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I recently subscribed to the subject magazine through a work colleague selling magazines on behalf of his child. Today, my first issue arrived (January 2011) with a good omen...there is a '56 DeSoto on the cover. The story revolves around a comparison of a '56 Fireflite hardtop to a '57 Chevy Bel-Air hardtop. The main topic compares the DeSoto Hemi to the Chevy's fuel injected engine. Not sure why they didn't compare two '57 models, but regardless, what's to compare???
Mark
Apples to kuquats... My impression was they wanted to compare the 57 fuelie to something.... I guess the DeSoto was available. A more realistic comparison would have been a 57 Dodge CRL D-500. From what I've read, that car would have ate up the fuelie.
What I was wondering about was, since the Desoto has the larger engine with higher torque why so much slower/
From the article, the 57 Chevy had a 22% greater power to weight ratio than the 56 DeSoto perhaps accounting for the faster times. It appears from the article that the Rochester fuel injection system on the 57 Chevy was pretty unreliable as was the Bendix f.i. system offered by Chrysler Corp. in 1958. Chrysler offered to retrofit all 1958 f.i. cars produced to carbureted systems. The only known 1958 f.i. Chrysler product in existence is a 58 Desoto convertible.
The article also referenced the torsion bar suspension on the 56 DeSoto. The torsion bar suspension was introduced on the 1957 models. Mac
I saw the mention in the article about the torsion suspension, and then noticed in the "specs" table that they had it right there....
Doesn't anybody proofread these days?
(better go back and re-read my own text now....)
It's supposed to be fun!
1949 De Soto Custom Convertible (project)
