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Topic starter
21/08/2021 9:48 pm
Yat Ming did several colors of the final '61 2-door DeSoto.
22/08/2021 10:58 am
Nice pictures Mike. Who did the convertible conversion?
22/08/2021 11:10 am
Mike, you perform such amazing magic with your pictures...
22/08/2021 3:37 pm
Rumor has it that those front fenders with their canted headlights were from unbuilt 1960 Lincolns. 
22/08/2021 5:20 pm
Love the mood of these images. Nice car too. Thanks Mike.
Topic starter
22/08/2021 7:39 pm
Nice pictures Mike. Who did the convertible conversion?
Lol, that would be me, Bob ! It is the windshield of a Yat Ming 1960 Chrysler 300 convertible mated to the a '61 DeSoto coupe after the top/windshield assembly was removed. I had a spare boot laying around to use, too.
Mike, you perform such amazing magic with your pictures...
Thanks, Galen !
Rumor has it that those front fenders with their canted headlights were from unbuilt 1960 Lincolns.
LOL !
Love the mood of these images. Nice car too. Thanks Mike.
Glad you enjoyed this one, David. The last of the DeSotos, sadly.
23/08/2021 10:45 am
Those are some very moody pictures, Mike. Well done. As to my reaction to the 1:1 back in the day, I thought the front grill treatment was hideous and needlessly busy compared to the more pure lines of the rest of the car. It just seemed that DeSoto was just trying to enrich the look of the car to justify its pricepoint over Plymouth and Dodge. It was a war they were losing anyway.
24/08/2021 2:56 pm
I'll chime in with agreeing the photos and the conversion to the convertible is great. I would love to have a '61 DeSoto in my collection, only because it was the last one to carry the name. The car itself is not attractive from a styling perspective, but being the last of the litter, I'd like one.
George Schire
Oakdale, Minnesota
24/08/2021 4:07 pm
Great models. By 1961, the DeSoto had pretty much lost it's unique deloveliness. 🙁
Topic starter
24/08/2021 5:43 pm
I think after the late 1958 - 1959 full-size S-Series Chrysler Corp cars from Virgil Exner (intended for 1962) were suddenly scrapped by mid-1960 or so, it had already been decided to drop DeSoto. It's possible they used a bit of the S-Series DeSoto headlight/grille ideas for a quick and inexpensive change in order to differentiate from Chrysler and to say they had been working on new styling for DeSoto even before the S-Series was due to come out. The picture comparison shows how maybe hints of the grille texture and even some of the "dual grill" idea (as well as the canted headlights) were maybe still a faint influence on the final DeSoto front re-style.
I always thought Exner's original S Chrysler Corp cars would have been really cool, and the downsized Dodges and Plymouths were sales disasters, yet I still find the shrunken versions interesting and pretty neat in their own way. I sort of feel that way about the last DeSoto, too. It's very interesting and intriguing in it's own way.
