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The two men telephoned each other. They decided to hire a suite of rooms at the Ritz-Carlton, near the Chrysler headquarters. And there for three days and nights they were alone. Waiters brought them food, awed attendants clean linen.
Three days and nights of locked-in deliberations, of matching and sorting Dodge Bros, and Chrysler Corp. assets.
Then decision: Chrysler to take financial control of Dodge Bros, by a trading of stocks; Dodge Bros, and Chrysler to continue separately as motor vehicle makers; Walter Percy Chrysler to be chairman of the directors of the combination; Clarence Dillon to be chairman of the directors' finance committee; Edward G. WTilmer to be president. Mr. Wilmer, by training a lawyer, has been Dodge Bros, president since Clarence Dillon took control in 1925. Mr. Dillon made Mr. Wilmer a Dillon-Read partner. He is a superb executive, the sort of man Mr. Chrysler himself is, except that Mr. Chrysler is also an automotive engineer almost without equal.
Trade Terms. Three years ago Clarence Dillon gave the Dodge Brothers heirs a $146,000,000 check for their property. He quickly sold it to the public for $174,000,000, retaining control. Since then the company has bought back several millions of its own stock from investors. For the property as it is, Walter Percy Chrysler last week paid the equivalent of $170,000000 in Chrysler stocks.
Walter Percy Chrysler is from Kansas.* He was a shop helper; he became a mechanic, a superintendent, a general manager. When William Crapo Durant was first ousted from General Motors control (1911; again 1920) and Charles W. Nash (now chairman of Nash Motors) became General Motors president, Engineer Chrysler became Buick's general manager. He developed the steel body for Buicks; increased the output, cut production costs.
When Mr. Durant went back to General Motors (1916) he insisted that Mr. Chrysler be vice-president. There was a quarrel over policy; Mr. Chrysler resigned. John North Willys figuratively clutched at him to work down Willys-Overland's $46,000,000 bank debt. Within less than a year the debt was down to $18,000,000.
In 1920 Maxwell Motors, which owned the old Chalmers Motors (Hugh Chalmers, founder of Chalmers Motors, is now a Chrysler director) was practically bankrupt. And that was Walter Percy's great opportunity to make the name of Chrysler known wherever wheels can run.
The late James Cox Brady of Manhattan was Maxwell's chief financier. He wanted Mr. Chrysler's production genius. Mr. Chrysler wanted to head a great motor company of his own name. He went to impoverished Maxwell ; cut down its debts ; and in 1925, as controller of the new Chrysler Corp., absorbed Maxwell. Mr. Brady became a Chrysler director; and Jules S. Bache, who heads one of the world's largest stock market brokerage houses. And when James Cox Brady died last November, his brother Nicholas Frederic Brady took over his directorate in the Chrysler Corp. and also his admiration for Walter Percy Chrysler.