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Engineering the Future
Walter P. Chrysler formed an innovative company

By Karen English
From Tomorrow Annual Meeting Issue

A lifelong pioneer, Walter Chrysler grew up surrounded by the limitless horizon of the Kansas frontier. But as an adult, he surveyed the very different horizon of a rapidly changing auto industry, trailblazing innovations that built a corporate giant.

Chrysler's lifetime, 1875 to 1940, spanned a period of enormous change. Born in a modest house in Wamego, Kan., he remembered scrambling down cellar stairs to hide when local settlers heard rumors of a possible Indian attack.

Later, as railroads crisscrossed the prairie, young Chrysler got on board.

Like his father, an engineer with the Kansas Pacific Railroad, Chrysler was fascinated with machines. At 17, he became a machinist's apprentice, learning all he could about engines. With a talent for management as well as mechanics, he rapidly worked his way up in the railroad industry. At 33, Chrysler was the youngest superintendent in the history of the Chicago Great Western Railroad, overseeing 10,000 workers.

But after he attended a 1908 auto show, the locomotive lost its lure. The auto captured Chrysler's attention, and he tapped his life savings to purchase a shiny white "Locomobile" -- just so he could see how it worked. Two years later, he joined Buick as works manager. When he left General Motors in 1919, Chrysler was executive vice president and a 45-year-old millionaire.

Chrysler's next challenge enlisted his talent for resuscitating troubled businesses. Earning his nickname, the "company doctor," Chrysler rescued Willys-Overland from near bankruptcy, then performed more corporate CPR at the Maxwell-Chalmers companies, which were rapidly going broke in the wake of severe quality problems.

Maxwell recovered, and Chrysler brought in an engineering team to design a new vehicle. The groundbreaking "Chrysler Six" was unveiled in 1924. The next year Chrysler bought Maxwell-Chalmers, and it became Chrysler Corp.

Chrysler at the wheel in a Plymouth plant in 1934.

By the end of the decade, stylish Chrysler cars had a reputation for speed and innovative design. And Walter Chrysler continued to build his empire, acquiring first Plymouth, then Dodge and Desoto. In 1929 he even tried real estate, building what was briefly the world's tallest structure -- Manhattan's gleaming Chrysler Building.

Chrysler and his namesake corporation continued to deliver design innovations despite the Great Depression. The sleek 1934 Airflow, while not a financial success, seemed a harbinger of the future. The next year, Walter Chrysler retired, leaving a company flexible enough to steer a steady course through a changing marketplace.

When he died in 1940, Walter Chrysler's place in automotive history was assured. From a prairie boyhood, he had grown up to contribute innovations that put Americans on the road in safety and in style.