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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n“I tried to haggle a little, and the seller said he could lower the price by 25,000 SEK. But then I wouldn\u2019t get the newly rebuilt 440 V8 engine or the newly refurbished transmission\u2026” Hellberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, Kent paid the full price – for a car in parts. The seller had been working on the car from 1989 to 2006 but never finished. The first sale ad appeared in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I remember the seller had written that there was ‘one week of wrenching left to finish the last bits: bleeding the brakes, some paint, and interior work.’ It wasn\u2019t quite that simple. I bought the car in 2016, and it took about a year to complete the build,” Hellberg laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He particularly remembers the trip to go see the DeSoto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was in August 2016. My wife and daughter were with me, and I could practically see my wife thinking, ‘I hope he doesn\u2019t buy it.’ She didn\u2019t even get out of the car at first and recommended a brain scan after the purchase was finalized. If they are happy today, a couple of years later? Sure, they think the car is stylish, although they\u2019d prefer to ride in a convertible. Oh, and that black roof, my wife still doesn’t like it,” Hellbergs says with a big smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Hellberg fell for, despite his genuine disinterest in finned cars, was the style. The gigantic rear tires, the widened wheel arches and the relocated frame rails. The foundation for something cool was there, and Hellberg could finish the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “There\u2019s probably nothing I haven\u2019t tinkered with, except for the engine and rear axle. I had to refurbish the transmission one more time and install a hydraulic brake booster, the only thing that fit. I rerouted the exhaust pipes, rewired the electrical system, and modified the fuel tank with a filler neck and the gas cap in the right taillight, a tank that the previous owner had placed in the trunk. I also installed a heater core and painted the car, among other things,” Hellberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the work was done, Hellberg sent a cellular phone text message with photos to the previous owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I wrote that he probably didn\u2019t want to see how the car turned out, but I wanted to show him anyway. I never got a response,” Hellberg chuckles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What about the engine and drivetrain? The only part, apart from the transmission, Hellberg hasn\u2019t touched. Does it match those massive rear wheels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n “There\u2019s a 440 cui engine in the DeSoto, built by ‘The Baron’ in the Swedish village Bettna in the 1990s. I\u2019d estimate it delivers about 500 horsepower. Not astronomical numbers today, but it was a fair amount back then when Lennart (The Baron) put together the V8. It\u2019s got a forged crankshaft and dual Edelbrock carburetors, 600 cfm each, on top. With the right gearing and those massive tires, something exciting could happen. Today, it pulls well if you push it at 80 km\/h, but it\u2019s not as impressive from a standstill,” Hellberg notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the drivetrain consists of a 727 transmission and an 8 3\/4-inch rear axle with 3.23:1 gearing and a limited-slip differential. A pretty classic Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> combination, in other words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Present at the photo shoot is Hellberg\u2019s father, Ivar. It\u2019s hard to miss that the two seem to have a great father-son relationship, and they look quite alike, even if neither one would ever admit it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivar talks about his own car passion, which is quite broad. Currently, he\u2019s in love with a super-green 1978 Lincoln Continental, a love affair not shared by his son. How that\u2019s possible is beyond me. Who wouldn\u2019t be fond of a six-meter-long car with opera windows and an eight-liter V8 producing a whopping 200 horsepower? So impractical, it\u2019s charming.<\/p>\n\n\n “Ivar has always been there to support me. If there was something I couldn\u2019t manage when I was young, Dad was there. Now it\u2019s the other way around. By the way, we\u2019re traveling to the U.S. soon. ‘It\u2019s now or never,’ Ivar says. We\u2019re going to the Daytona Turkey Run, and the idea was actually his,” Kent explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cars, by the way, seem to run in the family. Both Kent\u2019s daughter and son are now more or less vehicle enthusiasts.<\/p>\n\n\n “My son bought himself a \u201967 Pontiac Firebird a while ago,” Kent says with pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s shaping up nicely, with the third generation of Hellbergs set to start wearing down the asphalt. Who knows, maybe they\u2019ll soon be as fond of finned cars as their dad. Or start digging Titanic-sized Lincolns from the late 1970s like Grandpa\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n “I would never have bought a DeSoto in its original form. Never.” Kent Hellberg’s own words\u2026 However, he made an exception after seeing this DeSoto in a used car sales ad for the twentieth time. It’s easy to understand why. There are finned cars\u2026 and then there are fine cars! Ten years. That\u2019s how long the DeSoto was for sale before Kent Hellberg finally pulled the trigger. No, the car wasn\u2019t constantly advertised for a decade, but on and off, here and there, from 2007 to 2016. “I tried to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":82717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2624],"tags":[2948,3012],"class_list":["post-82694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-owners-clubs","tag-dodge-classics","tag-dodge-europe"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/1958DeSoto_Feature.jpg","social_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/1958DeSoto_Social.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82694"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82753,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82694\/revisions\/82753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/1958DeSoto_IMG003.jpg\")
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