Walter Chrysler
Walter Percy Chrysler ( born April 2, 1875 in Wamego, Kansas, † August 18 1940 in Kings Point, Long Iceland, New York ) was an American automotive pioneer and founder of the international automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corporation.
Life
Walter P. Chrysler was born in 1875 as the son of the locomotive engineer Henry Chrysler and his wife Mary in Wamego in the U.S. state of Kansas. Three years later his family moved to Ellis in Ellis County, near Hays. Chrysler worked as a salesman in a grocery store, selling silverware and belonged to the cleaning staff of the Union Pacific railroad. He then worked with the American Locomotive Co. ( ALCo ) where he rose to the base manager in Pittsburgh.
On June 4, 1900 married Chrysler and Della Forker, with whom he had three children, Thelma, Bernice and Walter Percy in 1910, he was plant manager at Buick in Flint, Michigan, and in November 1912 he succeeded to the selected General Motors President Charles W. Nash as president of Buick. He held this position held until June 1917. Spite of the not always easy working with Durant he left on good terms and as a rich man out.
His next professional challenge led him immediately afterwards for Chase Manhattan Bank for which he should remediate the Willys Corporation. This was a holding company of which John North Willys led regardless of its Willys -Overland Group. The work was extremely well paid: Chrysler received $ 1 million per year.
In 1921, he considered his work as completed and turned to the next reorganization case, the Maxwell Motor Company. This company had recently merged with the Chalmers Motor Car Company. Willys had in the meantime while trying to regain control over his businesses, too much debt. A part of the bankruptcy estate, which came up for auction were the former Duesenberg plant facilities in Elizabeth, New Jersey, together with the prototype of a six-cylinder automobile. At that Chrysler was interested as president of Maxwell, but was outbid in the auction of his former boss Durant (who was now back excreted at GM ). But it turned out that Durant 's work did not want the prototype. They agreed and the original Willy team developed the car further to the production stage. It was built from the beginning of 1924 in the former Chalmers plant near Detroit, Michigan and it was called the Chrysler. 1925, the Company became the Chrysler Corporation. 1935, Walter Chrysler retired from the business. His successor in the management team was Kaufman Thuma Keller.
Walter P. Chrysler had helped in his career Buick breakthrough and he was the last of the automobile pioneers who built an automotive group under its own power and was alive.
Walter Chrysler was also the owner of the Chrysler Building in New York City, which was briefly the tallest building in the world.
1929 Chrysler was one of Time Magazine's Man of the Year elected 1928.
Chrysler's eponymous German ancestor was Johann Philipp Kreißler (* 1672), which came from Gunter Blum on the Rhine and in 1709 emigrated to America, where the same -sounding English Chrysler was from the German surname Kreisler.