Park a 1957 DeSoto Adventurer in a carport and it looks as if it is already moving. The fins begin at the doors and rise all the way back. The taillights are stacked three high. It came in white, black and gold, and nothing else.

Under the hood was a Hemi V8 that made 345 horsepower from 345 cubic inches. It was the best thing DeSoto ever built, and within four years DeSoto was gone.

A mid-priced car with a problem

Walter Chrysler founded DeSoto on August 4, 1928, to give his company a car in the middle of the market, and it sold more than 81,000 in its first year. By the mid-1950s it was wearing the Forward Look, the long, low, finned styling that Virgil Exner brought to the Chrysler divisions. In 1956 a DeSoto paced the Indianapolis 500 and the division sold in record numbers.

What it lacked was a reason to choose it over a Dodge or a Chrysler. For a while, the Adventurer gave it one.

1956: the first one

The first Adventurer appeared on February 18, 1956, as a limited edition based on the Fireflite two-door hardtop. It had a tuned Hemi of 341 cubic inches with two four-barrel carburetors, rated at 320 horsepower. It came in white, black and gold, with gold wheel covers and gold flecks in the carpet.

It cost $3,728, a premium of $382 over the Fireflite. DeSoto built 996, and they are reported to have sold out in weeks. A prototype ran 137 miles an hour at Daytona Beach, and the car reached 144 at Chrysler's proving grounds in Chelsea, Michigan. Its stablemates that year were the Chrysler 300B, the Plymouth Fury and the Dodge D-500: every division had a fast car.

1957: the one to have

For 1957 the Chrysler divisions got new bodies, lower and longer, with taller fins. The Adventurer hardtop arrived in December 1956 and the convertible followed in February.

The engine grew to 345 cubic inches. With two Carter four-barrel carburetors it made 345 horsepower at 5,200 rpm, and the car is widely described as the first American model to offer one horsepower per cubic inch as standard equipment. The transmission was the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic, worked by push buttons. The front suspension used torsion bars, new that year across the company.

It rode on a 126-inch wheelbase and was more than 18 feet long. Dual exhausts, power brakes and a padded dashboard were standard. The convertible listed at $4,272. DeSoto built 1,650 hardtops and 300 convertibles, in a year when the division turned out more than 117,000 cars.

Why it was the last great idea

The 1957 cars had problems. One recent account notes that early examples leaked and rattled, and that torsion bars sometimes snapped while the car was parked.

Then the economy turned. In the recession of 1958 DeSoto's sales fell 60 percent, its worst year since 1938. The Adventurer lost its Hemi that year for a 361-cubic-inch wedge-head engine. A fuel injection system from Bendix was offered, proved troublesome, and found few buyers. Only 432 Adventurers were built: 350 hardtops and 82 convertibles.

The 1959 car had a 383 with 350 horsepower and seats that swiveled out to meet you, and 687 were made. In 1960 the name was moved onto a full line that included sedans, in a variety of colors. That sold 11,597 cars, the most ever, and ended the Adventurer as something special.

On November 18, 1960, 47 days after the 1961 models went on sale, Chrysler announced that DeSoto was finished. The last car came off the line on November 30. The usual explanation is that DeSoto was squeezed by its own family: Dodge, Plymouth and the cheaper Chryslers were all selling in the same part of the market.

What one costs now

The convertible is the prize, and with 300 built it is scarce. Sports Car Market has observed that only one or two come up for sale in a year. It reported one sold at RM Sotheby's in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in October 2017 for $126,500, which the magazine considered a bargain against a median of about $181,500.

The auction tracker Conceptcarz, working from 35 recorded sales of 1957 Adventurers, puts the median for a convertible at $178,500 and for a hardtop at $69,500. Its highest recorded sale is $341,000, in 2010. Its most recent, at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale in January 2024, was $47,300. The hardtop is the way in.

Before you buy

Make sure it is one. The Adventurer was built on the Fireflite. Have the numbers checked by someone who knows the cars, and confirm that you are looking at a genuine Adventurer.

Look for water. A body that leaked when new has had nearly seventy years to rust. Check the floors, the trunk and the bottoms of the doors and fenders.

Count the gold. The gold wheel covers and trim were particular to this model, and fewer than 2,000 cars were built. Expect missing pieces to be hard to replace.

Join the club first. The National DeSoto Club, founded in 1986, has about 1,000 members and 1,400 registered cars. It provides technical advisors for each model year, a directory of salvage yards and a magazine, DeSoto Adventures, six times a year. Dues are $40 a year.

Why it belongs in the carport

The houses we write about and this car come from the same few years and the same confidence. Both are long and low, and both assumed that next year would be better than this one. For DeSoto it was not. The car, at least, still looks as if it might be.