My own connection to DeSoto goes no further than knowing it was Howard Cunningham’s vehicle of choice on “Happy Days”. However, as one of Chrysler’s marques it has an interesting history which we’ve discussed numerous times. This DeSoto 1954 Firedome Sedan was built in Detroit (Los Angeles was the other plant) as per the vehicle number with a base price of $2,673, was finished in Azure Blue and equipped with pricy options such as the new for ’54 Powerflite 2-speed automatic transmission ($189), power windows $101), radio ($101), electric clock ($33) and heater ($78) as the ones that I can readily identify.
The engine, sadly long gone from this one, was a 276 cu.in Hemi V-8 producing 170hp and 255lb-ft of torque, heady numbers for the day. As the standard Firedome sedan with 45,095 built that year it is the most common bodystyle by far. Since the total number of DeSoto vehicles built that year was only 78,579 (of which 57,375 were Firedomes as opposed to the Powermaster 6) these don’t pop up every day, hence worthy of inclusion here. This was found very recently at a different yard than the prior subjects of this series and is part of the general population, so it’ll likely unfortunately be no more by around tax time.
What is a “fire dome”? A wood fired pizza oven?
It is a reference to the hemispherical combustion chambers of the motor.
Desoto’s brand name for the hemi. Dodge used “Red Ram”. I did’t capitalize hemi as I reserve that for the 60’s 426 CID version.
Note the padded dash. Desotos had these in the mid-50s.Our 56 Desoto was replaced with a 62 Impala which still had a metal dash.
This car confused me so much as a kid. My Grandma had a DeSoto. When I asked her what year it was, she said “a ’54” I later got a book that showed a 54 Desoto and it was absolutely not my Grandma’s car – which was really a 55.
I saw one of these once that had been really well preserved, and the interior struck me as fabulous. Just look at those dash switches under each gauge – I have never seen anything like them.
Very sad to see. I hope you grabbed the trim tag off the cowl. It looks like new!
Interesting idea- Place the tag in the lower corner of a picture frame, over a photo showing the car in its final resting place.
Of course, you would have to put the picture in the garage, since mama wouldn’t let it in the house…
The ’54 had a beautiful interior, and what power! I remember watching Groucho Marx in “You bet Your Live” in 1954, as a young boy of eight years of age with Mom & Dad, and being so engrossed in the commercials because Groucho said the Desoto was such a wonderful car and that I should see my local Desoto dealer.
I wonder what the noble1954 Firedome sedan would look like now if it had died and been resurrected in Cuba. I would purchase it “as is”, if $ were not an issue, and donate it to any one on the island who would promise to put it back on the road, in some form. MayB the DeSoto body on a contemporary frame, 12v w/air, disc brakes, painted some outrageous combo of pastel colors.
Ha, Ha.It would properly be running on a generator motor with cheap plastic wheel covers. Rust hOles would have been replaced with carefully crafted sheet metal… from an old Lada . The owner would still want 40 grand for it because that’s what it’s worth to him as a tourist taxi ,earning more in a few days than a doctor does in a month.
There are no parts allowed into the country due to the US embargo in 1962 after Castro announced he was a Communist. It’s make do n mend.
Mark Hobbs,
Yes, there have been export restrictions to Cuba, but as soon as these were put into place, people in other countries began acting as a shipping forwarder. For 3 decades I sold vintage car parts.
About 1985 I had a guy in Sweden who asked me for parts for his 4 cars he was having restored in Cuba. He wanted the parts sent to a person in Mexico who made regular trips to Cuba by boat, loaded with American banned products.
he informed me that the “good” cars like his 1957 T-bird, 1958 Eldorado convertible,& 1956 Cadillac Fleetwood, were taken by the Cuban government They were sold to Europeans, especially Swedish people. They had their cars restored in Cuba & shipped to Europe.
I’ve been told by 2 different reliable sources that there is a government storage lot with multiple Tatra T-603 cars, located near the ports for Havana, just sitting there unused. This info does go back about 25 years, but I have yet to hear of any Tatras coming out of Cuba. I wish I could find someone going to Cuba who could look into this. Today these are valuable cars in any condition, if complete.
I find the 54 Desoto quite handsome, and although I am always amazed at the lack of deep rust in these cars I concede that this one is too far gone to be saved.
Probably a nice parts car for someone, but that someone is not likely in your area.
Nice International pickup behind it though!
Give me a fair n reasonable price for those two assist (chrome) handles on either side of the back of the front seat…..(2) screws Phillip screws attach each handle to the internal steel frame of front seat. Where is this DeSoto? I’m in South Kansas City, MO. 64030
Jim Klein took the pictures so I’m not positive, but the background looks like Anderson’s in Greeley Colorado. The car is in their self-service yard, but they might pull the parts and ship them for someone out of town. Here’s their website:
http://www.andersensales.com/welcome.html
Yep, Jim confirmed in post further down- Anderson’s
Dave, Your reply is noted n appreciated. I plan to send email and get a price on those fine handles. Perish the thought that those handles will go with the DeSoto to the crusher.
You should ask them for all the trim that can be removed! Other people need the parts you don’t.
May I suggest that when older vehicles are discovered in salvage yards and are the subject of a write up on CC, that information on where to find said vehicle is also included, so that other people in need of spare parts can raid the car before it gets damaged further, or even scrapped for it’s metal value.
That rear window was used for only 2 years [’53 & ’54] on Chrysler and Desoto sedans, and is hard to find in the tinted version. Lots of good parts left on it, including the complete dash & all the power window parts to convert a manual window car to power windows.
It’s at Andersen’s metal and salvage in Greeley, CO, strictly pick and pull. Presumably someone from Row52 could get a part for you but the yard itself won’t do it.
My Uncle always had DeSotos, and my oldest brother fell in love with Uncle Elmer’s green and white ’55. DeSotos — any DeSoto — are his dream cars.
I’ve got a friend who has had a gorgeous wagon on a lift for at least 20 years. The combo hood ornament plane and air scoop is a great detail. You can almost see a ’55 prefigured in that dash, which looks too modern for the rest of the car.
Jonathan Ward’s Derelict wagon project is a beaut, too.
Hi Barry! Long time no see…
Your charity is to be commended, but the reality of the situation regarding cars in Cuba is likely not what you romantically imagine. The simple reason for the old USA cars being used is a product of them having nothing else to choose to own and keep running. That’s why they are often converted to soviet era diesels, or odd pairings of whatever they can find to keep them running. If they had the money, the more likely choice would be one of the many cheaper to own and operate Chinese models you are starting to see there, or anything newer.
And that is based on history. Look at the cars of the former Communist states. The East Germans, in particular, had lots of Trabbants, as that was the main car they could legally own. And when the wall was falling, tons of them appeared in Poland, or other borders, selling for practically nothing, as they were dumped in favor of anything not a Trabbant that was suddenly available.
Sadly, other than as tourist taxis, those 1950s American cars will be phased out quickly once the socialistic/communist government decides to allow more foreign cars in without horrible rules for ownership. Much like how the Chinese went from only the leaders driving their imported Buicks or locally sourced HongQi to everyone having access to a locally built product at a price they could afford, it will change rapidly and drastically.
To whom are you referring this comment about Cuba? I didn’t see any reference to Cuba in the text.
Someone above commented RE Cuba. The response was likely meant for them.
I think he was referring to the 1st comment above by Robert Reynolds.
Watched a TV documentary a couple of years ago when Cubans were first allowed to buy new private cars. At the only dealer in town, locals just shocked their heads and the laughed at the £ 40-50 asked for a new Kia. Massive import duties. The new world of capitalism, for them, if they can afford it.
I love these big Chrysler tanks of this vintage. I worked with some guys from Chicago on a construction crew in Iowa City in 1972, and they had a beautiful ’54 New Yorker. It was just so big and comfortable and exuded solidity. and the big 331 hemi just barely burbled, it was so well silenced.
It was just a beater to them (although in very good shape and no rust), and I hated to see it get abused by these kids. Oh well…
Every time I see a 1953 or 1954 DeSoto, I think of the close friend of mine whose maternal grandfather had a 1953 Firedome four-door sedan.
My friend (who lives in northern Maryland) kept telling his grandfather that he wanted the car. Just before my friend started to drive in 1986, his grandfather suddenly sold the car to a cousin in southern Virginia.
My friend asked him why he had done that, and the grandfather simply replied, “That old car would have given you too much trouble.”
I believe the car is still in southern Virginia, but abandoned in a field, and beyond repair by this point.
Ha, Ha.It would properly be running on a generator motor with cheap plastic wheel covers. Rust hOles would have been replaced with carefully crafted sheet metal… from an old Lada . The owner would still want 40 grand for it because that’s what it’s worth to him as a tourist taxi ,earning more in a few days than a doctor does in a month.
There are no parts allowed into the country due to the US embargo in 1962 after Castro announced he was a Communist. It’s make do n mend. p
models 1/25
’53
Great pix of the interior. These cars are not well pictured in magazines or websites. I note the padded dash, the power windows, and the rear ashtray with its own lighter. DeSoto used asymmetrical radios for a few years, with the tuning on the outer knob and volume on inner knob. I’ve never seen those two thumbwheels before; bass and treble, or tone and selectivity?
Leave it to Chrysler to put the most powerful engine in the country in an old lady’s car! Expert marketing and branding as usual.
About the time this ’54 was being built my dad traded his “50 (?) Jeep in on a ’52 DeSoto that was pretty much the same solid light blue as this ’54. The interior on the ’54 would have been much nicer than the blah, monochromatic interior our ’52 had. One of my most vivid memories was of being cold in Wisconsin Winters, that 125hp (IIRC) lil hemi and its optional heater just did not get any heat to the backseat!!
Another memory is all the “potholes” the chromed parts developed after 3 years out in New Jersey. Visually the car struck me as a massive helping of lumps; especially after the ’55 MoPars came out. I can’t remember ever being in the least bit fond of the hulking DeSoto.
After the right rear spring broke the old man $old the car for $125! That was in 1960, and by then even I realized that lil hemi was worth more than that! I was a budding car enthusiast, so what did I know at my young age just because I was reading Rod & Custom, Motor Trend, etc??! 🙂 DFO
Didn’t pay much attention to pre-55 MoPars when they could still be found on the road. That ’54 dash layout is amazingly similar to a ’55 I owned in the early 70s. A peculiarity of that layout was the asymmetric radio speaker placement.
If Baba O’Riley (Teenage wasteland) hit the airwaves, I’d be trying to turn it up to the proper volume (loud) while my passenger begged for mercy.
The true value of this car is in its parts. Scrap value is the default price. This yard should run a few ads in Hemmings or a DeSoto club magazine. Don’t be so quick to just crush it. Market it.
The yard properly has a set time frame for all its cars due to cash flow and storage space. Sell as many parts during a given time then crush it for it’s weight in mixed scrap metal. Business sense as they aren’t restorers.
Another fine old MoPar comes to it’s end .
These were dowdy looking but faster than you’d expect once they got going .
-Nate
Father Time caught up. 🙂
While the 1953-54 Chryslers and DeSotos were not as stylish as the contemporary Buicks and Oldsmobiles, they carried a lot more gravitas than the same-year Plymouths and Dodges.
Pictured below are two 1954 Chryslers, in likely the same Azure Blue paint as the featured DeSoto. The one on the left, as I recall, belonged to the grandparents of a friend of my younger brother in the early 70s. It was in very nice condition at the time, but could not be driven due to a defect in the power steering that forced the front wheels into the hard right position. The one on the right, a New Yorker Deluxe, was spotted at curbside in Los Angeles not long after we saw it in motion back in Dec. 2005.
Yes, the car itself is probably to far gone to be saved (aldo it deserves it) but please, let someone get all the good parts and save those, it would be a complete shame and a loss forever to let all those get crushed.
This brings many memories from when I was growing up in Israel in the 60s and 70s, we had quite a few of those (and earlier) Desotos but as lwb taxi versions with their gasoline engines long gone, replaced by clattery Perkins 4 cylinder diesels. They were mostly used on intercity services; slightly more expensive than a bus ride but they stopped anywhere unlike the buses which were limited to the stations. Slow, smelly and noisy but they lasted for 20 years of hard service until replaced by Checkers, MBs or Peugeots.
I love that picture! (as well as the other one, but this one for some reason especially)
T. Turtle,
I would estimate that almost all of the Desoto 6 cylinder 7-passenger cars were used in New York City as taxicabs. If the cars imported into Israel were NYC taxicabs, They would have already been driven at least 150,000 miles. To see these cars still in use as taxi or bus service decades later, is testimony on how well made & designed they were.
NYC had very special equipment requirements for taxicabs, some of the easier to find requirements were fold down trunk racks, metal edges around all door windows, and on DeSoto taxis, they had sliding steel sunroofs, called “DeSoto Skyview Taxicabs”. If your DeSoto cars in Israel had the metal edges around the door glass, and the sunroofs, they were ex-NYC taxicabs.
In my research on Taxicabs, I discovered that when NYC taxis were retired from service, if they were still running and looked OK they were often returned to the company who leased them or the original selling company had a buy-back agreement. The company typically sold these big sedans to foreign locations, where labor was cheap, and the cars rebuilt and put back into service again.
For Example, Packard Taxicabs for NYC were sold or leased from a company called Packard Federal Corp. Packard Federal handled all the export cars & taxicabs made by Packard [1939-1950]. The company was owned by Mr Robert King and his son. I interviewed the son about 45 years ago. He explained how they sold or leased Packard taxicabs in NYC. Once the cars reached the 10 year old point or 150,000 miles, NYC law said the cars could no longer be used, so they were returned to Packard Federal, who exported them “as-is”. Many states had a requirement that titles for vehicle used as taxicabs, must be marked as such, and no one in America wanted them. So the best method to sell these ex-taxis was to export them.
One more. This and the ones in the previous picture were used on the Tel Aviv to Eilat service which was about a 300 mile trip taking good 8-10 hours back then, mostly at Death Valley temperatures and of course without any form of air conditioning (pic (in Eilat) by Raffy Zanetti).
Next door neighbors had one of these, white and turquoise. Older couple, old persons car in my childhood eyes. Replaced by a bottom-of-the-line Buick in ’64.
Hello everyone, well I have a1954 desoto of my own. It was pretty nice until this young lady under the influence sideswiped the rear left destroying back panel and rear door. She was going super fast and police mentioned that if my car was not there she would have gone right into a telephone pole killing her instead. This just happened on September 5 2021 in California. She had no insurance and I had only liability on my 54. But I will say that if I had to choose between my car getting destroyed or young woman killing her self, I would choose my car getting damaged. By saying all this I’m not sure what I will do regarding my car. I don’t have the funds to repair so I might have to sell. Be safe out there everyone and keep those classics alive! Blessings
Offer your 1954 DeSoto up as a parts car. All parts would go to other owners and I am sure, be greatly appreciated. When there is nothing left but a body shell, it will be crushed and shredded, melted down and the process start over.
I inherited a 1954 firedome runs perfect and is all original has the hemi