The Chrysler story
When Walter P Chrysler was refused permission to put his first car into the 1924 New York Motor Show, he parked it in the lobby so everybody had to see it. The Chrysler Six was the first car to have four-wheel hydraulic brakes.
The Airflow of 1934, styled as the first "streamlined" car, set up 72 speed records but was a financial flop. Later in the decade, the company produced a forerunner of automatic transmission, the "fluid drive" which allowed the car to be driven away in any of its three gears. The Bishop of Cork had one which eventually made its way to becoming a hearse in this writer's family business.
During WW2 Chrysler made tanks, and engines for planes and trailer-mounted anti-aircraft guns. After the war it went back to cars, resurrecting the "Town and Country" styling begun just before the conflict.
In the 1950s, Chrysler's engineers invented the first power-steering, air-cooled brakes, and the famous "hemi" engine, so powerful it was banned in NASCAR racing.
In the 1960s it reshaped its styling and built its own version of the "muscle" cars of the time, the 300.
During the 1970s, one of Chrysler's most visible products had no wheels - the Saturn Booster rocket used by NASA. On the car front, the company was on its knees by the end of the decade, because of fuel crises and Japanese imports. It was famously rescued by Lee Iacocca, who used his own personality to sell new lines of cars on TV.
During the 1990s, the brand "invented" the whole minivan MPV segment, cab-forward design, and revived the large convertible format, then dead in the US, with its Sebring. In the 75th anniversary year since Walter parked his prototype in the lobby of the NY Motor Show, the company agreed a merger with Daimler-Benz. Today, some daring new concepts such as the Airflite point to an aggressive marketing approach for the future.
• Best Car: The LeBaron, the company's first convertible, which revived the image of the brand in its native country.
• Worst Car: Voyager minivans in the US through the 1990s, which had so many generic defects that their sales were only guaranteed by a 7-year warranty. But the nameplate that began the MPV revolution has great styling today, and is much improved.
• Weirdest Car: any of the hemi-powered dragsters in the 1960s and 1970s which dominated those crazy-car competitions.