Walter P. Chrysler, in full Walter Percy Chrysler, (born April 2, 1875, Wamego, Kan., U.S.—died Aug. 18, 1940, Great Neck, N.Y.), American engineer and automobile manufacturer, founder of Chrysler Corporation.
Early Life
Chrysler was the third of 4 kids of Henry (“Hank”) and Anna Marie (“Mary”) Chrysler. When he was three, his household moved to Ellis, Kan., the place 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 toddler, Walter Chrysler dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps within the railroad enterprise. He developed a ardour for equipment that might final his total life. Although Hank Chrysler was adamant that his son go to school, Walter defied him and started an apprenticeship in a railroad machine store when he was 17 years previous. He spent the subsequent 20 years working his manner up the echelons of railroad engineering, growing a repute for his inventive mechanical thoughts and his tireless enthusiasm. Quoting the poet Walt Whitman, he as soon as stated of his work, “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”
In 1901, after an engagement of almost 5 years, Chrysler married his childhood sweetheart, Della Forker, and so they settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, the place Chrysler was working for the Denver and Rio Grande Railway (later a part of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Company). The couple had 4 kids—Thelma, Bernice, Walter, Jr., and Jack. Chrysler loved the itinerant lifetime of the railroad enterprise, and the household moved ceaselessly as he accepted positions of accelerating accountability. He made a reputation for himself as a grasp of plant effectivity, culminating ready as works supervisor of the American Locomotive Company in Pittsburgh, Pa., at a beginning wage of $8,000 a yr.
In 1908 Chrysler purchased his first automotive, the Locomobile. He had fallen in love with the modern automobile when he noticed it on the Chicago Auto Show, however its $5,000 price ticket was far above his means. He had solely $700 in financial savings and a household to help, and he didn't know the way to drive. But, unable to get the automotive out of his thoughts, he borrowed $4,300 to make the acquisition and had the automotive shipped house by rail. Before he even discovered the way to drive his new possession, Chrysler frolicked finding out its mechanical system, taking it aside and placing it again collectively once more, till he knew it via and thru.
At General Motors
Chrysler didn't enter the car enterprise till he was 36 years previous, when he met Charles Nash, president of General Motors (GM). At the time, Chrysler was incomes $12,000 a yr on the American Locomotive Company, however Nash persuaded him to hitch GM because the supervisor of the Buick plant in Flint, Mich., for less than half that quantity. In the years to come back, Chrysler would utterly revolutionize Buick’s manufacturing system, introducing assembly-line processes pioneered by Henry Ford and greater than tripling manufacturing.
In 1915, when William (“Billy”) Durant, the GM founder, returned to run the corporate, he took be aware of Chrysler’s achievements, and in 1916 he made him president of Buick. Under Chrysler’s management, Buick turned the strongest unit of General Motors and probably the most profitable vehicle model within the nation.
Durant and Chrysler had been each males of sturdy personalities, and so they had been typically in battle, particularly over expenditures. Chrysler was an excellent cost-cutter who had at all times maintained that holding the corporate lean was the key to constructing inexpensive vehicles. He was well-known for having stated, “Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy [i.e., efficient] way of doing it.” In distinction, Durant was a dreamer who favoured the concept that spending extra money may result in larger development. In 1919 the 2 males’s totally different philosophies got here to a head over the price of body manufacturing. Chrysler wished to signal a contract with an out of doors firm to produce Buick with its frames, at an estimated financial savings of near $2 million a yr. Durant concurrently introduced plans to construct a $6 million Buick body plant in Flint. Chrysler, unable to abdomen such a wild expenditure, resigned from the corporate. Although Durant and Chrysler didn't see eye-to-eye on enterprise issues, they remained lifelong mates, and Durant devoted his unfinished autobiography partly to Chrysler.
From Maxwell Motors To Chrysler
Within a yr of his resignation from Buick, Chrysler had assumed course of each Willys-Overland Company and Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. At the time, Maxwell was an ailing firm, drowning in debt. Chrysler set about reviving it, introducing the Chrysler Six in January 1924 through the New York Automobile Show. The genius of Chrysler’s new automotive was not solely its superior engine expertise and its trendy look however its worth: underneath $2,000, it was priced for common folks. The low-cost automotive was a success with the general public, and a few 32,000 models had been constructed and offered in a single yr. The Chrysler model was so successful that in 1925 the Maxwell Motor Corporation was reorganized into the Chrysler Corporation.
In 1928 Chrysler bought Dodge Brothers, Inc., and later that yr launched the primary Plymouth mannequin to compete with modestly priced Fords and Chevrolets. The company turned a serious firm within the American automotive business, and Chrysler was named Time journal’s 1928 Man of the Year. He was using excessive that yr, because the Chrysler Corporation entered the highest tier of American automaking, alongside General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.
Not content material simply to construct iconic cars, Chrysler turned his consideration to the erection of an iconic constructing. Between 1928 and 1930 he supervised the development of the Chrysler Building, a hanging Art Deco skyscraper, 77 tales excessive, on the nook of Lexington Avenue and forty second Street in New York City. Until the Empire State Building was accomplished in 1931, the Chrysler Building was the tallest constructing on this planet. The construction was a separate endeavour from the auto enterprise, designed as a enterprise enterprise for Chrysler’s two sons, who weren't eager about becoming a member of their father within the automotive business.
Chrysler retired as president of his firm in 1935, although he stayed on as chairman of the board till his demise. In 1937 he revealed his life story in serial format; these articles had been later gathered into an autobiography, Life of an American Workman (1950). Chrysler’s life story was as a lot a narrative of affection because it was of labor. As he wrote,
The enjoyable I had skilled in making issues as a boy was magnified a hundredfold once I started making issues as a person. There is in manufacturing a inventive pleasure that solely poets are purported to know. Some day I’d like to indicate a poet the way it feels to design and construct a railroad locomotive.
In 1938 Chrysler suffered a stroke at his house on Long Island, N.Y., and that very same yr his spouse died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Two years later Chrysler suffered a second stroke and died at age 65. He was buried beside his spouse within the household mausoleum on the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, N.Y.