’57 Desoto

’57 Desoto Fireflite Sportsman. (Photo by Dan Lyons.)

—What happened that 60 years later glamour-boats like this are no longer made?
The January 2018 entry in my Tide-mark “Cars of the Fab ‘50s” calendar is this 1957 Desoto Fireflite Sportsman.
I paged through all the other 2018 entries, and none are as dramatic. And that includes a ’55 Chevy convertible, the car I lusted after all through high-school and college.
It’s a Desoto; Desoto was discontinued in 1961. I thought it a Chrysler at first, since it’s somewhat a Chrysler badge-engineered into a Desoto. When I was a child, Desoto was supposedly competition for Oldsmobile, and maybe Buick.

(This is actually a ’58.)

(This may actually be my church-people’s car; it was this color, and also a four-door sedan.)

It has all the Desoto trademarks, like taillights with individual lenses. In the early ‘50s it was the toothy grille.
A family in my church had one; they always bought Desotos. I remember a pea-green ’52: kind of droll.
This ’57, by comparison, is gorgeous.
I thought ’58 or ’59, but ’57 was the first year of Chrysler’s “Forward-Look,” marked by gigantic tailfins.
Chrysler looked okay, but better was this Desoto. Plymouth and Dodge looked awful, especially Dodge. Giant fins grafted to taxicabs. My wife (deceased) learned to drive in her family’s ’57 Plymouth. It was so big it intimidated. And it rusted almost immediately.
For whatever reason this Desoto looks all-of-a-piece. Its side-trim isn’t overly exuberant, and its front-end looks great.
The ’57 Chrysler, by contrast, looks sorta plain. Huge fins and quad headlights on a gigantic barge. Its grille is stupid (except the 300-C).
I remember a “Forward-Look” Chrysler garaged in my childhood suburb. The entire trunk (and fins) wouldn’t fit. Everything behind the rear window was out in the driveway.

1957 Chrysler 300-C.

Better-looking was this Desoto. The stylists got it right. Quads and tailfins set off by that gorgeous grille.
Its chassis was pedestrian. It’s still the ancient solid rear axle with heavy center differential. Its giant V8 was up front driving that rear axle via a long driveshaft. (Same as the Model-T Ford.)
And I think the rear-suspension is Hotchkiss. That heavy axle is suspended by outboard leaf-springs. Goose the motor and everything twists, steering you into the boonies. NASCAR allowed trackbars to hold everything in place.
The front suspension is also not as good as now. It’s independent, but not long-travel MacPherson strut.
Steering was also marginal. It wasn’t rack-and-pinion, and nowadays car-companies go overboard to develop superior steering feel.
Brakes were terrible. Fine for Granny and docile cruises to the supermarket; start usin’ ‘em hard. and they fade. They were drums which expanded away from the brake-shoes as they heated.
Disc brakes came later, not as prone to fade. Discs came into use in the ‘60s. ’57 is before discs, although the car pictured may be converted. Kits are available to convert older cars to discs. (A friend converted his ’62 Impala.)
The tables have turned. Suspensions are much better, as are brakes and steering. But oh what a glamour-boat this would be to majestically cruise the interstates. Now cars are much safer to drive, but they look like soap-bars.
People used to race these behemoths on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Fastest were the 300 Chryslers with the early Hemi. Flat-out from Philadelphia to the Ohio border. I think ’57 Desotos were also Hemi.