De Soto- good and cheap cars
Thursday, September 18th, 2008In 1928, Walter Chrysler found a new brand-de Soto to compete with Oldsmobile, Nash and Pontiac. Everything was all right since the cars were good and cheap. After the war there was a great demand for cars. The producers of cars struggled to meet it.
Slowly but surely the market began to be saturated. So the problems for De Soto started. Only 129 963 cars were sold in 1953. Next year the number fell to 69,844. Because of that the managing director of De Soto was replaced by ‘Tex’ Colbert. The new director got a budget of $250 million and gaveVirgil Exner the order to design a marketable car. Exner got a completely new model which design was absolutely new. It was spoken of as the ‘Forward Look’ .
The models were presented to the broader public in November,1954. The cars of model year 1955 called the Firedome and the Fireflite were powered by a 291 cu. in.V8 engine.Thanks to the mounting of a four-barrel carburetor, Firelite was able to provide 203 hp. Both cars had a wheel-base of 10.5 ft and were painted in gaudy colors, especially the Fireflite.The clients turned to De Soto again. 129 767 cars were sold very quickly in 1955. De Soto had a short success for about 3 years. Only 19 411 cars were sold in 1960. After that the production was stopped.