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The CEO Who Broke Chrysler

Your Mechanic Friend

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In December 1962, Time magazine put a Chrysler executive on its cover and credited him with pulling the company back from the edge. Lynn Townsend was a forty-three-year-old accountant from Flint, Michigan, and Chrysler's share of the American car market nearly doubled on his watch. The Hemi, the Charger and the Road Runner all arrived under him. That was 1962. But by January 1980, Chrysler needed one and a half billion dollars in federal loan guarantees just to stay alive. So what happened in between, and how much of it traces back to one man?

7 Comments

@sasz2107 1 day ago

You cannot blame this one man for the Arab oil embargo of 1973, which changed EVERYTHING for the auto makers. The oil embargo was sparked by the Yom Kippur War which was Oct 6, 1973. The Arab world was mad at the U.S. for supporting Israel. How could Lynn Townsend or anyone have foreseen that?? Big cars were the norm at the time. Chrysler invested all this money in the new for 1974 model year cars that then didn't sell due to the fuel crisis so they couldn't recoup their costs. They didn't offer smaller cars at the time because prior to that no one wanted them. You can't revamp your entire set of product lines overnight. It takes YEARS to do that. Plus during the 1970s there was massive inflation. He was handed a crappy set of circumstances.

@badrulsyah1311 1 day ago

Beginning Arab Oil embargo, all car producers should make more of smaller cars, rather than big ones

@johnlyle1127 1 day ago (edited)

Another YouTube on Chrysler said the first half of Townsend's time as CEO was a brilliant success but the second half a disaster. I liked the statement that CEOs like a lot of things have a shelf life. So many examples of this in the car industry, corporate America and government.

@joeapplebaum3763 1 day ago (edited)

The turbine cars were crushed mainly because of import duty. They were assembled in Italy.

@jkdm7653 20 hours ago

When mentioning the redesigning of the "big cars"(Plymouth, Dodge, and Chrysler) for the '74 year, why did you not mention Imperial, which underwent its redesign for '74 also?

@jeffherrle545 1 day ago

Another reason Chrysler went downhill was because of the Aspen / Volare : they sold well, mainly because people thought they were getting another Dart / Valiant. Problem was, the D / V's were tough and reliable, but the A / V's were built horribly and started falling apart in less than a year. Many of the 1975 models had fenders that would rust, because the new automated rustproofing sprayers that the factories started using in late 1974 were not working properly, but it wasn't noticed and figured out until thousands of those cars had already left the factory. Chrysler spend booku bucks dealing with it.