Brief History About Dodge
Dodge Automobiles was founded in 1915 in the USA by John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge. The Dodge brothers started out in business in 1900, selling automotive parts.
Unfortunately in 1920 both brothers died from separate medical conditions in the same year and the company now in the hands of their widows, struggled and eventually Dodge was sold to an American investment bank in 1925.
In 1928 Chrysler then bought Dodge from the investment Bank, who started the integration into Chrysler slowly with just a few models.
After WW2 Dodge production resumed with pre-war facelift models and by the mid 50’s restyled cars and more power was added (V8 Hemi introduced). During the 60’s more compact cars were added, along with muscle cars and as well as motorsports such as NASCAR becoming popular, all helped to keep Dodge going.
In 1973, like so many other manufacturers, Dodge was affected by the oil crisis and muscles cars and larger cars were now too costly to run, getting replaced with smaller cars. Although during the 80’s and 90’s more sporty cars gradually got re-introduced.
As the new millennium approached Chrysler merged with Daimler in 1998, but all was not well, as there were financial difficulties, although that didn’t stop the Charger making a comeback in 2006, followed by the Challenger in 2008.
As 2009 arrived and the American market was in a bad shape, both Chrysler and GM became bankrupt and was then bought, with financial help from the US government by Fiat to create Chrysler Group LLC and to then merge with Fiat creating the FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) in 2014.
(See Chrysler for 2013 on Viper)
