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The Chrysler Corporation was a United States-based automobile manufacturer that existed independently from 1925-1998. Chrysler and its subsidaries became part of the German-American based DaimlerChrysler AG after being purchased by Daimler-Benz in 1998. more...

Before being taken over in 1998, Chrysler Corporatiom traded under the "C" symbol on the NYSE. The U.S. operations are generally referred to today as the "Chrysler Group."

History

The company was formed by Walter Percy Chrysler on June 6, 1925, with the remaining assets of Maxwell Motor Company.

In 1928 Chrysler founded the Plymouth brand at the low end, the DeSoto brand at the low-medium end and purchased the Dodge Brothers automobile company; all of this was in order to set up a full range of brands similar to that of the General Motors corporation. This process reached its logical conclusion in 1955, when the Imperial was made a brand of its own and Chrysler marketed a GM-like five-brand lineup. Well before then, though, Chrysler Corporation had become noted both for its engineering features and its periodic financial crises. By the end of the 1930s, the DeSoto and Dodge divisions would flip-flop spots in the corporate pecking order making the lineup Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, and Imperial.

In the 1930s, the company introduced the Chrysler Airflow, featuring an advanced streamlined body which was among the first to be designed according to scientific aerodynamic principles. Chrysler also created the industry's first wind tunnel to develop them. Unfortunately, it was not well accepted by the public, and it was the humble Dodge and Plymouth divisions, which had not been given an Airflow model, which pulled the firm through the Depression years with its conventional but quite popular bodystyles. It was during this decade that the company created a formal parts division under the Mopar (Motor Parts) brand, with the result that Chrysler products are still often called Mopars.

The unsuccessful Airflow had a chilling effect on Chrysler styling and marketing, which remained determinedly unadventurous through the 1940s and into the 1950s, with the single exception of the installation of hidden headlights on the very brief production run of the 1942 DeSotos. Engineering advances continued however, and in 1951 the firm introduced the first of a long and famous series of Hemi V8s. In 1955, things brightened after the questionable designs of the 1953 and 1954 Chryslers with the introduction of Virgil Exner's successful Forward Look style. With these cars, Chrysler seized the industry's design leadership and produced several genuine classics, most notably the 1956 Plymouth Fury and the 1957 Chrysler 300C. With the inauguration of the second generation Forward Look cars for 1957, Torshion-Aire was introduced. This was not air suspension, but an indirect-acting-torsion-spring suspension system which drastically reduced unsprung weight and shifted the car's center of gravity downward and rearward, resulting in both a smoother ride and significantly improved handling. However, a rush to production led to quality-control problems (mostly related to body fitment and rust), and coupled with a national recession, soon the company was once again in financial recovery mode.

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