1908 Locomobile was Walter Chrysler's first love

DETROIT – Walter P. Chrysler started out as a railroad man, and he might have remained in that line of work had he not visited the 1908 Chicago Automobile Show.

An artist's rendering of a 1909 Locomobile finished, like Walter Chrysler's first car, in ivory white with red leather seats.

On display there was a huge Locomobile touring car, finished in ivory white with red leather cushions – and Chrysler fell in love. He had to have it!

But the Locomobile was one of the most expensive automobiles on the market at about $5,000, more than enough in those days to buy a comfortable four-bedroom home. And Walter, with a wife and two little girls to support, had just $700 to his name. He was employed at the time as Superintendent of Motive Power for the Chicago Great Western Railroad, at a salary of $350 a month.

Nonetheless, for the 33-year-old Walter P., it wasn't a question of whether, but rather of how, he was going to buy that car. In the end, he managed to persuade one of the railroad executives to co-sign his note, and the Locomobile was shipped, by rail, to the Chrysler home in Oelwein, Iowa.

A restored 1908 model Locomobile.

At that time, as far as we know, Walter Chrysler had never driven any automobile. Presumably he didn't know how. One might expect, then, that his first order of business would have been to learn how to operate this big machine in which he had invested so much. But he didn't.

Instead, Chrysler had a team of horses pull the vehicle from the railroad station to the barn behind his house, and he immediately set about disassembling it. For three long months he repeatedly took it apart and put it back together – about 40 times – studying every part of the Locomobile until he was sure he thoroughly understood how it worked.

Then, at long last, with a cigar clenched between his teeth, he cranked up the car, drove it out of the barn, and took his family for their long-awaited first ride.

A few confused minutes later, Chrysler steered his machine off the road and into a neighbor’s garden. He had to have his “horseless carriage” hauled back out to the road, again by a team of horses.

A museum likeness of Walter Chrysler in his workshop.

The rest of the family’s outing, though, was more successful, and by the end of the day, Walter Chrysler had learned to drive a car.

Three years later, Chrysler was drawing an annual salary of $8,000 as works manager for American Locomotive, and he had been promised a raise to $12,000 – a princely sum in those times when a skilled mechanic made only about $70 a month. But when Charles W. Nash, then president of Buick, offered him a job as Buick's works manager at half the salary he had been promised by his old employer, Chrysler took it.

Chrysler ended up running Buick, got very rich, and moved on. By 1925, he had formed the Chrysler Corporation and produced his first namesake car, the Chrysler 6.

But it was the Locomobile – his first automotive love – that had made the car industry irresistible to Walter P. Chrysler.