Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius (Automotive History and Personalities)

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

Customer Review: Great information, factual and entertaining...

If you are an automotive historian, you like what you read in this book. WPC was an integral part of the formation of the auto industry and the reader will recognize many figures mentioned in the book...

Customer Review: Overly-written biog of an interesting rags-to-riches automaker



This biography of Walter Chrysler is proof that sometimes less might be better. As Curcio says of his subject, "His progress took time, and was nothing if not methodical." The book indeed is me...
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