THE HISTORY OF CHRYSLER

Chrysler was born in 1925 by ex-GM executive Walter Chrysler. It was renamed from another car maker, Maxwell Motor Car. 4 years later, Chrysler climbed to the third biggest car maker in the US, behind GM and Ford.
The Plymouth brand was born in 1928. Car maker Dodge Brothers was acquired in the same year. The purchase of AMC (American Motors Corporation) in 1987 from Renault secured the famous Jeep division.

Like Ford and GM, Chrysler’s factories were turned into arsenal during WWII and concentrated on making the Sherman M4 tank. The broke out of Korea war in 1950 gave it another opportunity to earn a great profit.

Chrysler created a few classic cars. The Air Flow of 1934 was one of the first saloon designed with aerodynamic concern. The Chrysler 300 of the 50’s pioneered a powerful V8 with hemi-spherical combustion chamber, which gave the heavyweight coupe a strong performance. Another classic is Dodge Charger of 1967, which was the most fearsome muscle car. Its spirit inspired the Viper of the 90’s.

Chrysler was in financial crisis during the 70’s and early 80’s, thanks to oil crisis, emission control and the Japanese’s invasion. When Lee Iacocca was employed from Ford in 1978 as the new president, the company was closed to bankrupt. Iacocca, the father of Mustang, introduced a radical cost reduction, cutting heads, axing unpopular models and reducing platforms - eventually to only one ! As a result, Chrysler lost weight by 50%.

He sought $1.5 billion loan from the federal government, using them to finance the development of the one and only one platform - the front-wheel-drive K-cars, which formed the basis of many models including the Laser coupe. The K-cars were small cars compare with GM and Ford’s models. It helped Chrysler to regain profitability in 1982. Next year, it pioneered the MPV trend with Voyager / Caravan which was soon became the company’s best seller.

Chrysler tried to expand many times, some succeeded but more failed - the acquisition of 15.6% in Maserati in 1984 resulted in a turbocharged convertible version of the K-car built in small quantity. The took over of Lamborghini in 1987 resulted in the Diablo and the promising F1 engine program, but the company pulled out before any return was generated. The merge with AMC resulted in just several factories but a precious name, Jeep. The joint-venture with Mitsubishi to form "Diamond-Star" helped Mitsubishi to access the US market. It was then sold to the Japanese company in the mid-90’s.

Since the Iacocca era, Chrysler had became an efficient, fast-reacting and creative car maker. It was the first to realise the potential of MPV and SUV, which helped it earned billions before competitors came. The Neon also represent a creative design and development process with engineers and stylists working under the same roof. This helped it to achieve a record-breaking development time.

In 1998, Chrysler merged with Daimler-Benz to become DaimlerChrysler. The merge was said as "equal merge", but in 2000 most American top executives were sacked and replaced with German. By then it was clear that the merge was actually a takeover by Mercedes.


At the same time, the company faced sales slump and had to implement a 3-year cost cutting plan. Thanks to the reduced cost and a number of successful products, Chrysler returns to healthy.