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Late 1940s DeSoto.A photo from my own collection now, showing a marque little represented on this site until now, namely DeSoto. The car shown I think dates to 1949, although if a DeSoto expert can shed more light on the exact age and model shown, that'd be useful! | |
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DeSoto, a Chrysler company.Shortly after the birth of DeSoto, Chrysler completed their purchase of Dodge Brothers, another company whose products were positioned in the mid-range. Throughout the 20s and early 30s, DeSoto cars were positioned one or two rungs down the ladder from Dodge, so as to avoid too much in-house competition. This arrangement was reversed in 1933, the idea being to attract new buyers to Dodge automobiles, a brand that had been in existence and was more familiar to American car buyers since 1914, when the first complete Dodges were sold. Following WW2, DeSoto fired up their civilian car production lines once again, selling re-worked versions of their '42 models to the post-war motor buying public. The car shown above I think is a 1949 model, built at a time when DeSotos were available either as a DeLuxe or Custom, depending on specification. The DeSoto name finally disappeared from the new-car lists in 1961, its demise being announced late in 1960 following several years of declining sales in the segment of the market that DeSoto had been positioned in. | |
| Perhaps the best remembered De Soto model was the Airflow from the 1930s, a wind-cheating and very eye-catching piece of design work. Despite a very advanced design, both aerodynamically and beneath the skin, the home market didn't take to the rakish new DeSoto, and it was soon replaced by a more conventional looking model range. | |
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