Chrysler has had an impressive list of technological "firsts" throughout the years―including the Chrysler Six of 1924 and front-wheel-drive vehicles in the '70s and '80s, to name just two. While the company has catered well to a variety of consumers, it has also come to the brink of financial ruin more than once in its seventy-five-year history. In Riding the Roller Coaster , author Charles K. Hyde takes readers into the board room and onto the factory lines to tell the story behind Chrysler's products, people, and performance. Outlining their history from the founding of the company through the major merger with Daimler-Benz, Hyde recounts the ups and downs of Chrysler's monumental success turned colossal financial failure and sharp recovery. He pays special attention to the company's leadership in automotive engineering, its styling successes and failures, and its changing management, including a special look at automotive powerhouses including Walter P. Chrysler and Lee Iacocca. "As the title indicates, Charles Hyde's history of the Chrysler Corporation takes the reader on a historical journey marked by exhilarating climbs, severe descents, and disorienting changes of direction. The meticulous scholarship never gets in the way of a good story, one that shows how the business cycle, changing consumer tastes, governmental regulations, and management decisions impelled the wild ride taken by America's third largest automobile firm."―Rudi Volti, Pitzer College "Charles Hyde has written the first authoritative and complete scholarly history of the Chrysler Corporation. This cogent and insightful work details the company's antecedent business roots in early automobile ventures and traces Chrysler's activities through economic cycles, war production, postwar struggles and successes, and finally its merger with Daimler-Benz. A rich business history made more colorful by the self-styled leadership of Walter Chrysler and Lee Iacocca."―Mark Patrick, Curator, National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library "Charles Hyde's book, Riding the Roller Coaster, is a welcome addition to anyone's library of automotive history. This detailed examination of how an eminent 20th century corporation went about its business ranges from the origins of Chrysler (and even its predecessor firms) right up to the modern times of DaimlerChrysler. This volume will serve as a standard reference on the history of an American auto maker, its successes and its failures."―Larry Lankton, Michigan Technological University "Carefully documented, well-written, and full of detail, [this book by] history professor Charles K. Hyde brings facts and figures together into the often-astonishing story of Chrysler, right up to the merger with Daimler in 1998."― Old Cars Magazine " Riding the Roller Coaster is a carefully researched, well-written, attractively illustrated, and comprehensive company history of a firm that has received far less attention from historians, economists, and other scholars than its larger rivals in the American automobile industry. Hyde has made a significant contribution to Michigan's industrial history and helped fill a notable gap in the history of the American automobile trade."― Michigan Historical Review "With exquisite scholarship and a deft pen, Charles K. Hyde tells the story of the history of Chrysler."― Classic Car Club of America "Hyde provides the necessary context that helps explain the activities and implications of the personalities and economic events that defined Chrysler's successes and failures. This learned, comprehensive, and interesting business history offers an appreciation for the consequences of corporate policies whether those policies were proactive or reactive. Highly recommended."― Choice "As the title indicates, Charles Hyde's history of the Chrysler Corporation takes the reader on a historical journey marked by exhilarating climbs, severe descents, and disorienting changes of direction. The meticulous scholarship never gets in the way of a good story, one that shows how the business cycle, changing consumer tastes, governmental regulations, and management decisions impelled the wild ride taken by America's third largest automobile firm."—Rudi Volti, "Charles Hyde has written the first authoritative and complete scholarly history of the Chrysler Corporation. This cogent and insightful work details the company's antecedent business roots in early automobile ventures and traces Chrysler's activities through economic cycles, war production, postwar struggles and successes, and finally its merger with Daimler-Benz. A rich business history made more colorful by the self-styled leadership of Walter Chrysler and Lee Iacocca."—Mark Patrick, "Charles Hyde's book, Riding the Roller Coaster, is a welcome addition to anyone's library of automotive history. This detailed examination of how an eminent 20th century corporation went about its business ranges from the origins of Chry