CHRYSLER

Chrysler LLC is an American automobile manufacturer that has been producing automobiles since 1925 and from 1914 under the Dodge name. From 1998 to 2007 , Chrysler and its subsidiaries were part of the German based DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler AG ) Prior to 1998 , Chrysler Corporation traded under the "C" symbol on the NYSE. Under DaimlerChrysler, the company was named "DaimlerChrysler Motors Company LLC", with its U.S. operations generally referred to as the "Chrysler Group".
On May 14 , 2007 DaimlerChrysler AG announced the sale of 80.1% of Chrysler Group to American private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management , L.P., although Daimler continues to hold a 19.9% stake. Chrysler LLC is the new name. The deal was finalized on August 3 , 2007 .After the announcement of the spin-off to Cerberus, the Chrysler LLC, or "The New Chrysler", unveiled a new company logo on August 6 , 2007 and launched its new website with a variation of the previously used Pentastar logo. Robert Nardelli also became Chairman and CEO of Chrysler under the ownership of Cerberus. Chrysler is now the largest private automaker in North America .

The company was founded by Walter P. Chrysler on June 6 , 1925 , when the Maxwell Motor Company was re-organized into the Chrysler Corporation.Walter Chrysler had originally arrived at the ailing Maxwell-Chalmers company in the early 1920s, having been hired to take over and overhaul the company's troubled operations (just after having done a similar rescue job at the Willys car company).
In late 1923 production of the Chalmers automobile was ended.
Then in January of 1924 Walter Chrysler launched the well-received Chrysler automobile. The Chrysler was a 6-cylinder automobile, designed to provide customers with an advanced, well-engineered car, but at a more affordable price than they might expect. (Elements of this car are traceable back to a prototype which had been under development at Willys at the time that Walter Chrysler was there).
The Maxwell was then dropped after its 1925 model year run, although in truth the new line of lower-priced 4-cylinder Chryslers which were then introduced for 1926 were basically Maxwells which had been re-engineered and rebranded.
It was during this period that Walter Chrysler assumed the presidency of the company, with the company then ultimately incorporated under the Chrysler name.
The advanced engineering and testing that went into Chrysler Corporation cars helped to push the company to the second-place position in U.S. sales by 1936, a position it would last hold in 1949. Among the innovations in its early years would be the first practical mass-produced four-wheel hydraulic brakes, a system nearly completely engineered by Chrysler with patents assigned to Lockheed, and rubber engine mounts to stop vibration. The original 1924 Chrysler included a carburetor air filter, high compression engine, full pressure lubrication, and an oil filter, at a time when most autos came without these features

In 1928, Chrysler Corporation began dividing their vehicle offerings by price class and function. The Plymouth brand was introduced and aimed at the low-priced end of the market by re engineering and rebadging Chrysler's 4-cylinder models. At the same time, the DeSoto marque was introduced in the medium-price field. Shortly thereafter, Chrysler bought the Dodge Brothers automobile and truck company and launched the Fargo range of trucks. By the late 1930s, the DeSoto and Dodge divisions would trade places in the corporate hierarchy. This proliferation of marques under Chrysler's umbrella might have been inspired by the similar strategy employed successfully by General Motors . Beginning in 1955, Imperial , formerly the top model of the Chrysler brand, became a marque of its own, and in 1960, the Valiant was introduced likewise as a distinct marque. In the US market, Valiant was made a model in the Plymouth line and the DeSoto name was withdrawn for 1961. With those exceptions per applicable year and market, Chrysler's range from lowest to highest price from the 1940s through the 1970s was Valiant, Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, and Imperial . After acquiring AMC in 1987, Chrysler fulfilled one of AMC's conditions of sale by creating the Eagle marque to be sold at existing AMC-Jeep dealers.
By 2001 and as of 2007, the company has three marques worldwide: Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler.

In the 1930s, the company created a formal vehicle parts division under the MoPar brand (a portmanteau of Motor Parts), with the result that "Mopar" remains a colloquial term for vehicles produced by Chrysler Corporation. The MoPar (later Mopar) brand was not used in Canada, where parts were sold under the Chryco and AutoPar brands, until the Mopar brand was phased into the Canadian market beginning in the late 1970s.
[edit ] Airtemp

Chrysler's Airtemp marque for stationary and mobile air conditioning , refrigeration , and climate control was launched with the first installation in 1930's Chrysler Building , though the Airtemp Corporation would not be incorporated until 1934, when it used a former Maxwell factory. Airtemp invented capacity regulators, sealed radial compressors , and the self-contained air conditioning system, along with a superior high-speed radial compressor, and by 1941 had over 500 dealers selling its air conditioning and heating systems. The company supplied medical refrigeration units in World War II, and dominated the industry in the 1940s but slowly fell behind. By the 1970s Airtemp was losing money, and was sold to Fedders in 1976.

In 1934 the company introduced the Airflow models, featuring an advanced streamlined body, among the first to be designed using aerodynamic principles. Chrysler created the industry's first wind tunnel to develop them. Buyers rejected its styling, and the more conventionally-designed Dodge and Plymouth cars pulled the firm through the Depression years. Plymouth was one of only a few marques that actually increased sales during the cash-strapped thirties.
The unsuccessful Airflow had a chilling effect on Chrysler styling and marketing, which remained determinedly conservative through the 1940s and into the 1950s, with the single exception of the installation of hidden headlights on the very brief production run of 1942 DeSotos. Engineering advances continued, and in 1951 the firm introduced the first of a long and famous series of Hemi V8s . In 1955 things brightened with the introduction of Virgil Exner 's successful Forward Look designs. With the inauguration of the second generation Forward Look cars for 1957, Torsion-Aire suspension was introduced. This was not air suspension, but an indirect-acting, torsion-spring front suspension system which drastically reduced unsprung weight and shifted the car's center of gravity downward and rearward. This resulted in both a smoother ride and significantly improved handling. A rush to production of the 1957 models led to quality control problems including poor body fit and finish, resulting in significant and early rusting. This, coupled with a national recession, found the company again in recovery mode.

Starting in the 1960 model year, Chrysler built all their passenger cars with Unibody™ (unit-body or monocoque ) construction, except the Imperials which retained body-on-frame construction until 1967. Chrysler thus became the only one of the Big Three American automakers (General Motors Corporation , Ford Motor Company , and Chrysler) to offer unibody construction on the vast majority of their product lines. This construction technique, now the worldwide standard, offers advantages in vehicle rigidity, handling, and crash safety, while reducing squeak and rattle development as the vehicle ages. Chrysler's new compact line, the Valiant , opened strong and continued to gain market share for over a decade. Valiant was introduced as a marque of its own, but the Valiant line was placed under the Plymouth marque for US-market sales in 1961. The 1960 Valiant was the first production automobile with an Alternator rather than a electrical generator as standard equipment. It proved such an improvement that it was used in all Chrysler products in 1961. The DeSoto marque was withdrawn from the market after the introduction of the 1961 models due in part to the broad array of the Dodge lines and the general neglect of the division. The same affliction plagued Plymouth as it also suffered when Dodge crept into Plymouth's price range. This would eventually lead to the demise of Plymouth several decades later. An ill-advised downsizing of the full-size Dodge and Plymouth lines in 1962 hurt sales and profitability for several years.

In April 1964, the Plymouth Barracuda , which was a Valiant sub-model, was introduced. The huge glass rear window and sloping roof were polarizing styling features. Barracuda was released almost two weeks before Ford's Mustang , and so the Barracuda was chronologically the first pony car . Unlike the Mustang, Barracuda didn't do as well in sales as other division's models.Even so the Mustang still outsold the Barracuda 10-to-1 between April 1964 and August 1965.

In the 1960s Chrysler expanded into Europe, attaining a majority interest in the British Rootes Group in 1964, Simca of France and Barreiros of Spain, to form Chrysler Europe . For the Rootes Group one outcome of this take over was the launch of the Hillman Avenger in 1970 (briefly sold in the US as the Plymouth Cricket), which sold in Britain alongside the rear-engined Imp and the Hunter. During the 1970s the former Rootes Group got into severe financial difficulties. The Simca and Barreiros divisions were more successful, but in the end the various problems were overwhelming and the firm gained little from these ventures. Chrysler sold these assets to PSA Peugeot Citroën in 1978, which in turn sold the British and Spanish truck production lines to Renault of France .
More successfully, at this same time the company helped create the muscle car market in the U.S., first by producing a street version of its Hemi racing engine and then by introducing a legendary string of affordable but high-performance vehicles such as the Plymouth GTX , Plymouth Road Runner , and Dodge Charger . The racing success of several of these models on the NASCAR circuit burnished the company's engineering reputation.
The 1970s brought both success and crisis. The aging but stalwart compacts saw a rush of sales as demand for smaller cars crested after the first gas crisis of 1973. A large investment in an all-new full-size lineup went largely to waste as the new 1974 vehicles appeared almost precisely as gasoline prices reached a peak and large car sales collapsed. 1974 would also mark the end of the Barracuda (and the similar Dodge Challenger ) after the redesigned ponycars introduced for 1970 had failed to attract buyers in the shrinking market segment. At mid-decade, the company scored a conspicuous success with its first entry in the personal luxury car market, the Chrysler Cordoba . The introduction of the Dodge Aspen /Plymouth Volare twins in 1976 did not repeat the success of the discontinued Valiant/Dodge Dart line, and the company had delayed in producing a domestic entry in the now-important subcompact market. Chrysler Europe essentially collapsed in 1977, and was offloaded to Peugeot the following year, ironically just after having helped design the new Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni , on which the desperate company was pinning its hopes. Shortly thereafter, Chrysler Australia , which was now producing a rebadged Japanese Mitsubishi Galant , was sold to Mitsubishi Motors . The subcompact Horizon was reaching the US market as the second gas crisis struck, devastating sales of Chrysler's larger cars and trucks, and the company had no strong compact line to fall back on. Later the Horizon was produced and developed in Finland and marketed in Scandinavia as Talbot Horizon. After the Peugeot bought Talbot and the new version of Horizon was named as Peugeot 309 .

The Chrysler Corporation on September 7 , 1979 petitioned the United States government for US$ 1.5 billion in loan guarantees to avoid bankruptcy . At the same time former Ford executive Lee Iacocca was brought in as CEO . He proved to be a capable public spokesman, appearing in advertisements to advise customers that "If you find a better car, buy it." He would also provide a rallying point for Japan-bashing and instilling pride in American products. His book Talking Straight was a response to Akio Morita 's Made in Japan .
The United States Congress reluctantly passed the "Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979" (Public Law 96-185) on December 20 , 1979 (signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on January 7 , 1980 ), prodded by Chrysler workers and dealers in every congressional district who feared the loss of their livelihoods. The military then bought thousands of Dodge pickup trucks which entered military service as the Commercial Utility Cargo Vehicle M-880 Series. With such help and a few innovative cars (such as the K-car platform), especially the invention of the minivan concept, Chrysler avoided bankruptcy and slowly recovered.
In February 1982 Chrysler announced the sale of Chrysler Defense, its profitable defense subsidiary to General Dynamics for US$348.5 million. The sale was completed in March 1982 for the revised figure of US$336.1 million.
By the early 1980s, the loans were being repaid at a brisk pace and new models based on the K-car platform were selling well. A joint venture with Mitsubishi called Diamond Star Motors strengthened the company's hand in the small car market. Chrysler acquired AMC in 1987, primarily for its Jeep brand, although the failing Eagle Premier would be the basis for the Chrysler LH platform sedans. This bolstered the firm, although Chrysler was still the weakest of the Big Three.
In the early 1990s, Chrysler made its first steps back into Europe, setting up car production in Austria , and beginning right hand drive manufacture of certain Jeep models in a 1993 return to the UK market. The continuing popularity of Jeep, bold new models for the domestic market such as the Dodge Ram pickup, Dodge Viper (badged as "Chrysler Viper" in Europe) sports car, and Plymouth Prowler hot rod, and new "cab forward " front-wheel drive LH sedans put the company in a strong position as the decade waned.


Chrysler collaborates with Tata: Tata's all-electric Ace mini truck will be sold through Chrysler's Global Electric Motorcars division.
Chrysler announced in February 2008 that it would be reducing its product line from 30 models to 15 models.