1935 DeSoto Airflows, Coupe and Sedan

Nowadays I often find sets of car photos on the Internet with many images -- basically walkarounds.  And I'm happy to make use of them on this blog.   For example, here is a walkaround post featuring a 1936 DeSoto Airflow sedan.

Today's post features some images that I came across recently, photos of a 1935 DeSoto Airflow four-door sedan, and of a '35 DeSoto Airflow coupe.

For some reason, Chrysler and DeSoto Airflows interest me.  And for other reasons there are a lot of Internet images available of those cars.  Strange, in a way, because for many years Airflows were considered ugly, market-failures.  Yet many seem to have survived to be photographed.

DeSoto Airflows were shorter than the Chrysler versions, all having only a 115.5 inch (2934 mm) wheelbase.  1934 Chrysler Airflows, on the other hand, had wheelbases ranging from 118 inches (2997 mm) to 146 inches (3708 mm).  DeSoto Airflows all had short, stubby hoods, and therefore were generally less attractive than their Chrysler counterparts.

Airflows were not a market sucess in 1934, so for the 1935 model year the conventional Airstream design was added to the Chrysler and DeSoto lines.  I wrote about that here.

DeSoto's 1935 Airflow line consisted of a business coupe (70 built), a five-passenger coupe (418 built), a four-door sedan (6,269 built) and a four-window Town Sedan (40 made).  This post features images of a sedan and a coupe.  Also included are 1935 images of the Town Sedan -- only one seems to exist, and it has been hot-rodded enough to be useless for my purposes here.

Photos of the sedan below are of a car listed for sale.  Coupe photos are via Mecum Auctions.

Gallery

The 1935 DeSoto Airflow sedan.  Note how the windshield pivots open.

Coupes were necessarily racier-looking.

Sedan side view.  Compare to the coupe below having the same wheelbase.

Airflow coupes had wider doors than sedan front doors.  This was to improve access to the back seat.  That seemingly cramped back seat area permitted an advanced, for the time, "fastback" profile of the kind commonly found on early-1940s American cars.

This sedan lacks outside access to the trunk area behind the back seat.  Airflow sedans were not given conventional (for the 1930s) trunks until the 1936 model year.

On the other hand, all Airflow coupes had trunk lids.

A sales-card illustration of a 1935 DeSoto Airflow Town Sedan.  These had sedan bodies with the after side windows blanked over.

Advertisement photo of a 1935 DeSoto Airflow Town Sedan.