The last De Soto rolled off the assembly line 30 years before David Frank was born, but he’s one of the marque’s biggest fans. The 31-year-old engineer currently moonlights as the National DeSoto Club’s volunteer editor of DeSoto Adventures, and he’s not the only millennial or Gen Z’er who finds De Sotos to be “de-lightful” and “de-lovely,” as the company once advertised. The National DeSoto Club counts at least three people in their twenties and thirties on its list of national officers, trustees and volunteers — an uncommonly youthful car club staff in 2023.

For David, adventuring into the world of De Sotos was basically a matter of genetics.

“I kind of grew up in a family of them, so there wasn’t really escaping it,” he jokes. David considers himself a fourth-generation De Soto owner, his great-great uncle having bought a new 1941 De Soto and his great-grandfather having owned a 1949 De Soto Custom sedan followed by several more De Sotos. David’s grandfather bought several used De Sotos, some of which were his father’s cars. The De Soto gene then passed to David’s father, who, at age 14, bought a 1956 De Soto Fireflite Sportsman from his father, which he still owns to this day.

Even today, David’s grandfather and father still have De Sotos that they’ve owned for most of their lives, so it’s fair to say David grew up riding in cars with tailfins trailing behind and big, gleaming chrome bumpers leading the way. How could one not be impressed by the experience?

“I am just a middle-class guy and that was kind of a middle-class car,” he says of De Soto. “It wasn’t your basic entry-level Plymouth, but it wasn’t your top-of-the-line Imperial, and that kind of fits with who I am as a person, and it’s the kind of car I would have bought when they were new. I also think that Forward Look styling that they have is kind of fun.”

David was so affected by the De Soto experience that he bought his first De Soto at the age of 12 — a 1956 De Soto Fireflite Sportsman two-door hardtop purchased from his father (the same year and model that his father himself bought before becoming driving age). Unlike his father’s 1956 De Soto, David’s car is a project that he’s been slowly restoring over the last 20 years or so.

“[The restoration is] moving, but the guy who’s working on it is slow. It’s only supposed to get to the point that the paint, glass and the stainless around the windows are done, and I am going to finish it myself. I want to bring it home this year.”

In the time his first De Soto has been undergoing a body-off-frame restoration, David has found other cars to scratch his De Soto itch. He’s since bought several additional De Sotos, among other Chrysler Corp. marques, but these days you’re most likely to see him piloting his black 1959 De Soto Fireflite Sportsman two-door hardtop.

“Muscle cars are fun, but these cars are fun, too, in a different way,” David says. “To be honest, I have a 2006 Dodge Charger Daytona as my daily driver, but nine times out of ten, I will pick my De Soto to drive. And that Charger will out-handle the De Soto any day of the week.”

Getting in deeper with De Sotos

If owning several De Sotos wasn’t enough immersion in the De Soto hobby, David began volunteering for club duties, often because he simply saw a need to keep certain parts of the club afloat. Before becoming editor of DeSoto Adventures, the National DeSoto Club’s Old Cars Golden Quill Award-winning publication, David led the charge on hosting the club’s 2021 national convention. That volunteer job led to his role as the club’s editor, even though he had no formal training in the publishing field.

“Back in 2021, as we entered the year, we had two alternating editors,” David recalled. “One editor retired, leaving just one editor.” David said issues of DeSoto Adventures stopped appearing in members’ mailboxes during the transition.”

“We ended up with a six-month period without magazines,” he said. “That was the year I hosted the De Soto convention in Wisconsin, so at the time, it wasn’t ideal for me to [become editor]. After the convention was over and I had a chance to breathe, and by this time — four to five months down the road — it was pretty evident that a magazine wasn’t coming out.”

“I had been talking to Dan Lyman about what the position involved. I thought to myself that if I didn’t step forward, what are we going to do? You can’t advertise in a magazine that isn’t being printed, and it needs to be somebody that can deal with computers pretty well, because of the technology involved, and in a club, there’s a lot of retirees, and that’s a tall order.”

“I decided that it was a good fit for me to get the magazine back on track. I figured if it went on too much longer (without magazines), it would be bad for the club. So I kind of started working right after the convention.”

By the spring of 2022, David says he was caught up with delivering issues of DeSoto Adventures to fellow club members. To catch up, he had to learn publishing software and switch his engineer’s brain to that of an editor and designer.

“I had done a little writing here and there throughout college as part of scholarships, and I had one article that was published in an international magazine that I received a second-place award for, but beyond that, I had no formal training with editing or graphic arts,” he says.

Although he’s grown into the position as editor over the last couple years, David says there are still some challenges when it comes to editing a club’s publication.

“With regards to the biggest challenge as editor, part of it is the discussions with the printer for efficient configurations, and part is having to arrange each magazine based on the content for that issue, which has to be gathered from various members in a certain time frame, and then make it all fit into a package that flows well and looks appealing.”

Being a club editor of any age also requires some balance, David notes. Since taking over editing duties, he’s tried to add more technical articles to DeSoto Adventures, a diversity of content such as young De Soto owners and De Soto owners from around the world, and plenty of content to read when a copy of the full-color publication arrives in members’ mailboxes.

David spends much of his free time in his club volunteer role, and he says he regularly receives praise for his efforts from members. However, he knows he can’t please everyone all the time.

“I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who had the quote, ‘You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.’”

One more big question

Given his rare combination of youth and club involvement, we asked David for a perspective of the hobby from vintage car and truck enthusiasts of his generation.

“I think the idea of sitting in a hot parking lot under the sun to compete for a plastic trophy is not as appealing to them,” David says. “Their cars may not be perfect, either. Cars like my ’59 [De Soto], they are not trailer queens, and you have to endure the comments of, ‘When are you going to paint it?’ I think that a lot of people forget when they were younger they were driving around, cruising, getting ice cream and hanging out with their friends, and weren’t concerned with trophies or didn’t necessarily have the best paint job. They might have had five different colors on their Road Runner and a door from a different car, and I think that principle applies today.”

“There are younger people out there today still into these cars,” he adds. “Maybe not as many as we hope for, but more than people may see.”

“A challenge for me is to see how to get them involved in our club. I think the way to get them involved and heard and contributing to the club is to involve them. Then you might see younger people start to show up. More might show up at conventions, and it would snowball from there, hopefully.”

National DeSoto Club membership
104 Betsy Court
Greensburg, PA 15601
www.desoto.org
(Dues are $40/year, payable by check or money order)

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De Soto owner tells tale of his first national meet road trip

Only four years into his corner of the old car hobby, Mike Welsh was sold on attending an annual major meet of the National DeSoto Club, Inc. One reason he went was due to its proximity, only 220 miles from home. His tale is covered in the article, “My First Convention,” featured in DeSoto Adventures, Vol. 33, No. 5 (Dan Lyman, editor).

‘Welsh’s 1959 De Soto Fireflite “is a survivor car and a work-in-progress…now that the car runs and drives well, the latest project was to make the factory air conditioning function.” He did a step-by-step report on his work, which can be a godsend for others in a similar fix.

Mike and Judith experienced a full schedule with a couple high points per day as they headed to Branson in 2018.

The car garnered a second place it its class, which is commendable. The only downer on the drive was running over a “weed-eater” abandoned on the road. Fortunately, the car wasn’t damaged.

All this left a good feeling with Welsh. He realized his car could make the grade, performing well along the way. Had he been frightened by the thought of pressing the old car 220 miles there and back, he mayhave never left the garage. He also discovered 40 other De Sotos that were there, eight of which were from 1959.

Welsh almost certainly shared stories with other car owners during the meet. That by itself is a learning experience worth the time, cost and effort to attend a national meet.

“I made some new friends, went to the board meetings to see what went on, and we might go again,” he reported, uncertain if longer drives to either coast would be considered. But he did not discount them, either. What sticks with him is the range of De Sotos that appeared from 1929 to 1960. It all made him happily go into “De Soto Overload,” and he was glad he did.

National clubs often change locations for meets, thus allowing Welsh and others to attend when the destination isn’t too far away.

National DeSoto Club, Inc.
944 Fruitwood Dr.
Fruit Cove, FL 32259
DeSotoadventures@gmail.com
https://desoto.org

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