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From this link from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch comes this short column about the '58 DeSoto. Reasonably accurate although not correct when it comes to body styles in the Adventurer line.
http://www.stltoday.com/classifieds/tra ... fa682.html
DeSoto Fireflite Sportsman was at home anywhere it went
19 hours ago • By Bruce Kunz Contributing Writer
Check out this happy foursome. Dressed to the nines, these folks looked like they may have been headed to dinner at Lombardo’s or a night on the town at Gaslight Square.
The at-home-anywhere DeSoto Fireflite Sportsman was looking pretty dapper as well, all decked out in Spanish Gold and Pearl White — two of 20 colors on the DeSoto palette for 1958. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that was my aunt Dorothy and uncle Gene sitting in the front seat of this handsome ride.
Interiors were appropriately glitzy for the era featuring metallic Damask and vinyl upholstery in the Fireflite series. Door panels incorporated integrated armrests with aluminum-finish recess panels above them.
The Fireflite was the top-of-the-line, full body style series for 1958, offering two- and four-door "hardtops" (pillarless sedans) dubbed Sportsmans; a four-door sedan; a convertible and four-door, six- and nine-passenger Firesweep and Fireflite "Shopper" and "Explorer" wagons. Entry-level models carried the Firesweep badge and just above those were the Firedome models. Only the flagship Adventurer series topped the Fireflite, but it was offered in two- and four-door hardtop body styles only.
Parent Chrysler was always generous with power for their Mercury/Buick/Olds fighter. No wimpy six-bangers in the DeSoto lineup in the mid-50s. They left that up to the bread and butter Plymouth models. Standard fare in Fireflites for ‘58 was a 361 cubic inch (that’s 5.9 liters big for all you gen-xers and later in the audience), cast iron (weren’t they all back then?) V-8. And with a compression ratio of 10.0:1, it preferred high octane, premium fuel or Ethyl as we commonly called it. Two-speed PowerFlite and three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmissions were considered standard equipment in all DeSotos, however, a premium charge was applied on lower ranking Firesweep and Firedome models.
The Fireflite Sportsman you see here had a factory base price of $3,583 back in the day. With a generous list of available appearance, convenience and performance options, (not to mention delivery and dealer prep), buyers could easily bump the bottom line up to the 5K mark.
With fins that reached for the heavens and 86 two-tone color combinations to be had, whichever DeSoto model you chose in 1958, you could be sure to have a ride that would turn heads anywhere you wanted to go.
