Diverting back to DeSoto, here are a couple of commercials. I particularly remember the first one.
Three years and they used the same jingle? No wonder Chrysler stopped producing the car! 
They certainly went all out on that last commercial with Groucho. It’s more than three and a half minutes. We’re they cut ally in cars when they did that driving sequence with the moving background?
Anyway, fun to see what I missed because I was too you to pay attention to car ads in the 50s. The only car besides ours I remember from that era was my first grade teacher’s Buick with the continental kit.
The photo in post 9 above looks similar to the car the Counting Cars folks restored for the Pawn Shop granddad, Chrysler Imperial I think they said. Being in Las Vegas, they added A/C to the otherwise mostly oem package.
They changed the lyric slightly from year to year, but the reason for their choice of that tune was that it was originally a very famous/popular song by Cole Porter.
1 Like
Didn’t Chevy use the See The USA in Your Chevrolet song much longer than 3 years?
It sure seemed like an eternity every time that I had to hear Dinah Shore singing it.
1 Like
I recall hearing that song about every two hours when watching TV. Also “Ford Trucks Are Built Ford Tough!” … and “Rice a Roni, the San Francisco Treat!”
Now … it’s a lady advertising about how to disguise odors from armpits & … omg!! … even more smelly places … lol.
I’d be happy to go back to the other three …
3 Likes
Yeah for years. Dinah shore show. Don’t remember what years the cars were but kinda think one was a 62. All convertibles and white.
We kind of like that commercial, we call it our “Butt Crack” time out (well actually, as she says, “Just kidding…”), butt, it’s a great time to make pit stops, get more snacks, and refill the coffee cups, (“butt,” get it?) L 
L…
1 Like
My favorite of all the cars I owned was my 56 Desoto and I just saw a pristine example Wed. at the Canalfest of the Tonawandas.
3 Likes
Back in the days when you could convince people that something churned-out on a high-speed assembly line was “Custom Built”…
Hopefully most consumers nowadays are more discriminating than many consumers were back in The Good Old Days.
1 Like
Noticed the above Windsor model had a PowerFlite transmission, was TorqueFlite available on higher trim levels, or was that not until 57?
1 Like
TorqueFlite was introduced late in the '56 model year, essentially as a running change for Chryslers and DeSotos. IIRC, Plymouth and Dodge continued to use the old 2-speed PowerFlite for a few more years.
1 Like
My first car was a 1954 Dodge Meadowbrook, 2-door, Club Coupé. I bought it from my neighbor, who bought it new with almost every available option (and it came with all its original paperwork, sales slips, window stickers, etc…). The special option was the “Red Ram” Hemi V8 engine (not the huge hemi, but a “baby hemi,” 241 cu in, rated at 140 HP. It came with a three-speed, column shifter, with a Hydrostatic clutch (Fluid Clutch…) that worked like a torque-converter. You could let the clutch out in any gear and it acted just like an automatic with just one-gear. But to shift to any other gear, you had to use the clutch. Other options were the AM radio (with 7-buttons…), a heater, a defroster (both the heater and the defroster had different cores, and blower motors to push air through the heater or the defroster). It even had an air conditioner installed in the trunk, the compressor was powered by an electric motor and it ran vents under the seats and alongside the drive-train hump to cool the front. I miss that car…
I actually bought this car in 1965, a year before I could get my driver’s license. It belonged to my neighbor and he was selling it because it never started in the winter (we lived in Upstate New York) especially when it got to 20 degrees below… He wanted $100 for it (minimum wage was about $1.10 an hour, cigarettes cost about 25 cents and gas seldom hit 30 cents a gallon…). I only had $50 or so and he let me have it, with the balance due before I turned 16. It was about a month before I turned 16 when I paid it off. The next day he came over to the house with an old oil can. It had been cleaned out and it was stuffed with one-dollar bills (100 of them…). He told me that when he found out I wanted the car; he decided to give it to me. I asked why he made me pay for it then and he said it was to ensure I appreciated it, especially when I had to work so hard to earn the money. He also told me that he accepted the payments so I would learn that when you have an obligation, you meet that obligation…
I got my driver’s license one week after turning 16-years old. I passed the learner’s permit test the day I turned 16, but had to wait a whole week to schedule the driving test, it was perhaps the longest week on my young life…
I drove that wonderful beast for about 2-years before I “upgraded” to a '56 Chevy Belair, but that’s another story. I ultimately “sold” it to my neighbor’s nephew who made payments to me the same way I had; and I paid it forward with the same oil can when I returned the purchase price to him…
By the way, I never had any problem starting that Red Ram on the coldest winter day; after I changed the oil, I used 10w30. I found out a couple of years after I bought it that the mechanic at the local garage that my neighbor took the car to for all his service used straight 30-weight oil in the Dodge, since my neighbor would called him out when he needed a jump and it was one of the mechanic’s ways to pump up his business by “cheating” his customers…
Thank you for letting me trip down memory lane. Below are images are the 1st and last page from the original sales brochure that I still have…
Notice all the “standard equipment…” listed on the last page, nowhere does it list a radio, a heater, a defroster, or directionals; all of which were on the original sales receipt as Optional Equipment…
1 Like
Absolutely correct. Powerflight coexisted with Torqueflight until 1960 or 1961. Typically Torqueflight listed for about $60.00 more.
Our family had a Chrysler Windsor. Not sure of the exact model year, 1950’s. I seem to recall it had a little taller fins than the photo. I remember a similar glove box & radio speaker configuration, the steering wheel, and the push buttons for the transmission. I don’t recall that little box right below the radio though.
1 Like
That was for an optional record player (made by RCA, IIRC). They only played a record for a couple of minutes, and they didn’t work very well when one was driving on anything other than a velvet-smooth road, but I’m pretty sure that our resident Luddites would consider that fairly primitive technology to be superior to today’s long-playing digital media, which isn’t disturbed by road irregularities.
2 Likes
That is my Holy Grail car. Very few were sold. It was actually introduced towards the end of the 63 model year. I think I’d be willing to pay crazy money for one in excellent condition. It fascinates me that the list of formerly “optional” equipment that Chrysler was now making standard is now pretty much standard on almost any car in any price class.