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...Cars & Races |
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RitzSite is about cars and car racing from an enthusiast's angle. It's non-commercial and has no fancy stuff, but it does have lots and lots of original pictures with commentaries. So, if you like cars and pictures, bookmark this page! This site is best enjoyed with a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 and 24-bit (true) color. The pages are tested with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, so that will be the best compatible browsers. And you'll need a fast data connection because this site is brimful of pictures! | |
Car of the Month - January 2010 |
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DeSoto - hardtop coupe body - model year 1961 The economic recession in 2009 has had a profound effect on the once mighty car industry of the United States. Giant General Motors just barely survived thanks to a huge cash infusion by the US government and is planning to shed a few of its well established car makes, Ford had to sell many of its assets and Chrysler was acquired by Fiat of Italy. Much of this would have made no sense if you'd predicted it about ten years ago but now it just happened within a year. No doubt this shock will cause the American car manufacturers to bring their products more in line with that of the competition in Europe and Asia and to loose some more of the colorful characteristics that made them American. The Chrysler company was comparatively a latecomer in the car industry, only founded in 1924, but quite successful in the range of middle-class cars. To expand their market Chrysler devised a strategy of dividing their range over separate makes that would compete directly with the opposition. And so in 1928 Plymouth was introduced as contender in the lower price segment dominated by Ford and Chevrolet, and DeSoto (named after the Spanish explorer who discovered the Mississippi river) for the mid range option while Chrysler itself moved up the price range, making it the luxury make of the pack. Things got complicated however when Chrysler also bought Dodge in 1928 which already offered cars in the range intended for DeSoto. The DeSoto models were initially priced a bit lower that the Dodges and at first enjoyed good sales despite the in-house competition. But then the great depression of the early 1930s hit and sales declined. To turn things around the DeSoto policy was revised; from 1933 DeSoto offered cars which slotted in between the Chrysler and the Dodge models. Combined with the introduction of the unpopular Airflow models this first spelled disaster; sales were disappointing while the conventional Dodges sold better and better. So why was that premature and traumatic? First, Chrysler soon noticed that the gap filled by DeSoto before wasn't effectively occupied by Dodge. In 1962 a new Dodge model appeared, the Custom 880, which was more or less a restyled 1961 DeSoto, to mend that. Obviously this proved that with a different strategy DeSoto had been able to survive like before. But, perhaps more importantly, the striking models from the Forward Look area had made a deep impression and in the 1960s Chrysler struggled to offer anything that equalled the excitement those cars had offered. The defunct DeSoto name became synonymous with those golden days gone by and as such its cars became cherished objects of nostalgia. © André Ritzinger, Amsterdam, Holland |
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