Ah yes Larry, now you've really got me reminiscing.
I can still remember it to this day, playing in my dad's driveway, my 2 brothers and me.
We'd spend endless summer days building roads in the dirt to make those not-so-imaginary journeys from the playhouse to the backporch. Crawling the 50 or so feet on hands and knees, pushing toy cars whilst humming the sounds of the game.
Yrrrrroooommm!
Scrrrrreeeech!
RrrrrrRRRrrrr!
"Hey, pull over there!"
And all the while, looking up at those four giant fins.
Around about 1961 or so my father had two 1958 Desotos, sitting side by side in our yard back.
One red, one blue, and similar in most other regards except one. One had 2 headlights, the other 4.
Both had push-button automatic transmissions, both trunks enclosed more volume than some of today's passenger compartments, both sported two-tone paint jobs.
Cavernous interiors would haul 5 kids in the back seat to our weekly drive-in theatre excursion.
Desoto, was named for the Spaniard, who in 1539 first explored Florida, at one time anchoring at the mouth of the Manatee River near today's Bradenton, something this explorer would do some 450 years later. Fernando deSoto's bust would grace the front of some of these beauties as an illuminated hood ornament at some point in between.
Chrysler Corporation built over 2 million Desotos in Detroit between 1928 and 1960.
An early Desoto was driven the 3,114 miles from New York to San Francisco in 1932 in 10 days, averaging 21.4mpg, total gas cost? Thirty three dollars, six cents.
The next year another Desoto made the same trip as a publicity stunt- backwards.
During the dark years of World War II, when no American cars were produced, the Desoto plants turned out Sherman Tank parts and Superfortress nose sections as part of their patriotic duties.
With models like the Airflow, Firedome, Fireflite, Firesweep, and Adventurer, Desoto's ranks sounded as space-age as they looked.
Cars not unlike the ones in our yard were clocked at 144mph at the Chelsea proving ground, and in the 1957 Annual Pikes Peak competition climb not even the Thunderbirds nor Corvettes could match their awesome power and top speed.
Link to the Desoto Homepage on my childhood memory below.
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