Walter Chrysler saw his first car, which hit the road in 1924, as everything that buyers would expect of a luxury vehicle, only at a lower price: “I gave the public not only quality, but beauty, speed, comfort,” he said of the Chrysler Six.

He hoped that this combination would see off competition from Henry Ford’s Model T and the emerging General Motors empire. Ultimately the vehicle helped to cement the group’s position as one of the country’s largest carmakers, alongside General Motors and Ford.

Chrysler started his career as a railway worker, but he took a pay cut to join Buick in 1912. He rose to president of the car company. In 1921 he agreed to help to save Maxwell-Chalmers, a troubled manufacturer, from which the Chrysler business emerged.

The early Chrysler models proved popular, prompting expansion into Europe. By 1928 it was America’s fourth-largest car manufacturer.

The Depression hit and sales fell from 450,500 units in 1929 to 222,500 in 1932. Chrysler reacted by reducing the work-force and cutting costs, helping to keep the company profitable in all but one year during the Depression.

In the late 1970s, the company suffered financial difficulties, resulting in the sale of its European business to Peugeot in 1978. The group brought in Lee Iacocca, a former Ford executive, to help to turn things around. The acquisition of Jeep in 1987 prompted a fresh push into Europe in the early 1990s.

DaimlerChrysler was created in 1998, when the German owner of Mercedes-Benz proposed a $37 billion merger of equals. Profits at the Chrysler business plunged 90 per cent in 2000, in part because of a slowdown in American car sales. DaimlerChrysler said this year that the unit was being put up for sale.

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