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 (est. 1904) 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 (also called the B-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

* Chrysler 70
* Chrysler Touring

Vehicle marques

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 (a portmanteau of Motor Parts), with the result that "Mopar" remains a colloquial term for vehicles produced by Chrysler Corporation.

The MoPar (later 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.

Airflow

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.

The Forward Look

In 1955 things brightened with the introduction of Virgil Exner's successful Forward Look designs, 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 second generation Forward Look cars for 1957, Torsion-Aire suspension was introduced. This was not air suspension, but an indirect-acting, torsion-spring front suspension system which 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 had announced the production of electronic fuel injection (EFI) to be available as an option on some of its new 1958 car models (Chrysler 300D, Dodge D500, DeSoto Adventurer, Plymouth Golden Commando V-8) that resulted with 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 (round and round as well as up and down).

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 (this did not affect the radiation pattern). 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.

Postwar government programs

After the war, Chrysler continued with special projects for the U.S. government. These were in the aerospace fields of missiles and space boosters.

Missiles

In April 1950, the U.S. Army established the Ordnance Guided Missile Center (OGMC) at Redstone Arsenal, adjacent to Huntsville, Alabama. To form OGMC, about 1,000 civilian and military personnel were transferred from Fort Bliss, Texas. Included was a group of German scientists and engineers led by Wernher von Braun; this group had been brought to America under Project Paperclip. OGMC designed the Army's first short-range ballistic missile, the PGM-11 Redstone, based on the WWII German V-2 missile. Chrysler established the Missile Division to serve as the Redstone prime contractor, setting up an engineering operation in Huntsville and for production obtaining use from the U.S. Navy of a large plant in Warren, Michigan. The Redstone was in active service from 1958 to 1964; it was also the first missile to test-launch a live nuclear weapon, first detonated in a 1958 test in the South Pacific.

Working together, the Missile Division and von Braun's team greatly increased the capability of the Redstone, resulting in the PGM-19 Jupiter, a medium-range ballistic missile. In May 1959, a Jupiter missiles launched two small monkeys into space in a nose cone on a Jupiter; this was America's first successful flight and recovery of live space payloads. Responsibility for deploying Jupiter missiles was transferred from the Army to the Air Force; armed with nuclear warheads, they were first deployed in Italy and Turkey during the early 1960s.

In October 1950, K. T. Keller the president and chairman of the board of Chrysler was appointed part-time ''Director of Guided Missiles'' by President Truman to "make sense" of the missile program. Kenneth Nichols, who had worked with him on the Manhattan Project, was his assistant. They were to select missiles to be put into production and specify the number required and give more priority to air defense missiles. The process of authorizing came to be known as "Kellerizing", and once when the Navy objected to numbers lower than they desired being specified for their missile, Keller refused to accept the Navy letter. He sent it back, saying he was willing to discuss the numbers but refused to reply in writing and get into the "Pentagon paper mill procedure" of "endless reviews and letter writing". He resigned in September 1953.

Space boosters

In July 1959, NASA chose the Redstone missile as the basis for the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle to be used for suborbital test flights of the Project Mercury spacecraft. Three unmanned MLRV launch attempts were made between November 1960 and March 1961, two of which were successful. The MLRV successfully launched the chimpanzee Ham and astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on three suborbital flights in January, May and July 1961.

As America's manned space flight plans became more ambitious, Wernher von Braun's team designed the Saturn family of launch vehicles. With Chrysler's Huntsville operation then designated the Space Division, Chrysler became Marshall Space Flight Center’s prime contractor for the first (booster) stage of the Saturn I and Saturn IB vehicles. The Saturn I booster stage was designated S-I, which was upgraded to the S-IB for the Saturn IB. Chrysler based its fuel tank design on a cluster of its Redstone and Jupiter tanks, using four Redstone tanks to hold the RP-1 fuel and four to hold the liquid oxygen (LOX) oxidizer, around a central Jupiter LOX tank. Chrysler built these for the Apollo program in the Michoud Assembly Facility in East New Orleans, one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world.

Between October 1961 and July 1965, NASA launched four S-I boosters with dummy upper stages on suborbital test flights, followed by six complete Saturn Is on unmanned orbital flights. The last five of these tested boilerplate Apollo spacecraft, and the last three also carried Pegasus micro meteoroid detection satellites. All flights were successful.

Between February 1966 and July 1975, NASA launched nine Saturn IBs on two suborbital flights and seven orbital flights (five of which were manned); all flights were successful.

1960s

Starting in the 1960 model year, Chrysler built all their passenger cars with Unibody (unit-body or monocoque) construction, except the Imperials which retained body-on-frame construction until 1967. Chrysler thus became the only one of the Big Three American automakers (General Motors Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler) to offer unibody construction on the vast majority of their product lines. This construction technique, now the worldwide standard, offers advantages in vehicle rigidity, handling, and crash safety, while reducing squeak and rattle development as the vehicle ages. Chrysler's contributions to the technology included the first use of computers to design unit-body cars, and the first setup where exterior sheet metal was not required for structural strength, making sheet metal replacement easier.

Chrysler's new compact line, the Valiant, opened strong and continued to gain market share for over a decade. Valiant was introduced as a marque of its own, but the Valiant line was placed under the Plymouth marque for US-market sales in 1961. The 1960 Valiant was the first production automobile with an alternator (generating alternating current, paired with diodes for rectification back to direct current) rather than a direct current electrical generator as standard equipment. It proved such an improvement that it was used in all Chrysler products in 1961. The DeSoto marque was withdrawn from the market after the introduction of the 1961 models due in part to the broad array of the Dodge lines and the general neglect of the division. The same affliction plagued Plymouth as it also suffered when Dodge crept into Plymouth's price range. This would eventually lead to the demise of Plymouth several decades later. An ill-advised downsizing of the full-size Dodge and Plymouth lines in 1962 hurt sales and profitability for several years.

Partly to compensate for rust problems on the 1957 models and partly to ensure that their Unibody cars would remain safe, as rust was a larger problem when body panels were required for strength, Chrysler pioneered the use of electrostatic charges to improve anti-rust agent adhesion in their 1960 models. The company was also the first to use a seven-step rust proofing bath system, though not the first to use rust proofing baths.

In April 1964, the Plymouth Barracuda, a Valiant sub-model, was introduced. The huge glass rear window and sloping roof were polarizing styling features. Barracuda was released almost two weeks before Ford's Mustang, making the Barracuda the first pony car. Even so, the Mustang outsold it 10-to-1 between April 1964 and August 1965. Perception of the Barracuda as nothing but a reskinned Valiant was not aided by sharing front-end sheet metal.

Chrysler's target buyers were obviously men, and attracting female buyers was apparently not a high priority, because a 1967 sales brochure proclaimed, "At last—specifications your wife can understand." (This was, perhaps, an improvement over the Dodge La Femme option of 1955. It recognized that women were at least reading the specifications.)

Expansion into Europe

In the 1960s Chrysler expanded into Europe, attaining a majority interest in the British Rootes Group in 1964, Simca of France and Barreiros of Spain, to form Chrysler Europe. For the Rootes Group, one outcome of this takeover was the launch of the Hillman Avenger in 1970 (briefly sold in the U.S. as the Plymouth Cricket), which sold in Britain alongside the rear-engined Imp and the Hunter. During the 1970s the former Rootes Group got into severe financial difficulties. The Simca and Barreiros divisions were more successful, but in the end the various problems were overwhelming and the firm gained little from these ventures. Chrysler sold these assets to PSA Peugeot Citroën in 1978, which in turn sold the British and Spanish truck production lines to Renault of France.

More successfully, at this same time the company helped create the muscle car market in the U.S., first by producing a street version of its Hemi racing engine and then by introducing a legendary string of affordable but high-performance vehicles such as the Plymouth GTX, Plymouth Road Runner, and Dodge Charger. The racing success of several of these models on the NASCAR circuit burnished the company's engineering reputation.

The 1970s

The 1970s were tumultuous for Chrysler since, like all the American car companies of the era, the company was reliant on a marketplace where cheap oil was the norm. Although Chrysler entered the small car market with the 1971 Dodge Colt, a captive import of the Mitsubishi Galant and the first collaboration between Chrysler and Mitsubishi Motors and Chevrolet Vega. As market conditions changed and gas prices rose, Chrysler could not adapt in time. Critics of government regulations have claimed that U.S. anti-trust laws prohibited U.S. automakers from forming Japanese or European-style industry consortiums (which helped these foreign competitors to save costs). Chrysler was also slow to adapt to a gradual tightening of anti-pollution regulations. However, given that Chrysler's European divisions already had both the talent and the knowledge to make fuel-economic, less polluting vehicles, all that Chrysler's management had to do was to import European technology that it already owned. Chrysler's American difficulties, therefore, were largely the result of poor management.

Chrysler's lower sales volumes meant that new development and implementation costs made up a larger proportion of a vehicle's cost compared to Ford and General Motors. To avoid pricing themselves out of the market, Chrysler clumsily detuned its existing engines to meet emission requirements, which resulted in lower fuel economy at a time when fuel prices were rising. There was a rush to sell the compact Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant, but the 1973 oil crisis sharply reduced demand for the large, fuel-thirsty vehicles Americans had previously bought in large numbers and which made up the bulk of Chrysler's product line.

At mid-decade, the company scored a conspicuous success with its first entry in the personal luxury car market, the Chrysler Cordoba. The hurried introduction of the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré in 1976 brought enormous warranty costs to repair faulty design and shoddy construction, and destroyed the longstanding loyalty built up by the Dart and Valiant predecessors. Chrysler Europe essentially collapsed in 1977, and was offloaded to Peugeot the following year, soon after having helped design the new Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni. In 1980, Chrysler Australia, which was producing the locally developed Chrysler Valiant and the Mitsubishi Galant based Chrysler Sigma, was sold to Mitsubishi Motors

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