01
Origins
The Fireflite arrived for 1955 as DeSoto's new flagship, wearing Virgil Exner's Forward Look at its most confident — a long, low, chrome-edged body that made the previous year's cars look pre-war. Power came from the marque's hemi-head V8, and in 1956 the limited Fireflite-based Adventurer added genuine performance credentials. A Fireflite convertible paced the 1956 Indianapolis 500, the kind of honour that marks a brand at its peak. The peak was brief. The 1958 recession gutted the mid-priced field, Chrysler's own Newport undercut DeSoto from below while Chrysler models pressed from above, and quality problems with the 1957 bodies stained the reputation. The Fireflite lasted until 1960, DeSoto until 1961. It remains the best answer to what DeSoto looked like when everything, briefly, went right.
1959 DeSoto Fireflite · Stephen J. Brown from Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
