Collection Classics: The Concours Conquistador
February 1, 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.
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