Harry J. Fox Motor Co., Ft. Worth, TX.
Roesch Motors, DeSoto-Plymouth, Elmhurst, IL.
Lagrew Motors, DeSoto-Plymouth, Lexington, KY.
Wagstaff Motor Co., DeSoto-Plymouth, Atlanta, GA.
John Malasky Inc., DeSoto-Plymouth, Hudson, NY.
Periat and Sons, DeSoto-Plymouth, San Mateo, CA.
Howard Motors, DeSoto-Plymouth, New Orleans, LA.
McNeil-Stanley Inc., DeSoto-Plymouth, Los Angeles, CA.
Wagstaff Motor Co., DeSoto-Plymouth, Atlanta, GA.
George Byers Sons, Plymouth-DeSoto, Columbus, OH.
Nice, makes me wish I could get in the wayback machine and hit those used car lots .
-Nate
A spatz wearing salesman.
probably 2 tone shoes, not spats.
Harry Fox looks proud, with good reason. The ’55 DeSoto was Exner’s masterpiece. He should have quit while he was ahead!
I still love the 55 models, probably because my grandma drove one from around the time I was born until she traded it after the starter went out in 1967 when I was about 8 years old. A Firedome sedan, 2 tone pink and white!
Ditto. In college, I owned a ’55 DeS Sportsman hardtop for a bit more than a year. It also was pink & white. Mine was a Fireflite though. I think they called the color salmon or something like that. It was a great road car. Made a spring break trip with a group of guys from Wisconsin to Key West.
One little design annoyance was the radio speaker was on the far right passenger side of the dash. To hear it in the driver seat at highway speeds required blasting the front seat passenger.
Desotos had a fine fresh air ventilation system with 2 individually controlled outlets and a cowl vent. that could be raised. I’m not sure it actually worked better than anything else, but manipulating the controls helped alleviate boredom on long straight stretches of road through downstate Indiana.
Owning a DeSoto at that particular time of life coupled with a few travel adventures created some good DeSoto memories for me.
Almost makes me forget what a pain it was to check the brake fluid or rebuilt the stupid dual wheel cylinders!
So used to saying Chrysler Plymouth. Back then it was also Desoto Plymouth.
In Canada, DeSoto was dualed with Dodge from what I saw in these photos posted on Forwardlook.net.
http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=34008
“Mrs U S Savings Bonds”.. Wonder how long she dove that “DeSoto”?
I pride myself 😀 on my knowledge of California geography and the names of even obscure towns, so the location of Periat and Sons DeSoto Plymouth in Hillsdale caused me to think. Hillsdale is in fact a district within the city of San Mateo, best know locally for a huge shopping mall, which still exists. So technically the business was in San Mateo (an incorporated city since the late 19th century). I did find a nice photo from 1967, by which time it had become a Plymouth, Chrysler, Imperial and Dodge Trucks dealership … no Dodge cars. There’s a quite new looking six story financial building at that location now.
Ah, nice. I’ll update that info.
Here’s a list of Desoto dealerships.
The building still stands for the New Orleans Desoto dealership on 901 St Charles Ave, New Orleans as shown above.
https://desoto.org/dealers/
Thanks for the link, quite interesting how quite a few of them seemed to change hands very frequently since for some of the towns in my area there are several names listed, some at the same address and others sometimes just down the street. I did check a number of the addresses and quite a few of the existing buildings look like they were from the 50’s or earlier and certainly could have been car dealerships.
This building was once Ocean Motors DeSoto in Redondo Beach, CA.
Tell them “Groucho sent you”!!!
It’s DeLightful, It’s DeLovely, It’s DeSoto