Last summer, a 1959 De Soto Firedome showed up on the Cohort, but it was in pretty rough shape. But then I found this similar ’59 Firedome sedan on eBay, and I think this Heather Blue/Pearl White beauty deserves a post of its own. It also gives me the opportunity to showcase a unique design feature which was only used on certain Forward Look Mopars to great effect . . .
Four door sedans (and certain wagons) of Chrysler’s 1957-59 senior makes (i.e. De Soto, Chrysler, Imperial; but not Dodge or Plymouth) had these “smart burnished” aluminum door frames . . .
. . . which were “another example of the meticulous detailing” found only in these cars.
This is the first time in a long time that I’ve gotten a good look at these; I didn’t realize that they also included this wrapped bright metal base molding around the doorposts.
I like the graceful curve of the sedan roof combined with these nicely-fitting aluminum frames which won’t ever rust!
You can really see the effect here.
Since “the hobby” prioritizes convertibles and hardtops over sedans, this attractive sedan body style is so seldom seen, despite the models’ higher production numbers.
Like all Mopars for ’59, the De Soto has its own newly-designed front end, which, by virtue of its various elaborate space-age gothic forms, is very much in-tune with those exciting times!
All the Mopar makes were fundamentally similar; the decision of which to buy depended on how much money you were willing to spend and which stylistic flight-of-fancy appealed to you.
The wide-angle lens exaggerates the dramatic styling even further!
The comic strip Shoe parodied this car quite often!
This jewel-like dashboard is a true mid-century modern work of art–George Jetson would feel right at home!
We rarely get to see fine details like these in car books. How many people know what the door panel of a ’59 De Soto actually looks like? Will anyone recognize that jet motif on the lower right?
Seats look luxurious, with good quality materials. Pretty nice, considering this is the bottom-of-the-line “true” De Soto (the Firesweep being a Dodge with De Soto styling). Above Firedome were Fireflite and Adventurer–even higher levels of luxury and craftsmanship!
The “over your right shoulder” view.
Under the hood: This should be a 383 cubic inch, 305 horsepower V-8 with 2 bbl. carburetor.
Three torsion bars up front–two for suspension, and one sway bar. Is the oil filter rubbing against that hose?
Forward Look styling themes spread to other contemporary products. However, I suspect this “ad” is a modern forgery designed to look like it’s from the actual ’50s.
But there were real bikes that looked like this–I happen to have one. It’s called a Columbia Firebolt. Note the De Soto-like fin on the chain guard!
“Cars that can do what they look like they can do!” . . . Fly to Saturn? Bomb the Soviets? Scare little children? May-BE . . .
The next year (1960) all Chrysler Corporation cars were completely revised with newly-styled Unibodies. The aluminum door frames were no longer used. De Soto itself would disappear after 1960, which is something I find hard to explain. I thought De Soto often had the best styling compared to its stable-mates. That, plus the excellent Torsion Aire Ride, and fine quality materials and details throughout would seem to make De Soto a sharp choice in its field. De Soto sold about as many cars as Edsel for calendar 1959–not very good. Things got even worse in ’60, even as others did well. A handful of ’61 models were made, and then Chrysler pulled the plug on De Soto.
Sometimes, you offer the public something good, and they still won’t buy. And sometimes if you feed them gruel (like the Pinto), they lap it right up. So add De Soto to the list of makes that should have survived, but somehow didn’t.
I love the 59 DeSoto, and consider it one of the few years when it is clearly more attractive than the Chrysler of the same year. This is a sweet example – really original interiors often get obliterated when someone tries to freshen up a worn interior and can’t replicate the original patterns and fabrics.
I have long wondered about those aluminum window frames. I have suspected that they are simply cladding over the flat steel ones that graced the upper doors of my 59 Fury. They are certainly ornate and lighten up the look of the greenhouse on these cars.
I wonder how sales would have fared if they had done a heavier facelift for 1959 that carried over to 1960 before doing the new Unibody as a 61. But then given what a mess Chrysler styling was when the 61s were being done, the result might not have been good.
I have suspected that they are simply cladding over the flat steel ones that graced the upper doors of my 59 Fury.
Chrysler wasn’t lying, these are genuine “aluminum door frames”. Note how crisp the inside corners of the aluminum frames are, where the extrusions meet. The one-piece steel doors on the lowly Plymouth and Dodge have rounded inside corners. Quite different. (see image below).
Yes, I remembered those rounded corners well. I would love to see one of these up close and in person. My hesitation is that the 59 Chrysler Windsor used the regular painted frames where the Saratoga and New Yorker used the aluminum. Either they configured the aluminum and the trim pieces a little wider to disguise the curves, or the Chrysler/DeSoto doors were slightly different to start with, or they did special tooling and production on some variants and not others to replace the steel with the aluminum altogether. The Chrysler of that time did a lot of goofy things, so I could see any of these options being true.
Oops – edit – George Ferencz solved the mystery below, and I salute you as correct! Wow, Chrysler was amazing in its mysterious decisions.
Come on Jim; it’s obvious that these were different, they’re full aluminum frames. George even posted an eBay listing further down in the comments:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/57-58-59-Chrysler-DeSoto-Left-Drivers-Rear-Door-Window-Frame-OEM-/143604297371?nma=true&si=TBpOpfyVJgVOIpF9DYsVw7jfaQ4%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
Does this convince you? I’ve exhausted my evidence.
I think my edit went up right before your reply above. Yes, I saw George’s comment and photo and waived the white flag.
Now I’m wondering about those wagon doors and whether the bright frames on wagons were like these? Bright cladding would make so much more sense but making sense was not Chrysler’s strong suit in that period.
Of course they’re the same. Jim, these doors interchange; the ones with the aluminum frames are just hardtop doors, but with the frames added. And the wagons used the same too, in fact if you look at a wagon and 4 door hardtop rear door, they have the exact same curvature of the rear window.
I even suspect that they may all (hardtops and aluminum frame doors) use the same glass itself, as the hardtops have a pretty chunky piece of bright trim surrounding the glass, and the aluminum door frames may likely be very thin in the depths of their window channels.
It would make a lot of sense, both in how these doors are actually built as well as the interchange with the hardtops.
The Plymouth and Dodge non-hardtop doors are of course different construction totally. And if you look at them, they’re curved, rounded and quite chunky (the frames); there’s no way one could make them look like the thin aluminum frames by cladding them. Wouldn’t work.
Chrome window frames on sedans over at Pontiac, Olds and Buick became popular options starting around this time and continuing through the seventies. They were not nearly as nice as these though, just being thin cladding over the metal frames. Perplexing how Chrysler could totally over-engineer something as trivial as this and fail in overall build quality and design. Yes, the ‘59’s were better built than the atrocious ‘57’s, but the Forward Look aged quickly and the ‘59 offerings from Chrysler Corp. were sales flops.
I recall John Samsen, former Chrysler Corp. designer saying the DeSoto studio came up with the rear treatment used on the ’59 DeSotos and Chryslers, which may be why it comes off better here.
interestingly, unlike in ’57-’58, the Plymouth and Dodge used very different rear deck designs.
These ’59 refreshes really read like the brief back from the field said the ’57’s were too spare in their design…
From the copy of the magazine ad highlighting the five looks from ChryCo for ’59, I believe the Dodge pulled off the look the best – front and back. Not too out in space, modern looking for the times, dramatic yet not too overstated.
If you click on this link, you can zoom in and see the photos and the type better:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/c0/bf/fac0bf3654a7bf59c75823cf57d10993.jpg
Thanks, much better. I might have expected to be able to find this on Allpar.com but someone has really messed up that site and made it into a message board.
It says that these cars had auto-dimming headlights. That was also offered in the Autronic on the ’59 GMs. How did Chrysler accomplish this, if you know please?
Yes, most annoying.
I loved the De Soto stacked triple taillights. But, the Plymouth front end looks the cleanest to me. Dodge, uh, best for police car fleets.
That DeSoto bike is definitely something made up. The styling is horrendous, and that crazed kid (well, the entire background) is from a Schwinn comic book ad of the vintage. I think either for a Corvette or Jaguar model.
57-59 styling was totally Chrysler and DeSoto, Dodge was invariably the ugly one.
I have to agree with you that, from the perspective of 2021, Dodge styling wasn’t my favorite, either. It’s like it’s trying too hard to look distinctive, and ends up looking awkward.
But then again, who knows what I would’ve thought in 1957, given that I was enamored of Broughams in the 1970s, and now I think they look silly.
IMO the ’57-8 Plymouth was the cleanest, the ’59 Dodge was the ultimate tailfin car even over the ’59 Cadillac.
I tend to agree with you. I don’t think Comic Sans existed as a typeface (now called a “font”) in 1960.
Correct. Comic Sans came out in 1994.
“Typeface” and “font” are commonly mistaken for synonyms, but they aren’t.
Rambler also used “smart burnished aluminum door frames …found only in DeSoto”
I believe they were sourced from Reynolds.
A great example of a complex manufacturing issue solved with a ready-to-use component delivered by an outside supplier.
Whatever you think of the overall product and concept, some of these details are well executed, and truly fascinating.
Very tempting….
Pipe smokers….where did they all go ?
Back in the seventies my boss smoked a pipe; he was the only one I’d seen for years.
Fun to read about this today (and see the photos). When these were on the streets I clearly wouldn’t have noticed which particular variant it was, only that it was a Chrysler Corp. car of some sort.
The aluminum window things are very cool. Ebay photo has the whole assembly (says driver’s-rear)—I wouldn’t have thought of the “legs” extending down into the door:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/57-58-59-Chrysler-DeSoto-Left-Drivers-Rear-Door-Window-Frame-OEM-/143604297371?nma=true&si=TBpOpfyVJgVOIpF9DYsVw7jfaQ4%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
My Dad had one of the “one year only” 1960 Dodge Matadors (4th down on the poster).I still remember that space age dashboard, and how he liked to rock our heads by punching the 361! It truly resembled something aeronautical, what with those fins and deep tunneled “jet exhaust” tail light pods! 🙂 The picture is Dad’s car (only his was yellow w/ white top)
I don’t know why (the paint color & chrome outlining?) but this particular photo makes that “3/4ths of the way fin” really stand out.
Also, I’ve been reading CC for a number of years and will fess up to not knowing that Matador was a Dodge before it was an AMC.
Love the visibility. No blind spots with the six-window configuration. I think the 58 Desoto is the best looking of the 57-59 mopars.
How can a machine so ugly back in the day be that cool today? I love it.
I don’t know too much about DeSotos, but that is one gorgeous shade of blue. It’s almost violet.
That is all.
Although I was an infant back then, I can myself being a DeSoto kind of guy. Like Olds, it plays the middle kid well. Probably would have preferred a ‘56 though, for the taller seating experience.
There’s more to be said about extruded alloy door frames. Last week we looked at the ‘fifties Ramblers; were those the first American production bent aluminum door frames ?
More puzzling to me: what decade was it, and what make, that managed to bend extrusions and leave a fin of material to fill the corner of the opening ? Mid-‘seventies AMC Matador comes close, though there’s something hinky going on at the intersection; I can’t find a large enough photo (I’ve searched the Cohort). I can only sketch what I know is out there somewhere (with multiple and more closely-spaced ribs to the extrusion):
…and look, look! They even managed to sneak the Forward Look logo in as the turn signal telltales.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world:
Thank you for posting this featured DeSoto. I owned a ’59 Firedome as a daily driver for a couple of years in the early 70’s. The dash was a dream. I can’t recall if other Chrysler products featured this at the same time, but the horizontal speedometer indicator would change colors as speed increased. I believe that it changed to red above about 70 mph? Normal dash backlighting was a smart red hue.
I purchased it as a private sale from an older salesman at a Chrysler/Plymouth dealership in 1972, a one owner car. Very well kept, with about 50k and the white lacquer had been resprayed. $600. at a time when a running Corvair could be purchased for $50. Other than the A/C clutch going out the same day I bought it, it gave good service for another 50k in less than 2 years. A couple of generator rebuilds along the way. A sometimes fiddly electro-mechanical VR. A full trans rebuild cost me $300, after some girls that I had loaned it to when I was deployed, fried it.
Mine also had the 383 with big 2 bbl BBD carb, 305 hp. I’m not really sure, but I think this model/year had the one year raised block 383 that the Chryslers used? Despite the 2 bbl, it was a higher compression, ( 10/1 ?) premium fuel engine. It managed 13-14 mpg on anything resembling open road driving. Much more torque than the 270 hp, 2 bbl 383 low compression Chrysler Newport that I next owned, although that had superior fuel mileage. My girlfriend at the time used to beg me to trade in the DeSoto on a new Beetle.
That last ad targeting car-crazy boys to convince their dads to take them to the dealership to check out the new ’60s… could you imagine a manufacturer attempting this approach now? Are there enough car crazy kids still out there? And is dragging your dad to the dealership to look at the latest [fill in the blank] still a thing at all?
The handful of times my family went to the dealer when I was a kid, it was to Honda of Ithaca, and every time my brother and I would load up on brochures. We bought our rusty used ’85 Civic Sedan from their used lot, then several years later we were back for our (less used) ’90 Civic Wagon, which came back to them shortly with a blown head gasket (60k miles, a rare manufacturing defect supposedly). So we have circa 1995 Accord, Del Sol, and Prelude pamphlets that were scrutinized to a painful degree by a pair of car-crazy young boys