Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius [Anglais] [Relié]

It takes a while to get used to Vincent Curcio's highly colored prose, but his old-fashioned narrative technique suits his subject, the Kansas railroad mechanic who rose to become head of America's most dynamic car company. Born in 1875, Walter P. Chrysler came late to the automobile business, joining Buick in 1912, when the early companies were firmly established. Chrysler made his mark by being a great leader who thoroughly understood engineering and production, and who valued the contributions of his employees and directed them to produce high-quality, popularly priced cars. He made it his business to ignore conventional wisdom: he headquartered his company in New York instead of Detroit, commissioned a fabulous art deco skyscraper to house it, and introduced the first mass-produced, streamlined, aerodynamic car in 1934. The Airflow was a financial disaster but hugely influential on future design, and the well-managed Chrysler Corporation made money even during the Great Depression. Chrysler himself became enormously wealthy and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle during the decade before his death in 1940. Curcio's detailed, wide-ranging text offers an instructive history of the automobile industry as well as a full-bodied portrait of a classic American individual, praised by his peers as "one of the world's greatest manufacturers and one of the world's best men." --Wendy Smith

From humble beginnings as a Kansas railroad-shop apprentice wiping down locomotives for 5U cents an hour, Walter Chrysler (1875-1940) rose to become a railroad master mechanic and foreman, then a leading auto manufacturer and industrial mogul. Brashly confident, convinced of America's limitless potential for economic growth, Chrysler, "the quintessence of American business in the 1920s," built Manhattan's Chrysler BuildingAart deco emblem of modernism and progressAwhose spire went up just one month before the 1929 stock market crash. This dynamic biography brings a surprisingly neglected giant out of the shadows. Chrysler, self-educated, self-made son of a German immigrant, is not nearly as well known as Henry Ford, even though he expanded Detroit's Big Two (GM and Ford) into the Big Three, when Chrysler Corporation bought out Dodge in 1928. (His legacy lives on in Daimler-Chrysler, formed in 1998.) Two contrasting personalities emerge: one is the far-sighted, risk-taking industrialist, perhaps the last great individualist of automaking, a man who seemed genuinely concerned about his employees, a caring father of four with a rare gift for managing men, plants and machinery. The other is the hard-drinking, big-eating, tuba-playing bon vivant, "probably... a functioning alcoholic," who embarrassed his family and nearly wrecked his marriage thanks to his affair with showgirl Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Curcio never fully reconciles these two sides of his elusive subject, but his robust, engaging portrait is chock-full of lore from the classic automobile era, as it sets the Chrysler saga against the backdrop of the Roaring 20s, the Depression and the labor unrest of the 1930s. 50 photos. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Walter P. Chrysler (1875-1940) is the subject of this splendid new biography by Curcio (Suicide Blonde). Although he established the mighty Chrysler Corporation (now DaimlerChrysler), there was much more to Chrysler's life. From hardscrabble beginnings as a railroad machinist, he rose with hard work through the ranks to head a locomotive factory. When Chrysler was introduced to his first automobile, it was love at first sight, and he soon found his way to Detroit and the fledgling automobile industry. He personally supervised the design of the first Chrysler automobile in 1924, and its quick success led, in part, to the founding of the Chrysler Corporation the following year. Chrysler loved a challengeDwhether it was designing a new car, saving a company from bankruptcy, or creating a new building that would change the New York skyline. There were personal setbacks, especially during the Great Depression, but he persevered. While some of the anecdotes here seem irrelevant and a few of the design chronicles are at times longwinded, the book has been rigorously researched and reads well. Highly recommended for larger public libraries and transportation collections.DRichard Drezen, Washington Post News Research
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The lives of auto magnates William C. Durant, founder of General Motors, and Henry Ford have been well chronicled, but the remaining founding partner of the Big Three automaking triumvirate is generally known only by name and by the skyscraper he built in New York. Aside from his own brief memoir, Life of an American Workman (1937), no full-length biography of Chrysler has been written. In honor of Chrysler Corporation's seventy-fifth anniversary, Curcio offers this tribute to William Percy Chrysler. Curcio's previous biographical effort was Suicide Blonde (1989), a portrait of actress Gloria Grahame. With full access to Chrysler company records and family archives, he meticulously details the events in Chrysler's life as a skillful railroad mechanic, automobile designer and manufacturer, and tycoon. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Here is a richly detailed account of one of the most important men in American automotive history, based on full access to both Chrysler Corporation and Chrysler family historical records.

Chrysler emerges as a man who loved machines, an accomplished mechanic who also had highly developed managerial skills derived from half a lifetime on the railroads, a man whose success came from his deep understanding of engineering and his total commitment to the quality of his vehicles. Vincent Curcio traces Chrysler's rise from a locomotive wiper in a Kansas roundhouse to the head of the Buick Division of General Motors, to his rescue of the Maxwell-Chalmers car company, which led to the successful development of the 1924 Chrysler--the world's first modern car--and the formation of Chrysler Corporation in 1925. Chrysler was quite different from the other auto giants--a colorful and expansive man, deeply involved in the design of his cars, a maverick in establishing his headquarters in New York City, in the world's most famous art deco structure, the fabled Chrysler Building, which he built and helped to design. Because of his emphasis on quality at popular prices, the company weathered the Great Depression with flying colors--losing money only in the rock-bottom year of 1932--and despite the market fiasco of the Chrysler Airflow (which was years ahead of its time), the company grew and remained profitable right up to Chrysler's death in 1940.

The definitive portrait, Walter P. Chrysler is must reading for all car enthusiasts and for everyone interested in the story of a giant of industry.