A-Z of marques: No.11 Chrysler

The marque: Smallest of the American Big Three, now German-owned

The history: Walter P Chrysler was refused entry to the New York Auto Show in January 1924 because his cars were not yet in production. By the end of the year he had made 79,000, so the show organisers need not have worried.

Chrysler acquired Dodge in 1928 and launched the Plymouth and DeSoto brands (both moribund), and in the 1930s it revealed the Airflow streamlined saloon. It was aped by the little Singer Airstream in the UK, an irony given Singer's eventual fate..

Post-war, Chrysler went the same fins'n'chrome route as rivals General Motors and Ford, but it anticipated a new downsizing trend with the "compact" Valiant, designed to stave off the import threat. Chrysler expanded into Europe by buying into, and eventually controlling, the Rootes Group (Hillman, Singer, Sunbeam, Humber) and French Simca. Chrysler did not understand the market and sold the European operations to Peugeot for a dollar.

Back home it wrested AMC/Jeep from Renault's brief involvement, , then invented the MPV with the first Voyager.

Famous Chrysler muscle cars included the Dodge Challenger (as in Vanishing Point) the Plymouth Road Runner and Superbird, and the Dodge Viper V10 sports car. But a design-led, mid-90s reinvigoration foundered and Daimler-Benz stepped in, creating the German-dominated DaimlerChrysler.

Defining model:: 1970 Dodge Charger Daytona/Plymouth Superbird, be-winged

road racers with Chrysler's monstrous Hemi V8 engine.

They say: We're still as American as apple pie.

We say: Get your kicks on Autobahn 66.