Line: DeSotoDespite being a successful mid-priced line for Chrysler for most of its life, DeSoto's failure is due to a combination of corporate mistakes and external factors that were beyond Chrysler's control.
First, the 1958 recession, which seriously affected demand for mid-priced automobile makes, hurt DeSoto sales, which failed to recover in 1959 and 1960. Because of development costs, the marque had generated enough in sales to support its dealer network and production costs. As DeSoto's numbers sank lower in 1959 and 1960, it was apparent to Chrysler that DeSoto, as a brand, lacked consumer backing for future development.
Chrysler's dealer network also had an effect on the termination of the DeSoto brand name. Following World War II, Chrysler had a large number of dealers that were dualed with two or more Chrysler makes, with Plymouth–DeSoto and Chrysler–Plymouth relationships being the most common. However, as Chrysler attempted to spin Plymouth off into stand-alone dealerships, existing dealers chose higher-volume Plymouth dealerships over the slower-selling DeSoto brand, leaving the marque with a weakened dealer network and fewer outlets to sell its cars.
But it was Chrysler's own in-house brand management, which pitted each of Chrysler's five marques against one other, that did the greatest damage to DeSoto and, ultimately, to the company itself in long-range product planning. Rather than carefully managing the market relationship to specific price points for all consumers, as General Motors had done so successfully until then, Chrysler allowed its own divisions to develop products targeting markets covered by their own sister divisions. Dodge was, by far, the most successful when it introduced the Dodge Dart, the advertisements for which compared the Dart's advantages to the "C" car, the "F" car, and the "P" car—Chevrolet, Ford, and Plymouth. While Dart sales soared in 1960, they did so at the expense of Dodge's sister division of Plymouth, which lost sales to the Dart.
When Chrysler marketing showed that consumers were likelier to buy an entry-level Chrysler than a DeSoto, Chrysler, seeing the opportunity, introduced the Chrysler Newport in 1960, as a 1961 model, selling more than 45,000 units in its first year alone.
While various collectors claim to own the last DeSoto sold to the public, DeSoto's Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) system was altered in its final days, showing that the "final" DeSoto could have been produced on any number of dates in the last half of November 1960.
