Collection Classics: The Concours Conquistador

Ezra Dyer

02/01/2008

These days we take for granted that concept cars are the exclusive property of their manufacturers, cherished icons destined for corporate museums from which no amount of money can pry them. Take, for instance, the Range Stormer concept replica (The Robb Report Collection, October 2007). West Coast Customs built the copy for a Middle Eastern royal, because even cash-strapped Ford wasn’t about to sell the original to a private owner. It wasn’t always that way, though, and Chuck Swimmer can directly attribute his ownership of the world’s only 1954 DeSoto Adventurer II Ghia to the impetuous whims of the car’s first buyer, King Mohammed V of Morocco.

The Adventurer II was commissioned by Chrysler and designed by Ghia for the European car show circuit. With Chrysler Hemi V-8 power and Italian coachwork, the DeSoto concept is a spiritual predecessor to cars like the De Tomaso Pantera and Studebaker Avanti (we’ll forgive it any association, however tangential, with the Chrysler TC by Maserati). Its flowing, rakish shape is pure 1950s exuberance, and its semi-hooded wheel arches, connected by a line that runs unbroken along the length of the car, recall a certain dominating racer of the era—the Mercedes-Benz 300SL.

But the Adventurer wasn’t designed as a sports car so much as a grand tourer. For example, while it lacks flashy ’50s show-car accoutrements like in-dash Geiger counters and automatic Communism detectors, the De Soto does have a black-and-red two-tone leather interior, matching luggage, and a power rear window, à la the modern BMW 6-Series convertible. While the contemporary Bimmer’s window is a stubby piece of glass meant to preserve precious trunk volume, the DeSoto’s retractable backlight is made possible only by the graceful—and lengthy—taper of the tail, where the glass hides when lowered. If the power window hurt trunk space, though, that didn’t much bother the king of Morocco.

The Adventurer made the rounds at the European car shows, including Turin; but its public appearances ended in 1956, when King Mohammed decided he had to have it. He bought the Adventurer from Chrysler, and thus began the concept car’s life as a privately owned trophy. These days, you don’t hear of monarchs buying concept cars off the car show circuit but, as Swimmer says, "I think the king of Morocco does what he wants."

One reason His Highness was taken with the car is that it is a fully functional driver, not a hollow styling exercise. The Adventurer’s lack of bumpers is one of the only indicators that it wasn’t designed with series production in mind, along with the fact that there’s a Chrysler Hemi under the hood. Once it drove off the DeSoto stand and into the real world, the Adventurer went on to rack up 14,135 miles on its odometer, which is about 14,135 more than most show cars ever see.

Most of those miles were accrued before Swimmer bought the car six or seven years ago. The king only owned the car for about a year, and its second owner, an American diplomat, brought the car to the U.S. It spent time in Florida and eventually became part of the Blackhawk Museum, by which time it was a well-regarded show car rather than a weekend driver. "I don’t like to talk about value, but at this point this car is too valuable to risk driving it on the street," Swimmer says. Indeed, you’re probably not going to find DeSoto Adventurer Ghia parts at your local Maaco if you get in a fender-bender. Swimmer figures he’s driven the car about 100 miles, but that’s been in controlled environments, like the private roads at Pebble Beach.

The Adventurer, which Swimmer describes as a 98-point concours car, notched a third place at Pebble Beach, and a string of firsts at various other car shows. Many of the cars in Swimmer’s San Diego Collection are for sale—a 1959 Fiat Abarth Zagato can be yours for $125,000, for instance—but he plans to hold onto the DeSoto. "It wins wherever it goes," says Swimmer. "I have long-term plans for this car."

Unfortunately, by the time the Adventurer’s shapely bodywork was hammered out by Ghia’s craftsmen, Chrysler didn’t have anything resembling long-term plans for DeSoto. In a harbinger of what was to come for Plymouth four decades later, Chrysler never really figured out where DeSoto fit into its brand portfolio, and the Adventurer II epitomizes the confusion over the DeSoto brand. Was DeSoto supposed to be a mainstream counterpart to Dodge, or something more stylish and exclusive? After 1961, Chrysler quit trying to answer that question and closed the doors at DeSoto for good. And so the 1954 Adventurer Ghia concept remains a beautiful one-of-a-kind, a fusion of American muscle and Italian style that imagines a glamorous alternative path for DeSoto, a future dreamed of but ultimately unrealized.