I'm a great fan of classic car shows,
but not because I get to see the cars I grew up with in Melbourne in
the 1950s and 60s. It's great to see those vehicles, but to me the
real thrill is getting up close and personal with the cars we didn't
see in Australia. Cars that were not brought into Australia for
various reasons. One of those is our featured yank tank, a 1960
Desoto Adventurer which we spotted in 2009 at an All Chrysler Day at
Mt Gravatt Showgrounds, near Brisbane.
Post-war Australia did bring in Desoto
cars from Canada and these were marketed as the Desoto Diplomat which
in reality was identical, apart from the name badge, to the Dodge
Kingsway. They were simple cars with a grunty side valve straight six
engine hooked up to three-on-the-tree gear shifter.
The chassis and mechanicals were
imported in CKD form and the bodies built and fitted in Adelaide by
T.J.Richards. They were not handsome cars with fins, but rounded
sedans that were developed immediately after the war and preceeded
classics such as the 1957 Chevrolet, 1956 Ford Customline and 1957
Chrysler Royal that were common on our roads.
As car prices rose some of the brands
that failed to sell competitively in the Australian market were
discontinued. Buick and Oldsmobile from GM disappeared, Ford Mercury,
and Desoto from Chrysler although Dodge survived. The effect of this
was we saw some of the best of Chevrolet, Ford and Chrysler/Dodge in
the flesh, but none of the brands such as Desoto after the mid 1950s.
Then, in 1960, Chrysler collapsed Desoto and it was sent to the great
car-brand graveyard in the sky that perpetually hovvers like a grim
reaper over the North American continent. (Pontiac joined that party
early this year)
With Desoto out of the way Chrysler had
the Royal to fly the Mopar flag and it was later joined by the Dodge
Phoenix. The Adventurer started as a show or
concept car in 1953 and featured Desoto's 1951 replacement of the
side valve six engines with the FireDome hemi-head V8. It was
Desoto's headline act, a hero hardtop aimed at drawing attention to
the brand.
Note the push button auto on the left of the dashboard
The Desoto Adventurer hit the streets
first in 1956 – the year of the Melbourne Olympics – and gave
much needed depth to the Desoto range in the U.S. It was what they
call a hardtop, which in Australia is also known as a pillar-less
coupe. In simple terms the B-pillar is missing, the four doors are
reduced to two, but usually the car retains the full length of the
sedan it is based on, which in this case is about a yard short of a
cricket pitch.
Adventurer was always about the fins,
the grille and the engine. The fins stretched out like a giant cape
on Superman's back. Between them was a boot lid the size of a
football pitch and under that lid a boot the size of a grand
ballroom. If those fins were a little wider they may have helped the
car become airborne when it raced along Daytona Beach at 137 mph and
then eclipsed that by a further 7 mph at Chrysler's proving grounds.
Adventurer joined Firesweep, Firedome
and Fireflite – names unfamiliar in Australia – as the Desoto
lineup. The year 1956 was a watershed year for Desoto, building
almost 120,000 cars, but by 1958 it dropped to less than half this
number. It was being white-anted from within because of Chrysler's
similarity in lineup and the parent company wanting to be represented
in the lower end of the market as well as the middle ground.
By 1958 Americans were over the fin
revolution yet Desoto persisted with the colossal winged warriors.
The Adventurer was highly equipped. There was a lot of bang for your
buck. But, inexplicably the car that was renowned for quality build
in 1957 became the opposite. Starting from a low sales base this was
critical to Desoto's future. Within the Chrysler stable it's rival
was the Chrysler 300. This car was the ancestor of the current
Chrysler 300C that is now a dominant player in Australia's large car
market, along with Holden's Statesman and Caprice.
The 300 was a legendary Chrysler
nameplate. Yet, the bashful Desoto Adventurer came with more
features, at least equal performance and better power-to-weight than
the 300. The Desoto was considerably cheaper. By 1957 it was fitted
with a Desoto hemi V8 of 345 cubic inches that produced an equal
number of horses – 345 hp. In 1957 the Adventurer also lifted it's
lid and was available as a convertible as well as hardtop. The
quality issues this same year saw sales plummet in 1958.
Whenever Chrysler product from this era
is written about it is inevitable one name will surface: that of the
company's chief designer, Virgil Exner. If GM's designer Harley Earl
invented fins, then Exner exploited the design as much as any, if not
more, than most automobile designers. Exner was responsible for the
explosion of fins on Chrysler product but by 1959 even Chrysler knew
fins were passe. The 1959 Chevrolet is a good example of this with
it's fins falling over outwards like wilting flowers. In Australia we
were late to start with fins and late to finish with the 1960 FB
Holden and 1961 EK Holden's boasting the largest local fins of all
until the fin-less EJ was launched in July 1962.
So it was that in May 1959 Exner's
design studio emerged with an all-new design for a Desoto convertible
with a long bonnet, shorter boot and a smooth, dropping boot and no
fins. It was called the S-Series and was slotted in as the 1962
Desoto. Despite it's forward planning 1959 was an even worse year for
Desoto than 1958. The bells were ringing and it wasn't Christmas.
Desoto shuffled its models like deck
chairs on the Titanic for 1960. In a downgrading of product
Adventurer was demoted to Fireflite status, while Fireflite was
dropped to Firedome status. Station wagons and convertibles were
dropped altogether. That was the bad news. But the remaining vehicles
were built using Chrysler's unibody or monocoque system. The
drive-trains remained strong ... stronger than sales that slumped to
just a few over 26,000. It was obvious Chrysler would be forced into
action. Yet, a 1961 model was announced and it was a facelift of the
impressive 1960 variants which shared components and body parts with
Chrysler Newport and Windsor. Both were powered by a 361 cubic inch
V8 with a slightly lower compression ratio than the 1960 model to
enable standard fuel to be used.
The MY 1961 cars went on sale in
October 1960 but sales were as dry as the Australian outback.
Chrysler gave Desoto just 30 days before they pulled the pin on the
marque. Production was ended on November 30, 1960. It was a sad end
to a proud brand. The 32 year Desoto adventure and Adventurer were
finished. Dealers were told Chrysler would concentrate on the lower
end of the market where there were clear signs of growth. This would
be lead in the US by the Plymouth brand. In Australia it was led by
Chrysler, using the Valiant starting with the R and S Series cars in
1962 which replaced the Chrysler Royal.
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