was an American automotive industry executive and founder of the Chrysler Corporation.

From Maxwell Motors to Chrysler

Within a year of his resignation from Buick, Chrysler had assumed direction of both Willys-Overland Company and Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. At the time, Maxwell was an ailing company, drowning in debt. Chrysler set about reviving it, introducing the Chrysler Six in January 1924 during the New York Automobile Show. The genius of Chrysler’s new car was not only its advanced engine technology and its stylish appearance but its price: under $2,000, it was priced for average folk. The low-cost car was a hit with the public, and some 32,000 units were built and sold in a single year. The Chrysler brand was such a success that in 1925 the Maxwell Motor Corporation was reorganized into the Chrysler Corporation.

When Chrysler left Willys in 1921 after an unsuccessful attempt to wrest control from John Willys, he acquired a controlling interest in the ailing Maxwell Motor Company. Chrysler phased out Maxwell and absorbed it into his new firm, the Chrysler Corporation, in Detroit, Michigan, in 1925. In addition to his namesake car company, Plymouth and DeSoto marqueswere created, and in 1928 Chrysler purchased Dodge. The same year he financed the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York City, which was completed in 1930. Chrysler was named Time Magazine‘s Man of the Year for 1928.

Early life

Chrysler was the third of four children of Henry (“Hank”) and Anna Marie (“Mary”) Chrysler. When he was three, his family moved to Ellis, Kan., where his father, a lifelong railroad engineer, went to work for the Kansas Pacific Railroad (later a division of the Union Pacific Railroad Company).

As a child, Walter Chrysler dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps in the railroad business. He developed a passion for machinery that would last his entire life. Although Hank Chrysler was adamant that his son go to college, Walter defied him and began an apprenticeship in a railroad machine shop when he was 17 years old. He spent the next 20 years working his way up the echelons of railroad engineering, developing a reputation for his creative mechanical mind and his tireless enthusiasm. Quoting the poet Walt Whitman, he once said of his work, “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”