Looked great, and still does look great if you ask me! Thank you for sharing. ^__^

It does! And I love the corrugated look of that trim piece that goes up the side of the car.

back in the day when everything had to have fins...

V.

I think it was a reflection on how crazy the public had become over rockets and space travel. Fins were the future. Flying cars were just a couple of years away... uh... Sixty is just a couple, right?

oh yes... at least I think so...

V.

As always, I love your way with perspective and details. Have you ever thought of doing a "name that car" sort of quiz?

It's too bad what happened to DeSoto. They made very nice cars, but the name was basically irrelevant at Chrysler by the time this beautiful example was made. Positioned between Chrysler and Dodge in the Chrysler Company's brand lineup, a few events at Chrysler during the mid-'50s combined to help seal DeSoto's demise.
In 1955 the Imperial became a stand-alone marque to compete with Cadillac in the luxury car market. With that, Chrysler Division expanded their model line downmarket into DeSoto's turf with the low-priced (and popular) Windsor model. Meanwhile, Dodge's image was being moved upmarket with cars like the Lancer and the D-500. Soon neither Chrysler's management nor the car-buying public could decide if the DeSoto was a low-rent Chrysler or a big Dodge. With no real identity of its own, DeSoto was eaten alive from both ends within the company's own lineup. The last few hundred DeSotos were built in 1961.

The quiz idea is a good one. In fact, raynard_foxglove has already been doing that (check out his scraps). Maybe I'll do it some time during the upcoming car show season. My current backlog of car photos has been exhausted.

Thanks for the brief history on the demise of DeSoto. So many great car companies have either vanished or been swallowed up by the Big 3.

That's true about the diminishing number of car companies. Even the Big 3 are dumping them like yesterday's papers. I never thought I'd ever see Mercury, Oldsmobile, Pontiac or Plymouth become extinct.

In Japan something similar happened in the late 80's to the 90's where a manufacturer would build two cars based on each other but styled differently. Mechanically they'd be the same.

e.g Toyota Corolla Levin (AE86) Toyota Corolla Trueno (AE86),
Nissan Silvia (S13) and Nissan 180SX (S13)

I think it pretty much stopped after the 90's

I always wonder why we don't have more complex trim pieces and light shapes now, I mean headlights have changed a bit but lets see some styling :3