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Most of them came in with Walter Percy Chrysler, the comet of the industry. Kansas-born Walter Chrysler started as a 5¢-an-hour locomotive wiper, rose through the shops, went to Buick, and became a $500,000-a-year boss. Chrysler retired at 45, was lured out of retirement (at $40,000 a month) to put Willys-Overland on its feet, later took over the debt-ridden Maxwell Motor Co. Inc. In 1924 he brought out the first Chrysler, a slick engineering job whose high-compression engine and jackrabbit pickup immediately caught the public's fancy. Result: in 1925, Chrysler Corp. replaced Maxwell.
When President Chrysler, burned out by his own scorching working pace, stepped up to chairman in 1935, he was succeeded by husky Kaufman Thuma Keller, who, like Chrysler, was a crack machinist. When Keller moved up to board chairman 2^ months ago and Colbert became president (at an estimated $250,000 a year), it was a complete break with Chrysler's engineering tradition. No specialist, but a general practitioner in every phase of the business, Tex Colbert is a lawyer-turned-automan. He is the man who, somehow, has to find as good a management team as the one he is losing.
Clean Desk, Dirty Hands. A big (6 ft. 1 in., 190 Ibs.), external-combustion type of Texan, brown-haired, blue-eyed Tex Colbert is a clean-desk executive who is not afraid to get his hands dirty in the shop. He is up at 6:50 every weekday morning, breakfasts on orange juice and coffee, drives the 17 miles to work in his Dodge. In his moderate-sized office at Chrysler's Highland Park plant, he whips through the day's mail, then sets out on a round of whirlwind conferences and inspections. Every other Monday, he presides over the weekly meeting of Chrysler's Operations Committee, top policy group of the corporation; every second Wednesday of the month, the vice presidents meet in his office. On other days the Colbert door is open to a stream of dealers, engineers and production men. Drawls Tex: "I like to see a man face-to-face. I'm no memo writer."
To keep his waistline trim, Colbert eats a light lunch (soup, salad and Jello) in the executives' dining room at Highland Park; there, as at home, any talk of business is taboo. Hardly a day goes by that Colbert does not dash across town to the Dodge plant, whose presidency he still holds, in addition to bossing the corporation. There he keeps a finger in everything from production to sales, says confidently: "If you develop the facts, the problems will solve themselves."
Once having settled a problem, Colbert rarely gives it a second thought. He gets through all his work at the office, takes none home with him nights. He owns a briefcase, but seldom uses it.
"A Ball of Fire." On the road, where he has spent much time, Colbert carries all the facts he needs in his head. In the past five years he has crisscrossed the country on scores of trips, met nearly all of Dodge's 4,142 dealers. Dealers grow lyrical about this direct approach, talk about Colbert almost exclusively in ad writers' superlatives. Sample quotes: "A ball of fire . . ." "A very human sonofagun . . ." "A two-fisted operator . . ." "A good old Texan . . ."