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It all started with a misunderstanding. Kirk Kerkorian, the Las Vegas wheeler-dealer, thought Chrysler's management would back him up if he tried to take the company private. Chrysler's management thought they'd made it clear they had no interest in such a deal. As the two sides faced off--Kerkorian and legendary Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca on one side, current Chrysler boss Bob Eaton and his top executives on the other--Mercedes-Benz CEO Helmut Werner stepped in. The result is the company now known as DaimlerChrysler. But Vlasic and Stertz make clear no one really knows the result of the deal. It's far too early to tell if blending the manufacturer of sleek German luxury sedans with the Detroit-based progenitor of the minivan will succeed in the global marketplace. Instead, they show in riveting detail how the deal came to be, and the immediate aftermath. They give us private moments with the major players and show us the multilayered considerations that crop up when two gigantic companies merge. Another book will have to judge the ultimate success of the merger, but the immediate results aren't exactly promising. By late 1999, a share of the original Chrysler was worth a few pennies less than it had been before the merger was announced, and only about a dollar more than before Kerkorian made his move back in April 1995. --Lou Schuler |
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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 |