The company was founded by Walter Chrysler in 1925 when the Maxwell Motor Company was reorganised into the Chrysler Corporation. In 1928, the corporation entered the low-priced field with Plymouth and the medium-priced field with DeSoto. After that, Chrysler bought the Dodge Brothers company, catching up with General Motors in the size of its model range. In the late 1930s, the company’s lineup included Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial.
The first Chrysler 300 made its debut in 1955 and caused a huge furore. It was a two-door 5.5m long sedan delivering 300 hp, which could sprint to 60 mph in 10 seconds, while its top speed reached 200 km/h. The Chrysler 300 «letter series» comprised 15 models, with each of them using a new letter of the alphabet as a suffix — A, B, C, D, E, F, L, M, etc.
In 1957, Chrysler introduced another masterpiece designed by Virgil Exner. The Forward Look styling of the new model was inspired by an airliner. It was awarded two Grand Prix D'Honneur and two gold medals by the Industrial Designers Institute.
It featured a new front torsion-bar suspension. The car produced 375 hp in standard version and 390 hp with performance pack thanks to the «Hemi» V8 engine, which earned its name due to the hemispheric shape of the combustion chambers. In addition to that, the car was fitted with an all-new three-speed automatic transmission.
