History of Chrysler


The history of Chrysler involves engineering innovations, high finance, wide alternations of profits and losses, various mergers and acquisitions, and multinationalization. Chrysler, a large automobile manufacturer, was founded in the 1920s and continues under the name Stellantis North America.

History

Origins

Chrysler was founded by Walter Chrysler on June 6, 1925, when the Maxwell Motor Company was re-organized into the Chrysler Corporation.
Walter Chrysler had originally arrived at the ailing Maxwell-Chalmers company in the early 1920s, having been hired to take over and overhaul the company's troubled operations just after a similar rescue job at the Willys car company.
In late 1923, production of the Chalmers automobile was ended.
Then in January 1924, Walter Chrysler launched an eponymous automobile. The Chrysler 70 was a 6-cylinder automobile, designed to provide customers with an advanced, well-engineered car at a more affordable price than they might expect. Elements of this car are traceable back to a prototype which had been under development at Willys at the time Chrysler was there.

Engineering innovations

The original 1924 Chrysler included a carburetor air filter, high-compression engine, full pressure lubrication inside the engine, and an oil filter, at a time when most autos came without all these features. Among the innovations in its early years would be the first practical mass-produced four-wheel hydraulic brakes, a system nearly completely engineered by Chrysler with patents assigned to Lockheed. Chrysler pioneered rubber engine mounts to reduce vibration; Oilite bearings; and superfinishing for shafts.
Chrysler also developed a road wheel with a ridged rim, designed to keep a deflated tire from flying off the wheel. This safety wheel was eventually adopted by the auto industry worldwide.
Following the introduction of the Chrysler, the Maxwell marque was dropped after the 1925 model year. The new, lower-priced 4-cylinder Chrysler introduced for 1926 year was a badge-engineered Maxwell.
The advanced engineering and testing that went into Chrysler Corporation cars helped to push the company to the second-place position in U.S. sales by 1936, a position it would last hold in 1949.

Early models

In 1928, Chrysler Corporation began dividing its vehicle offerings by price class and function. The Plymouth brand was introduced at the low priced end of the market created essentially by once again reworking and rebadging Chrysler's 4-cylinder model. At the same time, the DeSoto marque was introduced in the medium-price field. Shortly thereafter, Chrysler bought the Dodge Brothers automobile and truck company and launched the Fargo range of trucks. By the late 1930s, the DeSoto and Dodge divisions would trade places in the corporate hierarchy. This proliferation of marques under Chrysler's umbrella might have been inspired by the similar strategy employed successfully by General Motors. Beginning in 1955, Imperial, formerly the top model of the Chrysler brand, became a separate make of its own, and in 1960, the Valiant was introduced likewise as a distinct marque. In the U.S. market, Valiant was made a model in the Plymouth line and the DeSoto make was discontinued for 1961. With those exceptions per applicable year and market, Chrysler's range from lowest to highest price from the 1940s through the 1970s was Valiant, Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, and Imperial. After acquiring AMC in 1987, Chrysler fulfilled one of AMC's conditions of sale by creating the Eagle marque in 1988 to be sold at existing AMC-Jeep dealers. The Eagle brand lasted a decade, being discontinued in 1998, while Plymouth was ended three years later.
By 2001 and as of September 2009, the company had three marques worldwide: Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler. Effective October 2009, however, a fourth brand was established with the creation of the Ram brand, a breakout from the Dodge marque. Initially, the new brand consisted of the Ram full-size pickup, Dakota compact pickup and the Sprinter van. During the unveiling of Chrysler's business plan on November 5, CEO Sergio Marchionne indicated that the Ram brand will be augmented by Fiat-sourced vehicles, including a smaller van than the Sprinter, which itself would be replaced by a Fiat-based vehicle. In 2011, however, Fiat became Chrysler's fifth brand with the North American introduction of the Fiat 500.

Other marques

MoPar, Chryco, AutoPar

In the 1930s, the company created a formal vehicle parts division under the MoPar brand, with the result that "Mopar" remains a colloquial term for vehicles produced by Chrysler Corporation.
The MoPar brand was not used in Canada, where parts were sold under the Chryco and AutoPar brands, until the Mopar brand was phased into the Canadian market beginning in the late 1970s.
Many Chrysler Corporation vehicle parts also bore variants of the DPCD monogram, for Dodge-Plymouth-Chrysler-DeSoto, well after the 1961 end of DeSoto production.

Airtemp

Chrysler's Airtemp marque for stationary and mobile air conditioning, refrigeration, and climate control was launched with the first installation in 1930's Chrysler Building. The Airtemp Corporation was incorporated in 1934 and it utilized a former Maxwell factory.
Airtemp invented capacity regulators, sealed radial compressors, and the self-contained air conditioning system, along with a superior high-speed radial compressor, and by 1941 had over 500 dealers selling its air conditioning and heating systems. The company supplied medical refrigeration units in World War II, and dominated the industry in the 1940s but slowly fell behind. By the 1970s Airtemp was losing money and was sold to Fedders in 1976. In 2012 the name was reborn as a Nordyne byproduct exclusively sold by the R.E. Michel Company.

Acustar

In the 1980s, Chrysler formed a subsidiary business called Acustar to sell parts to other automakers as well as supplying parts for Chrysler-built vehicles, similar to General Motors' creation of Delphi Corporation and Ford's later creation of Visteon.

Safeguard

Safeguard is Chrysler's brand for original and replacement auto glass, much of which, from 1958 through the mid-2000s, was made at Chrysler's McGraw glass plant, and some of which was manufactured for Chrysler by established glass companies.

1930s

In 1934, the company introduced the Airflow models, featuring an advanced streamlined body, among the first to be designed using aerodynamic principles. Chrysler created the industry's first wind tunnel to develop them. Buyers rejected its styling, and the more conventionally designed Dodge and Plymouth cars pulled the firm through the Depression years. Plymouth was one of only a few marques that actually increased sales during the cash-strapped thirties.
The unsuccessful Airflow had a chilling effect on Chrysler styling and marketing, which remained determinedly conservative through the 1940s and into the 1950s, with the single exception of the installation of hidden headlights on the very brief production run of 1942 DeSotos. Engineering advances continued, and in 1951 the firm introduced the first of a long and famous series of Hemi V8s.

1950s

In 1955, things brightened with the introduction of Virgil Exner's successful "100 Million Dollar Look", followed in 1956 by Chrysler's pioneering adoption of transistor radios in cars. On April 28, 1955, Chrysler and Philco had announced the development and production of the world's first all-transistor car radio. The Mopar model 914HR was developed and produced by Chrysler and Philco and was a $150.00 "option" on the 1956 Imperial automobile models. Philco was the company that had manufactured the all-transistor car radio Mopar model 914HR, starting in the fall of 1955 at its Sandusky, Ohio plant, for the Chrysler corporation.
With the inauguration of the Forward Look cars for 1957, Torsion-Aire suspension was introduced. This was not air suspension but an indirect-acting, torsion-spring front suspension system that drastically reduced unsprung weight and shifted the car's center of gravity downward and rearward. This resulted in both a smoother ride and significantly improved handling. A rush to production of the 1957 models led to quality control problems, including poor body fit and finish, resulting in significant and early rusting. This, coupled with a national recession, found the company again in recovery mode.
On September 28, 1957, Chrysler announced the production of electronic fuel injection to be available as an option on some of its new 1958 car models that resulted in approximately 35 total installations. Chrysler used the same all-transistor modulator "Electrojector" fuel injection system from Bendix Corporation that was withdrawn from public sale of the 1957 Rambler Rebel by American Motors because the system could not be made reliable. Owners of EFI Chryslers were so dissatisfied that all but one were retrofitted with carburetors, while that one has been completely restored, with original EFI electronic problems resolved.

Government programs in World War II

Vehicles and systems

During World War II, essentially all of Chrysler's facilities were devoted to building military vehicles and systems. Chrysler ranked eighth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. Chrysler made the converters for the Manhattan Project's K-25 gaseous diffusion plant in their Lynch Road plant in Detroit, after Dr Carl Heussner of the Chrysler plating laboratory solved the nickel plating problem.

Radar antennas

One of Chrysler's most significant contributions to the war effort was not in the field of vehicles but in design and manufacture of the components of radar systems. The Radiation Laboratory at MIT, established in 1941 to develop microwave radars, developed the SCR-584, the most widely recognized radar system of the war era. This system included a parabolic antenna six feet in diameter that was mechanically aimed in a helical pattern.
For the final production design of this antenna and its highly complex drive mechanism, the Army's Signal Corps Laboratories turned to Chrysler's Central Engineering Office. There, the parabola was changed from aluminum to steel, allowing production forming using standard automotive presses. To keep weight down, 6,000 equally spaced holed were drilled in the face. The drive mechanism was completely redesigned, using technology derived from Chrysler's research in automotive gears and differentials. The changes resulted in improved performance, reduced weight, and easier maintenance. A large portion of the Dodge plant was used to build 1,500 of the SCR-584 antennas as well as the vans needed for the system.