Chrome, Sweet Chrome: The 1958 Classic That Won Her Heart
Christina Park fixed up her DeSoto Firesweep Sportsman after finding it at an estate sale
3 min
Christina Park, 24, a genetic counselling assistant at a children’s hospital who lives in Columbus, Ohio, on her 1958 DeSoto Firesweep Sportsman, as told to A.J. Baime.
My father started his company dealing in classic car parts when he was about 15, so since I was born, I have been around it. He was always rotating cars, new ones coming all the time. When I was 11 or 12, a DeSoto showed up on a trailer. I was just getting to the age where I was noticing cars, and what I liked and didn’t like. I liked fins, chrome and pretty colours. This DeSoto was all of that. I fell in love with it instantly, and, ever since, DeSotos have been close to my heart.
Most people, even up to my parents’ age, don’t know what DeSoto is, since DeSoto ended production in model year 1961. DeSoto was its own make of cars under the Chrysler umbrella, just like Dodge and Plymouth.
One weekend in 2016, my dad asked me if I wanted to go to an estate sale, which was a pretty common thing. When we got there, we found this DeSoto Firesweep Sportsman in the back of a garage, and it was for sale. Not too many people were there, and it was clear that no one had tried to start this car in many years. The colours were beautiful, and the car was similar to the DeSoto I had fallen in love with years earlier.
The Firesweep ended up coming home with us. I was 16, and, from the start, my dad said he would teach me what I needed to know to get it running and take care of it myself. But also, that it would be my car to do with what I wanted. When we started working on it, we were not sure how it was going to go. It needed a lot of TLC. We went through the usual mechanics. When we took off all the original belts and hoses, they cracked in our hands like pretzels. We put new tires on and polished the chrome. A year after we brought it home, it started right up.
It wasn’t my daily driver, but I started driving the DeSoto and, occasionally, taking it to school. Even people who were not car fans thought it was cool because of the paint and the chrome, and how different the styling was from anything you saw at the time. People were a little astonished by it.
Now, I have three DeSotos, but two of them are project cars that are not roadworthy. The Firesweep Sportsman gets stored through the Midwestern winters. But this time of year, I begin getting it ready for summer. I drive it to car shows and anywhere I can. Last summer, I put 1,600 miles on it. It is almost always the only DeSoto at a car show, so getting to show it off and talk about the brand is very rewarding.
I joined the National DeSoto Club even before I owned a DeSoto, and for the past two years, I have taken my car to the national conventions. It is a great community. A lot of the members are older, but there are younger people, and it’s so great to hang out with people who share this passion. The community is also very helpful if you have to find a rare part or need help doing something mechanically.
At the first national convention I went to, in 2022, I met the club’s magazine editor, David Frank. We started meeting up at other car events, and now we are two years into our relationship. He has a 1959 DeSoto Fireflite and, while he lives in Wisconsin and I live in Ohio, twice we have had our cars together. I guess I have gotten more than I ever could have expected out of my love for DeSoto.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
ABC Bullion has launched a pioneering investment product that allows Australians to draw regular cashflow from their precious metal holdings.
Two coming 2027 models – the first of the “Neue Klasse” cars coming to the U.S. early next year – have been revealed.
