Chrysler Corporation

On June 6, 1925, the Chrysler Corporation was founded here after a reorganization of the Maxwell and Chalmers automotive companies by Walter P. Chrysler. The first cars to bear the Chrysler name were manufactured in the Maxwell plant, which was built here in 1909 and which is now the center of the corporation’s worldwide administrative and engineering headquarters. Chrysler had its origin in some 130 auto companies founded as early as 1894 and today is one of the few survivors in an industry that has included approximately 1,500 companies. By 1930 Chrysler had become the world’s third largest producer of automobiles; during World War II its production of war materials helped make Detroit the world’s “Arsenal of Democracy.”