Yeah, it’s a hemi. Seriously. My Grandparents loved their ’57 Desoto Firesweep wagon, and drove it all over the midwest and the rockies. It had a push-button transmission, and was 19 feet long. My Dad had one just like it without the hemi, and green and white rather than blue and white. Here it is loaded up for one of their Yellowstone National Park camping trips. I love the silver dust “deflectors” he had installed on the rear roof pillars to help blow the dust off the rear window as they’d cruise the backroads.
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Allee Willis
My DeSoto Fireflyte is 1955 and before the pushbutton transmission. This model was the very first year for that. I would kill to own this car. Station wagons in those days were almost houses in and of themselves. Two tone was mandatory. In the model I had, three tone was mandatory, in my case black, white, and aquamarine.
How many trips did you go on in this car?
Mark Milligan
In this car, since it was my grandparent’s, no long trips, unless we were going on the same trip, which we did in this case, and we took our own Desoto to Yellowstone as well. I might’ve taken part of the trip with Grandma and Grandpa, I just don’t remember because I was about 3 when we did it.
I began to smile though when I read the question, because the last time I was actually in that blue and white Desoto was when I was 15, still didn’t have my license, and was driving it (alone) down a deserted but paved back road in Nebraska about 90 mph. Everybody left their keys in their cars, and Grandma had driven out to visit my other family members at the farm and I decided to “blow the cobs out of it.” Oh my God that thing could fly down the highway with that hemi. I’m sure Gramps was spinning in his grave that day.
In our green and white Desoto wagon just like this one, we did Yellowstone 2x at least, Mount Rushmore, Tucson, Astoria, Oregon, and the Colorado Rockies countless times, we lived only about 4 hours from Denver, and Dad got the itch to see the mountains and camp a lot, so off we’d all go. Bliss.
windupkitty
oh my god..leaning on the jealous button now……….of course, like most things, this reminds me of one of my childhood cats…she was a troublemaker and my Father called her Hemi, which was short for hemorrhoid, but which he and I insisted to my mother meant hemispherical combustion chamber….i’m pretty sure she was on to us, but we thought we were funny…..what a gorgeous car…i’m so jealous on so many levels, especially about letting her cut loose on a back road in Nebraska…heaven.