentials. The Six featured a high-compression engine that produced 68 horsepower from six cylinders, roughly fifty percent more power than comparable cars. It also included hydraulic brakes on all four wheels, a full-pressure oiling system, and an air cleaner. The car cost $1,565 and sold 32,000 units in its first year. Chrysler grew with extraordinary speed. In 1928, the company acquired Dodge Brothers, instantly gaining a dealer network, a truck division, and manufacturing capacity that vaulted Chrysler into the Big Three alongside General Motors and Ford. That same year, Chrysler introduced the Plymouth and DeSoto brands to cover the lower and middle price ranges. By 1929, revenue had reached $700 million and the company was building the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, briefly the world’s tallest structure. Walter Chrysler died in 1940, and the company he founded spent the following decades cycling between innovation and near-collapse. Chrysler introduced the first mass-produced car with an automatic transmission in 1941, pioneered the muscle car era with the Hemi engine in the 1950s, and came within days of bankruptcy in 1979 before Lee Iacocca secured a controversial federal loan guarantee. The company merged with Daimler-Benz in 1998, was sold to Cerberus Capital in 2007, went through bankruptcy in 2009, and is now part of Stellantis. The name survives, but the independence Walter Chrysler built from a failed motor company lasted only eight decades.