Chrysler Group LLC is an American automobile manufacturer headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is a consolidated subsidiary of Italian multinational automaker Fiat.Chrysler is one of the "Big Three" American automobile manufacturers. It sells vehicles worldwide under its flagship Chrysler brand, as well as the Dodge, Jeep, and Ram brands; it also manufactures vehicles sold under the Fiat brand in North America. Other major divisions of Chrysler include Mopar, its automotive parts and accessories division, and SRT, its performance automobile division. In 2011, Chrysler Group (not including Fiat) was the twelfth biggest automaker in the world by production.
The Chrysler Corporation was founded by Walter Chrysler in 1925, out of what remained of the Maxwell Motor Company. Chrysler greatly expanded in 1928 when it acquired the Fargo truck company and the Dodge Brothers Company and began selling vehicles under those brands; that same year it also established the Plymouth and DeSoto automobile brands. In the 1970s a number of factors including the 1973 oil crisis impacted Chrysler's sales, and by the late 1970s, Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy. Lee Iacocca was brought in as CEO and is credited with returning the company to profitability in the 1980s. In 1987, Chrysler acquired American Motors Corporation, which brought the profitable Jeep brand under the Chrysler umbrella.
In 1998 Chrysler merged with German automaker Daimler-Benz AG to form DaimlerChrysler; the merger proved contentious with investors and Chrysler was sold to Cerberus Capital Management and renamed Chrysler LLC in 2007. Like the other Big Three automobile manufacturers, Chrysler was hit hard by the automotive industry crisis of 2008–2010 and along with General Motors received billions of dollars in loans from the United States government in late 2008 and early 2009 to prevent both companies from shutting down. Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on April 30, 2009. On June 10, 2009 Chrysler emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings with the United Auto Workers pension fund, Fiat, and the U.S. and Canadian governments as principal owners. Over the next few years Fiat gradually acquired the other parties' shares to take majority ownership of the company.