Walter P. Chrysler and His Automotive Dreams Realized

Walter Percy Chrysler was born in Wamego, Kansas on April 2, 1875. He once was a plant manager of the American Locomotive Company, but it was not until the company had settled to expand into the automobile business that Chrysler's auto career began. He bought his first car in 1908, which he immediately took apart to find out how it worked. In 1911, he resigned from ALCO and took a job at the Buick Motor Company in Flint Michigan, because he was just so fascinated with Flint. Another reason was that he realized that automobiles could be vastly improved.

Chrysler became one of the richest men in America when he left Buick Motor Company because he was being paid a whopping $10,000 per month and $500,000 in stock, or a bonus of $500,000 every year. Buick Motors was turning out only forty-five cars a day before he joined the company. But, through his plan of reorganizing the firm and through clever production strategies, the company was producing an astounding 600 cars a day eight years after.

He made even more money when he was hired to run the Willys-Overland Motor Company, receiving an astonishing amount of one million dollars a year. He then applied his production and operation philosophies to the company, palpably, to the firm's advantage.

But Chrysler left Willys-Overland in 1921when the shareholders resisted his attempt to oust John Willys. After four years, Walter Chrysler established his own firm and called it Chrysler Corporation. Plymouth and DeSoto marques were created in supplement to his company. He soon bought Dodge in 1928. At that same year, he accomplished so many things, including the title of Time Magazine's Man of the Year and the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York City.

The Chrysler Corporation became the nation's third largest automobile company.

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