John Willys
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John North Willys | |
---|---|
United States Ambassador to Poland | |
In office May 24, 1930 – May 30, 1932 | |
President | Herbert Hoover |
Preceded by | John B. Stetson Jr. |
Succeeded by | F. Lammot Belin |
Personal details | |
Born | Canandaigua, New York, U.S. | October 25, 1873
Died | August 26, 1935 The Bronx, New York, U.S. | (aged 61)
John North Willys (
Early life
Born in
Career
Willys' interest in cars came after an 1899 trip to Cleveland, where he saw an automobile for the first time, and knew they would quickly replace bicycles.
Labor difficulties began to emerge at the Willys-Overland Toledo plant that resulted in a violent strike in 1919, shutting down the plant for several months. Willys hired
Although very profitable, Willys' businesses were highly leveraged, expanded and/or acquired through massive borrowings. In 1921, Willys' nervous bankers forced him to consolidate in order to limit their exposure. To raise cash for debt reduction, the Willys-Overland plant in New Jersey was sold at auction to
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw numerous carmakers go out of business, and the Willys enterprises went into bankruptcy reorganization in 1933.
In 2008, Willys was posthumously inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan.[2]
Personal life
Willys and his wife had at least one daughter, Virginia, who married a rancher, Luis Marcelino de Aguirre, in 1929 when she was 18.[3]
The following year, John Willys and his wife of thirty-seven years divorced. He soon remarried.
Death
He died on August 26, 1935, of a
.References
- ^ a b "» John N. Willys | Automotive Hall of Fame". www.automotivehalloffame.org. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
- ^ "Auto pioneer Willys in industry hall of fame". The Blade. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
- ^ "U.S. Heiress Weds". The Daily Herald. 27 May 1929. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
- ^ "J. N. Willys Dies. Automobile Maker. Pioneer in Industry Started Career in 1907 in Ohio on $7,500 He Borrowed". The New York Times. August 26, 1935. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
Further reading
- Post, Theodore (October 14, 1916). "How John Willys Built up a $200,000 Business on a Start of $50". The Magazine of Wall Street. 19 (1): 7–9. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
- Redgap, Curtis. "John North Willys, Automotive Pioneer". Allpar. Retrieved March 16, 2016.
- Willys, John North (June 6, 1909). "The Automobile as a Civilizer". The New York Times via carsandracingstuff. Retrieved March 16, 2016.