Chrysler Corporation
The Chrysler Corporation was a United States based automobile manufacturer.
1929 Chrysler Model 77
The company was formed by Walter Chrysler in 1925, with the merger of Willys-Overland and Maxwell Motor Company.
In 1928 Chrysler founded the De Soto brand at the medium-high end and the Plymouth brand at the low end, and purchased the Dodge Brothers automobile company; all of this in order to set up a full range of brands similar to that of the General Motors corporation.
The De Soto brand was axed in 1960 after several years of recession and poor sales that also killed off Packard and Edsel.
In the mid 1960s, Chrysler expanded into Europe, by taking over the British Rootes Group, and Simca of France. The former purchase unfortunately turned out to be a major mistake for the company, inheriting a major industrial relations problem which afflicted the British motor industry at the time, coupled to the archaic factories and outdated product range that Rootes manufactured. The Simca division of the company was more successful, bu in the end the various problems were overwhelming, and amid huge debts and losses, Chrysler Europe collapsed in 1977, and was offloaded to Peugeot the following year
Amid hard times, the Chrysler Corporation on September 7, 1979 asked the United States government for $1 billion dollars to avoid bankruptcy. With such help and a few innovative cars, especially the invention of the minivan concept, a market still led by Chrysler brands, Chrysler avoided bankruptcy and slowly fought their way back up. The death of AMC and its purchase by Chrysler in 1987, mostly for its Jeep brand, certainly helped, but Chrysler was still the weakest of the Big Three American auto makers.
In the early 1990s, Chrysler made its first tentative steps back into Europe, setting up car production in Austria, and beginning right-hand drive manufacture of certain Jeep models in a 1993 return to the UK market.
1937 Airflow, 2002 PT Cruiser
Chrysler merged in 1998 with Daimler-Benz to form DaimlerChrysler AG. This was initially touted as a merger of equals but within a couple of years the truth had been leaked; it was effectively a buyout of Chrysler by Daimler-Benz, with the latter very much the dominant partner.