Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge A Day at the Auction

Nope, this isn't about some long lost and never seen old Marx Brothers movie, it's about what I thought was the coolest car I saw yesterday while traipsing around the enormous Barrett-Jackson auction grounds down in Scottsdale Arizona.

Halfway through my time of walking past and admiring the hundreds and hundreds of very nicely restored Muscle Cars and Hot Rods, one after another, which after a while somehow actually became tedious, I spotted what I thought was the COOLEST friggin' car of 'em all....this 1957 DeSoto Adventurer convertible here.....



And while I've never been all that much into big ol' "Yank Tanks" like this, I have to say this baby kinda knocked my socks off!!!

(...and yeah, if you're wonderin', it also had its original 346 Hemi sittin' under its hood!)

That musta been a BLAST to be there!!! And yeah, I have to agree, that is a lovely chunk of Americana. I am however, trying to figure out which is bigger; the car, or the truck in the background.

Yep Keith, THAT'S pretty much a tossup there, alright!

Though, compared to the '59 Caddy convertible that was also there yesterday, this DeSoto could've almost been described as a "mid-size offering"!

(...now THAT BABY was HUGE!!!)

Wow. Very jet-age.

See any of these yesterday?



10 points for what it is

It has spokes and fins

jh

He|| Dwight, you just know I love my Yank Tanks.
Looks like it's from a Chrysler, maybe a 300 F, probably 1960 at a guess.

How many more points do I need for a free coffee machine?

I would feel compelled to dress as Batman when driving it!

However it does look a really nice car.

I'd say that bit looks like it's from a tardis or failing that a flux capacitor. Either way the badge kinda look like a peugeot badge.

My first car was a hand me down from my Dad. It was a 1952 De Soto Hardtop Coupe. It had the first hardtop without a mid pillar between the front and back. It came in robins egg blue with a dark blue top. It also had the famous Hemi engine.

It also had a two speed hydromatic transmission. There was a shift lever on the column and a clutch pedal. You would start out by engaging the clutch and putting the lever into low range. Disengage the clutch and you are off. Once you achieve about 15 mph you let off on the accelerator pedal and the transmission trips a solenoid and it goes into 2nd gear. Again acclerate and when you achieve about 35 MPH engage the clutch and shift the lever down into high range. You are now in 3rd gear. Again accelerate and once you hit about 50 mph you let up on the gas and it shifts into 4th gear. You are now in overdrive or 4th gear.

He had a gallon metal can of marvel mystery oil in the trunck with a small plastic tube feeding into the gas line. It was adjustible but automatically fed that wonderful stuff into the gas and kept the engine clean and maintained an excellent oil film on the rings and such and thereby gave excellent gas mileage and performance over a long period of time.

When he gave it to me in about 1962 it had over 250,000 miles on it. I put another 50K on it during the next few years and I eventually sold it to a young farmer upstate in NY. He modified it for stock car racing and it ran on the dirt tracks for another 3 years before he demolished it during a race. He won some money with it and it died a glorious death on the racetrack.

This thing was a tank. It weighed over 5,000 # before people and cargo. It drove like a Cadillac with power steering and brakes. However that big engine was thirsty. If I recall it gave about 18 MPG when I had it.

They have not made cars like that for many years. The metal in the doors and fenders was heavy duty. It had real bumpers that would prevent damage to the car.

I had installed a set of lake pipes on the exhaust that operated from the drivers seat with a wire that would open the pipes for more power when needed and could close them down and reroute the exhaust gases back thru the mufflers when the police were around.

The sound that this big thing would make with the pipes open was awesome. Something like about 4 HD's with open pipes at once on steroids. With the pipes open it would do over 130 MPH on the NYS Thruway. I have the ticket to prove it. It cost me over $250 for that one and it was worth every penny. The Trooper was awed by this car and his Ford Interceptor Crown Vict was smoking and coughing when he finally stopped me in Suffern NY. Mind you the car was loaded with cargo and the trunk and back seat were stuffed with hundreds of pounds of belongings.

It was truly a great car and I am sorry that I do not have any photos of it to remember it by.

Bad things were that the brake master cylinder was mounted on the frame under the drivers feet through a nasty little door that collected all the grit and sand and when you opened it you needed to get a vacuum to remove that stuff before you checked the level of brake fluid in the master cylinder. Second bad thing was that the brake lines were metal and had seams. We had a severe loss of brakes again and again and we could not find the problem. We repleaced all the wheel cylinders for the brakes and the master cylinder and the problem continued.

One day we again lost the brakes on a country road and before having the car towed to the garage I jacked it up and ran my hands over the brake lines. Lo and behold I found the open seam on top of a brake line under the frame of about 1/2" in length. It would open if you hit a bump in the road in a certain way and would allow the loss of a lot of brake fluid. Then it would close with another bump and you would not be able to find it. Once I found the problem we just replaced the faulty brake line and the problem was solved.

Other than brake linings, tires and oil changes and such that old De Soto cost us nada for over 15 years in repairs. Oh, I replaced the original shocks at 300,000 miles as the old ones were worn out completely.

I am still mad at Dad for selling the 1941 Buick Straight 8 sedan back in 1969 without giving me a chance to buy it. I would have and it would still be on the road today if I had.

Given a choice, I prefer late 40's to early/mid 50's.
Enough already, do I get the points?

Wow! Great story of your youth and an old Mopar there, Dan.

Sounds to me like you might be keeping pretty close tabs on Dave's restoration of that old Dodge of his, eh?!

I knew it wasn't a Renault badge Dwight.









Because it doesn't look anything like the imprint left on my butt from saturday!

So, how much did ya pay for it?

We also had a 59 Cadi hearse in the yard complete with a Jefferson Airplane sticker on the dash. It was very cool looking with tiled oval windows in the back just before the scroll.

yeah, I dig it!

Yup. Looks like Keith is right.

I'm positive Dwight... although you did cast a little doubt in my mind when you mentioned that Dyson vacuum cleaner.

Well, there ya go I suppose, Chris! It looks as if you've found concrete evidence that Keith and Ade were right after all!

Though NOW I'm ALSO thinkin' Robby the Robot from those '50s Sci-Fi flicks might've somehow had a hand in the design of this thing!!!

(...WARNING WILL ROBINSON!!!...WARNING WILL...oops, sorry, wrong robot!!!)

Nice looking interior on those cars.

True, Chris. However, I have to say that my favorite interior of all those late-50s/early-60s "Jet Age" cars would have to be those in the 61-63 Ford T-Birds.



(...of course, the fuzzy dice would be optional!)

Oooo, that IS nice Dwight... love the red interiors we'd see back then. Here's the dash of a 1960 Impala.

What an awesome interior. Look at all the pretty buttons. I wonder what they do. Ejector seat perhaps? Ray gun? Flux capacitor ignition?

My dad had an old one of these as a pickup when I was a kid.



Note suicide door behind driver's door allowing access to pickup bed. Bed was polished stainless, and had a polished stainless retractable cover. If memory serves, the coach builder was Fisher, as in "Body By Fisher." As near as the 'rules' would allow, it was indeed a Cadillac factory pickup.

To fuel up the vehicle, you would press in on one of the tail light reflectors, and the entire tail light assembly would flip up, allowing access to the filler cap and pipe.

A true definition of "They don't build them like they used to."

Still in my collection: a factory built Harley Davidson 3 wheeler. Most don't believe me and say "Harley never built a factory 3 wheeler, but I have the pics to prove it.

Really, Bill?! You're not goin' for that old Mid-Century Jet Age look of this DeSoto then, eh?! I'm findin' that kinda hard to believe. I mean, I could understand maybe not goin' for either GM's or Ford's offerings in 1958 through 1960, as THOSE got really "ornate", too chrome-laden and very very "heavy looking", but I think THIS car, along with most all of Chrysler's offerings of that era, is really pretty "cleanly" designed, even WITH those tail fins there.