1951 De Soto - The Pain. Oh, The Pain.

This is the latest in a series on the mysterious cars my parents had before I was born in 1964. Read the first of the series, a blog about my father's 1941 Buick Roadmaster here.

Of all the cars my parents had, the one my mother found most dear was "The De Soto". That car was, apparently, so nice and so special that all other cars they had afterwards were judged against it and none of them came close to it. I estimate tha my parents owned "The De Soto" between 1955 and 1960 so I don't have a lot of information about it aside from it being "very nice" and Kelly green (dark green). Connecting the dots through some disparate details I do know of, I have been able to deduce what model year "The De Soto" probably was.

I wish I could say that my parents had a dashing 1957 De Soto Fireflite like this one that's for sale with an asking price of more than $16,000 down in Nashville. Good luck with that, sir. No. They did not have a 1957 De Soto. The timing's just not right. I know they had "The De Soto" when they first moved to Baldwin in October of 1956 so a befinned De Soto like this was never in their garage on Overlook Place before I was born. These late '50's Chryslers are spectacular, aren't they? Even in four door guise. Lovely. 

Nor did they have an all new for 1955 De Soto. While not nearly as flamboyant as the '57, the '55's were long, low and wide and came available in wild color combinations like these two that are illustrated. This hard top coupe also has a V-8 denoted by the badge on the rear quarter panel. That pinkish sedan, with no V-8 badge, powered no doubt by Chrysler's hoary flathead six. The timing could have been right for "The De Soto" to have been a '55 but it couldn't have been for other reasons. 

I remember my father telling me about how difficult cars like "The De Soto" were to steer before power steering became common place. Taking that comment into account, I've found that power steering was not offered on De Soto's until 1952. So, that means that, sadly,  "The De Soto" was more than likely a 1950 or 1951 model like this drab, kelly green lump. The pain. Oh, The Pain. Let's say it was a '51 rather than a '50 so I can think Mom and Dad, who always bought used, didn't buy something too old. 

The '51 De Soto featured "three-roller-tooth gear" steering; that sounds medieval in a car as large and heavy as this car was. Manual brakes too; this thing was handful. Knowing my shy, quiet and retiring father who was a Willy Loman meets Walter Middy kind of guy, he let my mother steer the purchase of a brutally hard to drive car that she never drove. After all, she liked how it looked and thought it the nicest car they ever had. 

Not the first time I've disagreed with Mom.

De Soto's were mid priced automobiles that competed with Buick, Oldsmobile and Mercury. Founded in 1928 and named after the Spanish explorer that discovered the Mississippi River, Chrysler dropped the division in December 1960.