Walter P. Chrysler.....................................

Walter P. Chrysler (1875-1840) was one of the titans of the early automotive industry.  The son of a railroad locomotive engineer, Chrysler's first employment was as an apprentice machinist and mechanic.  By 1910 he was the works manager for the American Locomotive Company in Pittsburgh.  An ALCO board member then got him interested in taking a production management job with Buick.  The rest, as they say, is history.  This excerpt from Chrysler's wiki might give you an idea of how talented he was:

In 1916, William C. Durant, who founded General Motors in 1908, had retaken GM from bankers who had taken over the company. Chrysler, who was closely tied to the bankers, submitted his resignation to Durant, then based in New York City.  

Durant took the first train to Flint to make an attempt to keep Chrysler at the helm of Buick. Durant made the then-unheard of salary offer of US$10,000 (US$165,000 in today's dollars) a month for three years, with a US$500,000 bonus at the end of each year, or US$500,000 in stock. Additionally, Chrysler would report directly to Durant, and would have full run of Buick without interference from anyone.   

 Apparently in shock, Chrysler asked Durant to repeat the offer, which he did. Chrysler immediately accepted.

Chrysler ran Buick successfully for several more years. Not long after his three year contract was up, he resigned from his job as president of Buick in 1919. He did not agree with Durant's vision for the future of General Motors. Durant paid Chrysler US$10 million for his GM stock. Chrysler had started at Buick in 1911 for US$6,000 a year, and left one of the richest men in America.

In January of 1929, Walter Chrysler was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year:

Here are a few quotes attributed to Chrysler:

“The reason so many people never get anywhere in life is because when opportunity knocks, they are out in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers.” 

"To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

"To allow wasteful practices to continue after they have been analyzed and proved wasteful is to sap the energy of your organization at its source."

"I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile.

"I always want to know how things work.  Had I been Aladdin, I am certain that after just one wish or two, I’d have taken that old lamp apart to see if I could make another, better lamp."

"Highly paid workmen should be busy with accomplishment, not useless motion."

"I don't care how raw the ability is, that can be developed through experience. But unless a man is loyal and honest, I don't want him associated with me."

"I am concerned first of all with executives, because if their principles are not right it is useless to look for results from the men."

"When railroad engineers come to a mountain they do not always go through it; sometimes it is best to go around it."

"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man;  he is sure to find an easy way of doing it."