Description
From the Chrysler Six of 1924 to the front-wheel-drive vehicles of the 70s and 80s to the minivan, Chrysler boasts an impressive list of technological "firsts." But even though the company has catered well to a variety of consumers, it has come to the brink of financial ruin more than once in its seventy-five-year history.
How Chrysler has achieved monumental success and then managed colossal failure and sharp recovery is explained in Riding the Roller Coaster, a lively, unprecedented look at a major force in the American automobile industry since 1925. Charles Hyde tells the intriguing story behind Chrysler-its products, people, and performance over time-with particular focus on the company's management. He offers a lens through which the reader can view the U.S. auto industry from the perspective of the smallest of the automakers who, along with Ford and General Motors, make up the "Big Three."
The book covers Walter P. Chrysler's life and automotive career before 1925, when he founded the Chrysler Corporation, to 1998, when it merged with Daimler-Benz. Chrysler made a late entrance into the industry in 1925 when it emerged from Chalmers and Maxwell, and further grew when it absorbed Dodge Brothers and American Motors Corporation. The author traces this journey, explaining the company's leadership in automotive engineering, its styling successes and failures, its changing management, and its activities from auto racing to defense production to real estate. Throughout, the colorful personalities of its leaders-including Chrysler himself and Lee Iacocca-emerge as strong forces in the company's development, imparting a risk-taking mentality that gave the company its verve.
Product Details
| Publisher | Great Lakes Books Series |
| Publish Date | February 01, 2003 |
| Pages | 408 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780814330913 |
| Dimensions | 10.5 X 7.3 X 1.2 inches | 2.3 pounds |
About the Author
Charles K. Hyde is professor emeritus of history at Wayne State University. He has authored numerous books, including Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II and The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy (both Wayne State University Press), the latter of which was selected as a Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.
Reviews
Riding the Roller Coaster is a carefully researched, well-written, attractively illustrated, and comprehensive company history of a firm that has received far less attention from historians, economists, and other scholars than its larger rivals in the American automobile industry. Hyde has made a significant contribution to Michigan's industrial history and helped fill a notable gap in the history of the American automobile trade.
-- "Michigan Historical Review"Carefully documented, well-written, and full of detail, [this book by] history professor Charles K. Hyde brings facts and figures together into the often-astonishing story of Chrysler, right up to the merger with Daimler in 1998.
-- "Old Cars Magazine"Hyde provides the necessary context that helps explain the activities and implications of the personalities and economic events that defined Chrysler's successes and failures. This learned, comprehensive, and interesting business history offers an appreciation for the consequences of corporate policies whether those policies were proactive or reactive. Highly recommended.
-- "Choice"With exquisite scholarship and a deft pen, Charles K. Hyde tells the story of the history of Chrysler.
-- "Classic Car Club of America"As the title indicates, Charles Hyde's history of the Chrysler Corporation takes the reader on a historical journey marked by exhilarating climbs, severe descents, and disorienting changes of direction. The meticulous scholarship never gets in the way of a good story, one that shows how the business cycle, changing consumer tastes, governmental regulations, and management decisions impelled the wild ride taken by America's third largest automobile firm.
--Rudi Volti "Pitzer College"Charles Hyde has written the first authoritative and complete scholarly history of the Chrysler Corporation. This cogent and insightful work details the company's antecedent business roots in early automobile ventures and traces Chrysler's activities through economic cycles, war production, postwar struggles and successes, and finally its merger with Daimler-Benz. A rich business history made more colorful by the self-styled leadership of Walter Chrysler and Lee Iacocca.
--Mark Patrick "Curator, National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library"Charles Hyde's book, Riding the Roller Coaster, is a welcome addition to anyone's library of automotive history. This detailed examination of how an eminent 20th century corporation went about its business ranges from the origins of Chrysler (and even its predecessor firms) right up to the modern times of DaimlerChrysler. This volume will serve as a standard reference on the history of an American auto maker, its successes and its failures.
--Larry Lankton "Michigan Technological University"Earn by promoting books
