Chrysler is an American automobile production company that has been around since the mid 1920s. The company was founded by Walter P. Chrysler on June 6th, 1925. On that date the Maxwell Motor Company was re-organized into Chrysler. In 1928 Chrysler introduced their famous Plymouth brand of automobile.
The Plymouth
The Chrysler Plymouth was a lynchpin of the Chrysler Motor Company for almost 80 years. It started in 1928 and was discontinued in 2001. The Plymouth was originally designed to be a lower priced car available to the average person so Chrysler could compete with Ford and Chevy. During the Great Depression the Plymouth almost single handedly kept Chrysler in business. In the mid 1960s the Plymouth started to begin its long decent that would officially end in 2001.
Chrysler in the 1960s
A lot happened to Chrysler during the 1960s. In the early part of the decade they became the first of the major auto companies to offer unibody construction on the majority of their products. Unibody construction, which offers advantages in handling and crash safety, is now an industry wide standard in automobile construction. The Valiant model was also introduced in the 1960s.
In the 1960s Chrysler also expanded their operations into Europe buy buying out the British based Rootes Group, the French company Simca and the Spanish company Barreiros. They combined these companies to form Chrysler Europe. Chrysler Europe is still in existence to this very day.
The Present and Future
In the late 1970s Chrysler almost went bankrupt as they needed a $1.5 billion loan from the United States to stay afloat. In the 1980s Chrysler started to sell of its subsidiary companies to stay afloat. In 1998 they finally sold the entire company to Daimler-Benz. In 2007 Chrysler is set to be sold to Cerberus Capital Management.
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