Chrysler is celebrating an important milestone in 2025. Typically, the pentastar brand has been the smallest and scrappiest of the traditional “Detroit Three” automakers, but that hasn’t prevented this company from going the distance, from turning 100 this year. During the last century, Chrysler has enjoyed periods of tremendous prosperity and weathered trying storms that pushed it to the brink of disaster. Commemorating a century of progress, the automaker is honoring some of its greatest vehicles and innovations.
Breaking Conventions For 100 Years
Founded on June 6, 1925, when Maxwell Motors was restructured by Walter P. Chrysler (is that name familiar?), this new company was off to the races, inaugurating a long history of innovation and challenging conventions. Some of Chrysler’s more recent successes are still well known by the motoring public. Products like the minivan and PT Cruiser remain culturally relevant, while the Ram truck, Jeep Wrangler, and vaunted Hemi V8 engine are still adored by enthusiasts, but these products are just the tip of the iceberg.
Decades before the minivan or Wrangler hit the road, Chrysler was pushing the automotive world forward. The automaker introduced the low-priced Plymouth brand in 1928, which brought the fight directly to rival entry-level makes Ford and Chevrolet. A huge sales success, Plymouths were well-engineered cars that had superior hydraulic brakes from day one, something rivals did not.
In the 1930s, Chrysler introduced the pioneering Airflow, one of the first vehicles to benefit from a design that was tuned in a wind tunnel for enhanced efficiency. The Airflows also featured an incredibly rugged tubular steel structure and were designed for great comfort. Unfortunately, that carefully massaged styling was too avant-garde for drivers at the time, and the Airflows were a financially painful sales flop.
- Chrysler was founded on June 6, 1925
- Walter P. Chrysler reorganized Maxwell Motors to form this new company
- The automaker has had numerous innovations over the last 100 years
- Chrysler has faced challenges during the last century, including bankruptcy in 2009
- The automaker is currently part of Stellantis
Later, Chrysler would introduce the letter series cars, with powerful engines and stunning design. Inaugurating this lineup, the Chrysler 300 debuted in 1955 and featured a Hemi V8 that delivered – you guessed it – 300 horsepower, an almost unfathomable amount of giddy-up for the time.
Defying convention, in 1963, Chrysler built a fleet of 50 cars powered by turbine engines. An interesting experiment – and an intriguing alternative to reciprocating engines – these vehicles were provided to 200 families for real-world testing, though, unfortunately, this experiment ended up being just that, and piston power remained a driving force in the automotive world.
Other groundbreaking innovations include the TorqueFlite three-speed automatic transmission, one of the greatest gearboxes of all time. There’s the front-wheel-drive LH cars of the early 1990s, which provided huge amounts of interior room in a stylish package. Chrysler also brought dual sliding doors to minivans starting in 1996, a brilliant innovation, and some years later, this was followed by the ingenious Stow ‘n Go fold-flat second-row seats. Seriously, the engineering genius behind those chairs is mind-blowing.
Plenty Of Bumps In The Road
Chrysler has an undeniably proud history, but it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. The company has had several brushes with death, perhaps most famously in the 1980s, when executive Lee Iacocca saved the company from complete ruin with the revolutionary front-wheel-drive K-car. That vehicle went on to spawn a dizzying array of models, including the original minivan, which was a smashing success.
Along the way, Chrysler merged with German automaker Daimler in the late 1990s to form the ill-fated DaimlerChrysler. About a decade later, Chrysler was sold to Cerberus, a private equity firm, and another group that mismanaged the brand and drove it into bankruptcy in 2009 during the Great Recession, the same fate that befell General Motors.
An Uncertain Future
After all that, there was a merger with the Italians to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), and then came Stellantis in 2021, a multinational automotive company with a dizzying array of different brands.
Unlike, say, Honda, Toyota, or, to a lesser extent, even GM, Chrysler has had a tumultuous history chockablock with euphoric highs and challenging lows. Still, the automaker has moved forward, often innovating in ways rivals have not.
Unfortunately, more trouble could be on the horizon. Stellantis has 14 brands, and that makes it challenging and expensive to keep the product portfolios fresh. Functionally, the Chrysler brand itself only has one vehicle right now, the Pacifica minivan (the lower-cost Voyager is basically the same thing). Where Walter P. Chrysler’s titular automaker goes in the future remains to be seen, but hopefully the future is bright.
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