The company was founded in the early 1900s by the brothers Horace Elgin Dodge and John Francis Dodge as the machine shop Dodge Brothers Company. Dodge was originally a supplier of parts and assemblies to the Detroit-based automobile manufacturer Ford. They began building complete automobiles under the “Dodge Brothers” brand in 1914, before the founding of the Chrysler Motor Corporation. John Dodge died in January 1920 from the Spanish flu, and Horace Dodge died in December of the same year.
In 1925, their family sold the company to Dillon, Read & Co. before being sold to Chrysler in 1928. Assembly in Schinznach-Bad can be divided into two eras: the 1950s with few vehicles between 1955 and 1959 and the 1960s with the Dodge Dart, which was compact by American standards, and its spin-offs from 1961 to 1972.
