Hey, would you look at that: A pillarless four-door sedan from DeSoto in 1933. While the Foursome never made it to production, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Not so long ago at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we explored the story of DeSoto for 1933, a year that saw a historic shift for the brand from just above Plymouth to just below Chrysler in the Chrysler corporation’s price and product ladder. (See our feature here.) Within that story was one special model that, while it was never approved for production, was worth a feature of its own: the Foursome, a pillarless four-door sedan. Now there’s something one didn’t see every day in 1933.

Up to that point, pillarless sedan body styles were seen infrequently in Europe and only rarely in the United States, mainly from custom coachbuilders. Background material on the Foursome is intriguingly sparse, and just what motivated the DeSoto division to pursue the pillarless design was never explained. However, it is recorded that Briggs Manufacturing, Chrysler’s body supplier, was working on pillarless construction at the time and filed a number of patents. However, no connection between Briggs and the Foursome project has ever been mentioned in any sources we’ve seen. All we have is reasonable speculation.

Pillarless construction presents a number of challenges, especially in car bodies of the ’30s. First, with no center post to support the structure,  the roof rails and rocker sills must be exceptionally rigid to hold the door latches fast and in correct alignment. The front and rear doors must be extra rigid as well, but also thin and light to keep the stresses to a minimum. But then there’s the benefit: The front doors can be hinged at the front and the rear doors at the rear, creating a spectacular wide-open door opening for total ease of entry and exit.  According to DeSoto, the door opening area was actually 12 inches wider than on the standard four-door sedan.

The front seats tipped forward (in the manner of a two-door coach) to make rear seat access even easier. Meanwhile, the Foursome’s cabin appointments were considerably finer than in the standard sedan, with full carpeting and premium Bedford Cord upholstery with contrasting leather trim. The seating configuration was devised to provide comfort for four passengers, hence the name Foursome. Body and interior aside, the Foursome was a regular DG series package in Custom trim, with Goodyear Air Wheel tires and wheels.

The Foursome’s exterior was styled in the European fashion, with a rakish roofline and a top covering of white Burbank canvas. “It’s Europe’s newest style note in America’s smartest low-priced car,”  DeSoto explained in a small brochure printed up for the Foursome. “It stared in France . . . it entranced Europe . . . now Desoto engineers bring it to America. We call it the Foursome . . . you’ll call it the most distinguished body style you’ve ever laid eyes on.”

As the story goes, the prototype Foursome (the only one, far as we know) was presented to a meeting of DeSoto dealers, who balked at the projected list price of $925. That was almost $200 more than a conventional sedan, and as they saw it, the European styling was a poor fit with their customer base. There, reportedly, is where the Foursome project ended.