(first posted 11/12/2014) Have you ever had an amazing dream? A dream that was equal parts awesomeness, fulfillment and a sensation that what you have done was the best thing ever done? Did you find out later that said dream was actually quite dumb? This “Small” Chrysler represented that for me. And I have no idea why.
Really. Every time I see this car, I think equal parts how much I would love to own one of them and at the same time how much of an idiot I am for wanting one. Why would I want one anyway? Could it be the fact that I naturally hover towards very large and impractical cars? Could it be the fact that cars from the ‘70s are not getting any more plentiful and it’s a decade of cars I haven’t driven yet? (‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s and ‘10s are all present and correct.) Or it could just be the marketing campaign with Ricardo Montalban’s soothing voice telling me all about its soft, Corinthian leather while a Spanish guitar and horns provide the atmosphere.
“But look closely” says that tiny voice in all our heads to fill us with either common sense or fear, depending on perspective. “You know it’s based on the same platform as the Dodge Dart, only that with a decade of bloat over it. It’s not even the Correct B-Body. Wait a year or so for Chevrolet to figure that one out.”
I hate to admit it, but the voice may have a point there. The “Small Chrysler” was right around the size of the whaletastic Full-Size Chevrolets that were about to be forced into the Atkins diet. The Chrysler B-Body could trace its origin to the old 1962 Dart, an endearingly weird looking thing in itself. But between it and Cordoba it had gained no less than 500lbs and 12 inches of length, yet it lost an inch of wheelbase. The 318 LA V8 had been declawed like everything else on the market, only managing to eke out 145 HP. The big 400 was also around, providing 185 HP for those ready to have occasional flings with single-digit fuel economy. Then we get to the interior…
It’s all fine with full instrumentation and a lovely dashboard but there is something to address. The proverbial elephant in the room. Something that, when you find out, you will never be able to forget. There’s no way of putting it lightly, so I will just say it. The Corinthian leather that Chrysler so proudly presented in its blurb is a phony, it’s a fraud, it’s a fake. At no point did it even went near Corinth. It was all a ploy created by marketing, once again proving that it’s only as good as the person in charge of it. That exotic sounding material, supposedly coming from that faraway Greek land of immense beauty and eternal sunshine was actually coming from Newark, New Jersey.
Newark.
New Jersey.
Poor Ricardo would’ve certainly been disappointed if he ever found out “Whatever do you mean it is not coming from Greece?” He would ask. In an alternate Universe he could even go Francisco Scaramanga on them. Or maybe he was in on the whole thing. Notice how in that timeless ad, the soft Corinthian leather looks suspiciously like normal red Velour. It’s not like he couldn’t convince you that he was none the wiser about the whole thing.
Of course, having ranted about everything this is the part of the Document where I have to type “And Yet.” So here it goes: And yet, even as I write this article I find myself wanting one. Whenever someone asks me what would be the one car I would buy given all the money in the world I just say “X308 Jaguar XJR”, but the 1976 Cordoba always makes the Top 5 (Currently sitting at #3 between a Mercedes R63 AMG and a Fiat 500C Abarth.). The year is also oddly specific, I guess my subconscious wants to avoid being a Beta-Tester with a ’75 and I don’t care for the “Inspired by Monte-Carlo” ’78 and ’79. A smidgen of rationality in an irrational want.
1980 brought us a new Cordoba, sharing the J-Platform with the Sinatra-endorsed Imperial. It had a slant six as the base engine now. Which come to think of it may be actually an upgrade because it meant that unlike the Imperial the Cordoba had a sporting chance of starting in the morning. But now the best engine you could get was that choked down 318 V8 that had been a base engine on the last generation. Now even less capable at 120 wheezing anemic hamsters. I don’t know what to make of them. I know what to make about the original though, and I will no-doubt be driving it soon enough, just after I go to bed.
Pretty sure you mean Newark, the Corinth of Essex County. 😉
Yes he does. Typo, fixed.
I’ve never cared for the 1976 Cordoba. I thought it looked ugly. I thought the 1980 version of the Cordoba was way better looking.
Funny, I’ve always thought the opposite. 🙂
I also like the earlier Cordoba, I thought it looked like a pretty classy personal car. There used to be many of these around these parts and now I can’t even remeber the last time I saw one in the wild. Not worried about the performance because I can easily remedy that on a car like this.
Because the opposite is true.
I agree with you, I loved my 76 . I hated after 77 the 78 is when they changed for the worst.
These with the Jag inspired front clips are kinda snazzy in a cheezy ’70s kind of way. I really like the J-cars. The ‘regular’ ‘doba is the most ‘meh’, but the crosshair grilled and monochrome LS is the shizz. The Mirada is the most attainable. Id take any of those and put a warmed over 360 under the hood and a swapped in Mopar 4 spd to make a luxo hot rod. GIMME.
+1 I like EVERYTHING that you said about the Mirada!! I, too, would to have one so equipped!! 🙂
It’s an OK looker but still miles ahead of the opposition.A lot of american cars lost their looks in the 70s
The Cordoba is a beautiful car. It was Chrysler’s answer to the Monte Carlo and Grand Prix, also beautiful cars. But Chrysler managed to make the Cordoba more elegant. Cars like these truly are what dreams are made of. They are one of the great things from the ’70s. Over and over I hear about how bad cars were in the ’70s. Yet IMO the ’70s produced the best cars ever made, reaching their peak in the mid ’70s. Owning a car like this can only be a dream for me Most of them were scrapped a long time ago. I look out at the vast sea of garbage they are trying to pass off as cars today, and I don’t see anything I want that I can afford, and pretty much nothing I want at any price. I would love to see the return of the two door personal luxury coupe. I promise I would buy one.
“… The 70’s produced the best cars ever made…”
Seriously? IMHO, There was nothing from the 70’s that wasn’t less beautiful, worse quality, slower, and less fun to drive than the cars of 60’s
The Córdoba just seems clumsy and contrived compared to the 69 Eldorado for example
“The Cordoba is a beautiful car.”
Now imagining Dan Aykroyd’s voiceover “The Royal Deluxe II. A beautiful car.”
I completely agree. this is a gorgeous, stylish awesome design that combines luxury and muscle cues. the only thing wrong with it is the government mandated engine that manages to provide both low power and low mileage at the same time. it is an engine swap away from perfection. and being a front engine, rear drive vehicle with some room to work with rather than being space-engineered to a millimeter, a swap is very doable.
I still can’t believe this was my father’s first car.
You have to credit the Chrysler Cordoba with being a great lesson in geography. A prior CC “dealt with” The Origins of Corinthian Leather and identified Corinth, Mississippi as being its birthplace. Sort of…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-the-origins-of-corinthian-leather/
THOUGHTS of Corinth take you to Greece. Cordoba is in Spain. Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG, stage-named Ricardo Montalbán, came from Mexico. The car was from Detroit. Advertising was pure Holllllywood (gotta have five or four “Ls”).
And now Gerardo Solis introduces Newark, NJ. Now, THAT’S a major comedown, even from Corinth, Mississippi.
Newark’s not so bad. And I would counter that Mississippi could be found at the bottom of just about any list.
The guy across the street who was in high school when I was in elementary school had a 76 with t tops. It was on air ride shocks and G70’s. It was the coolest car in the world to my 10 year old brain.
I remember those best for the no-cost Self-Immolation option, also known as Lean Burn. I vividly remember a brand new 4 eyed Cordoba going up in flames in the teacher’s lot at my vocational school way back when…
I suffer from the same Cordoba-irrationality that you do. I know that it’s a 1970s Chrysler (syn. – abysmal quality) and that it’s a 74 Charger SE in a fresh leisure suit, but I still want one. Even though the steering column still shakes when you slam the door like in my buddy’s 74 Charger strippo.
For once, Chrysler absolutely nailed the styling trends for 1975. After what seemed like a decade of the fuselage, these were beautiful cars – enough 1970s gimmicks to make them popular, but still mighty clean and elegant compared to a lot of what was out then.
Also, who else was putting leather into a mid-sized coupe in the mid 70s? Precisely nobody. This was the era of vinyl, and the Doba may have been the first car to bring leather back out of the Cadillac/Lincoln/Imperial class since just after the war. This was the first Chrysler in a long time that made regular people (meaning people who were not “Mopar People”) want one. Sadly, most of those regular people did not go back for a second.
“Also, who else was putting leather into a mid-sized coupe in the mid 70s? Precisely nobody”
ERRR….The Pontiac Grand Prix had a leather interior available since 1969 and all the way through the 70’s and into the 80’s.
Leather was also available on the later Colonnade Cutlass Supreme Brougham and in the downsized 78 and up Cutlass Supreme Brougham.
Thunderbirds had leather available on and off until at least 1976.
Leather was available on the Electra and Riviera and 98 and Toronado as well, though not in the mid-sized category, they were outside of the Cadillac-Lincoln-Imperial class.
Of the cars you mention, how often did you ever see one with leather? The pre 77 T-Bird may have been the most common, and it was a more expensive car than the Cordoba (I believe, anyhow). As for the others, I don’t doubt you. But I lived in a family and neighborhood where medium/upper medium priced GM cars were everywhere, and I do not recall ever seeing a single one. The take rate for leather on these must have been like the take rate on 3 speed column shift 69 Bel Airs.
Thinking back, my Dad bought (or maybe leased) a 76 Mercury Monarch Ghia with leather. But again, that was the only one I ever saw, and I saw a lot of them. The Cordoba may not have been first, but it sure popularized it, because leather seemed fairly common in them.
Depends on the climate of the area back then too, leather is like sitting on ice in the cold and a skillet in the heat. Remember leather being “high end” is a fairly recent phenomenon, leather used to be mostly for open cars and the chauffeurs compartment.
I’ve seen a few Grand Prix’s with leather, especially on the Colonnade ones, leather wasn’t seen as such a “must have” back then, especially in the “fine crushed velour” era, cloth interiors were still the top option, like on the d’Elegance and Talisman Fleetwoods, they were velour, leather was only available on the “base” Fleetwood. Though I will give the Cordoba the nod for popularizing leather as “must have” through its use of actually marketing the leather as an important feature of the car.
I forgot about the Grand Monarch/Ghia’s, leather was also available on the Marquis and maybe some LTD’s too. I know I had a 1976 Colony Park with leather.
Where I lived, it was vinyl, vinyl everywhere. In the 70s, vinyl was still king in mid sizers. Our 72 and 74 Cutlass Supremes, 74 Luxury LeMans were all vinyl. As was my grandfather’s 70 Electra 225 and a scout den mother’s 72 Buick Estate Wagon. And a friend’s 73 LTD Brougham. I grew up hearing my mother call it “leather” but it was the kind only grown by the petrochemical industry. Miserable stuff, that vinyl. In the 50s-60s, it at least had the benefit of being able to survive a direct nuclear blast. But by the late 60s, everyone was cheaping out so that the seams would split after 5 years of normal use. By the late 70s, velour had taken over.
My 1953 Mercury Monterey 2-door hardtop had factory leather seats.
Carmine, IIRC, wasn’t leather an available option on a Fleetwood Brougham with the d’Elegance package in the late 70’s? I’m pretty sure that my neighbor had a black 1978 Fleetwood Brougham d’Elegance with a tan vinyl top and tan leather pillow seats. I know that a good friend of the family had a 1979 Fleetwood d’Elegance with leather as I rode in that car several times. It was a medium gray with a blue full vinyl top and blue leather interior (sounds weird but it actually was a very attractive car!) It had thick ultra shag carpeting and the seats were very comfortable, although Cadillac did away with the multiple button loose cushions in 1979. I think it only had a few large buttons instead.
Yes, Cadillac started offering leather in d’Elegance package on the downsized Fleetwoods, I was referring more to the 74-76 era cars in reference to the Cordobas leather availability. 77-78 d’Elegance interiors are similar to the 1976 style, which was also used in leather on the 1977-1978 Eldorado Biarritz. The 1979’s had a unique one year only d’Elegance cushion design, by 1980 the multi-button style that came out in the 79 Biarritz became the “upline” seat option on Cadillacs through the end of the 80’s.
Yeah, even the ’77 Dodge Diplomat was available with leather.
Corvettes always had leather available too, though thats also out of the realm of mid sized/mid priced. Leather did start becoming more common by the late 70’s as “The Broughaming” continued, by 1979 AMC was offering leather interior equipped Pacer Limiteds
I like Pacer Limiteds in the same “wrong” way that the Cordoba is loved, in a its so wrong, its right kinda way. I think the Pacer Limited is probably one of the Broughamy-est small cars you could get.
As a Spanish speaker I find really amusing that they misplaced the tonic syllabe from the name, as Córdoba, with an accent, is the real name of the Andalusian (and Argentinian) city. So instead of corDOHba, the actual name is CÓRdoba. Ok, I know it was a marketing plot but I can imagine Mr. Montalbán grinding his teeth. That thing on the letters in Spanish marks exceptions in the stressed syllable of the word.
What I also find amusing is that Chrysler Corp. had another remarkable Spanish name in that era but it was marked as Italian… Volaré instead of Volare, which mean “I will fly” in Spanish and “to fly” in Italian respectively… Amusing, amusing
BTW, this must be one of the few cars featured in this site I’ve seen in the flesh, in my last trip to the US. It was at a local classic car meet-up in Pennsylvania and the car really was in a bad condition. I even sat inside!
“What I also find amusing is that Chrysler Corp. had another remarkable Spanish name in that era but it was marked as Italian… Volaré instead of Volare, which mean “I will fly” in Spanish and “to fly” in Italian respectively… Amusing, amusing…”
I wondered at the time…which came first, the name of the car or the Italian advertising theme with Sergio Franchi singing a few words from the 1958 pop hit “Nel blu dipinto di blu” (In the Sky, Painted Blue), popularly known as “Volaré,” by Franco Migliacci and Domenico Modugno. Sometimes you get a tail-wags-the-dog feeling about such things.
On the other hand, the Rex Harrison “Unbelievable Aspen” commercials were positively insipid. So what did I buy (and keep until 1998)? A 1976 Dodge Aspen. For me it was reliable…for me in California, a non-ruster that spent its entire life garaged and looked it. It still appears on the local show circuit today.
But although I admire its external styling immensely, I could not own a 1975-1978 Chrysler Cordoba because on the inside it looks too much like the 1975-1978 Dodge and Plymouth Pursuit cars that I drove all day at work.
I remember seeing an interview of Ricardo Montalban on a talk show where he said the exact same thing. When he was hired to do the ads he argued with Chrysler’s people that the correct pronunciation was CORdoba but they kept wanting him to say “carDOHba”. Hearing him mock the American way of saying Cordoba was hilarious.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out 🙂
Really, changing stress in words make no sense to us.
Sometimes changing stress in a word gives it an entirely different meaning. At least we were spared that.
It’s pretty easy to go hard on the Cordoba. The cultural camp factor that eventually surrounded the car is an easy place to get started.
My main gripe with the car is that Chrysler used the GM playbook to finally find success in the mid-size personal luxury car arena. The mid-size products before the Cordoba were distinctly Mopar. The ’75 – ’79 Cordoba is more or less a Monte Carlo front clip attached to a Grand Prix and this killed anything unique about Mopar offerings.
But, as the “fifth division of GM” to offer a Colonnade coupe, there is really nothing wrong with it for its time. The driving experience and styling was generally liked better than Ford products, and it was probably one of only two truly successful Mopar product launches in the ’70s – the other being the Omni / Horizon twins. The car has not been associated with the kind of quality problems that plagued the full-size cars in ’74, the compacts in ’76 and the R bodies in ’79. Sales actually managed to go up after the first model year, a rare phenomenon for Chrysler in the ’70s!
To a degree, this is the car that saved Chrysler in the ’70s. And, I’d probably pick it over some of the GM offerings at the time, as did quite a few buyers. On those positive notes, I’m glad this car had its time in the spotlight.
The funny thing is that it was originally pitched as a Plymouth badged Monte Carlo fighter, which probably would have still found success, but probably not as much as when they turned up the pretend luxury and sold it as a Chrysler. I think that was probably made it such a hit, the Chrysler name still had some rapidly fading upper class cache.
Back in the early 60s, Chrysler advertised that there would be no “junior edition” to diminish the owner’s investment. The Newport was as cheap as they ever got, and having Plymouth in the same showroom kept the strippo models out of the showrooms. Had they followed Olds and Buick into smaller cars in the 60s, I can imagine Lynn Townsend’s Chrysler going farther downmarket with Chrysler B Body sedans around 1970-71 or so. In hindsight, it looks like they kept that powder dry for the right time, because by the 1970s, they needed every sale they could get. Some of the 77-79 slant six LeBarons were pretty plain. Cordoba and LeBaron probably helped suck much of the life out of Plymouth in the 70s.
“Umm, Mr. Townsend, sir. Are you sure you want to go with this campaign? I mean, Oldsmobile and Buick are cleaning up with smaller cars and market trends continue to………….”
I actually love this 1965 ad, but it was definitely meant to appeal to my Grandfather’s generation, he was 62 at the time. Kind of stuck in the 1950s – the Bob Hope sponsorship, the snooty take on smaller cars, I’m sure it sold some cars to some older folks. Not exactly the Youngmobile and Dr. Oldsmobile campaigns Oldsmobile cooked up before the end of the ’60s.
Chrysler….We’ve upped our standards, now up yours.
See Bob Hope’s Chrysler Theater Stunt Spectacular on NBC’s Tuesdays at 8pm an watch Ann Margaret drive a Valiant through a ring of fire! After that stay tuned for the Consolidated Wax Variety Hour featuring Benny and His Monkey.
Bob Hope was still a Chrysler pitchman into the 1980’s and still got a free car or cars from them, he had one of those 81-83 Imperials and a really swank R-body 5th Avenue New Yorker.
The Cordoba was a decent looking car and the marketing hit the sweet spot. And, I agree that it would have been hard for the Plymouth name to compete with a market that at GM was dominated by the higher price divisions if you look at total sales – the vast majority of buyers went to Pontiac or higher.
I’m not sure how you’d define pretend luxury. The interior picture in the article, despite some fading, shows an interior that is a few notches above my ’76 Cutlass Supreme Brougham – and most of the other GM offerings. The Cordoba seemed to catch the trend of better interiors that came in the mid ’70s, I’m thinking ’77 T-Bird vs. Gran Torino and the ’77 GM B – C range. The Cordoba was quite a step up from a ’74 Charger SE, would have been almost wildly plush for Plymouth, and seemed like a competitive offering with Olds and Buick – as a Chrysler should be.
Add to that a decent enough standard V-8 engine and automatic and this car was built to bypass the low end Buick and Olds offerings with their sixes and dog dishes.
If Chrysler had had the money, I think the Cordoba left room for Plymouth to have a well differentiated car.
Had the Cordoba had been originally launched as a Plymouth (and who know if it would had been called Cordoba, Plymouth could also used Belmont nameplate as a nod to the 1950s showcar). I wonder if Dodge would had get more higher sales with its “Cordoba-ized” Charger?
Btw, I saw this photo, photoshopped or it was a clay model, showing a 4-door Cordoba. https://www.diecast.org/diecast98/html/asp/forums/lounge/viewMessage.asp?id=239604&start=239604
I remember when they were first introduced. I thought they were very stylish and handsome cars. If I recall, they even had unique and interesting pin stripes. I was still in college at the time and also remember the metallic paint was almost like metal flake – very attractive. Anyway, a couple of years later I had a neighbor who bought a new 1978 and was sort of embarrassed when he drove it to work to show it off to his co-workers and they said “Don’t they include tail light lenses with the purchase of a new car?” – because it was missing one of the tail light lenses! It turned out that it was glued on, no screws, and it fell off! I remember thinking at the time, how the quality of cars were changing so rapidly. I was driving a 1964 Buick La Sabre 4 dr sedan at the time, which had cornering lights. By comparison, the cornering light lens on my Buick, which was smaller than the Corboba’s tail light lens, had 6 SCREWS holding each of them on! That kind of change in a little over a decade! To my knowledge, the first car to have a plastic grille was the 1966 Pontiac. This almost all seems silly now, since some cars have their entire bodies glued together!
Say what you will about the Cordoba, it was teh one bright spot in the Chrysler sales picture in the mdie 70s — over 150K were sold in each of the first two years — I’m not sure about the 77, but it was certainly still Chrysler’s best selling car. When the big cars were going down the drain, the Cordoba kept Chrysler afloat. And I’m sure you write a similar piece about the other mid-70s personal luxury cars. It was not the US automakers’ finest hour!
As far as 1970s styling goes – the Cordoba and the 1977 Thunderbird (I own one of those), are the best looking of the mid-sized luxury coupes. These may have been among the last of the “styled” cars. Just to look at one – you wanted it. The Cordoba has the look, it had the 1970s luxury, it had the name, and it had the advertizement, that made it a success.
The quality of all cars was changing at the time.
I have a story that says it all. Back in the mid 1980s, a co-worker and myself were walking through the parking lot of the manufacturing company we worked at when I looked down and saw a small shinny piece of metal with glue on it. I bent down and picked it up to see what it was. Believe it or not, it was an aluminum glued on tag that said: “Chrysler Quality”! It had fallen off of a Chrysler built car!
Back in the 1970s when I was a kid, my Pop and I would go see all the new model year cars when they came out in the fall. I’d grab brochures and we’d check out key models at each dealership. I remember being at Bergeron Chrysler Plymouth in New Orleans in late 1975, with a beaming salesmen waving to a sea of shiny Cordobas on the lot and proudly proclaiming that “this was the car that saved Chrysler.” I guess it was the last time their head went above the waves, at least with a higher margin car, until after the bailout. I also remember that I thought they were very nice cars, at least through the eyes of a 9-year-old, and they were my favorite of the Mopars that year. And yes, I still have the ’76 Cordoba brochure I picked up that day 🙂
I’m hardly known to be a lover of mid-70s personal coupes but the Cordoba comes off the best of the bunch. The round headlight front is of course very evocative of the Jag XJ6, and ironically, the greenhouse, which is only a mildly modified version from the Charger with its windshield and side glass, makes it seem lighter than the rather heavy-handed competition from GM and Ford. It’s my choice of the three, although I don’t exactly dream about one 🙂
Back in college (right around ’98), I went out with a girl whose dad had an original condition ’75 Cordoba in the barn, along with his original owner ’68 Sport Satellite hardtop with a 383/4-speed combo. Needless to say, I drooled over the Satellite and completely ignored the Cordoba. Now, I wish I would have looked it over more carefully, just for the weird factor, but that’s all water under the bridge.
I love how 215.3″ long was considered “small” in 1975. Perhaps they were referring to the interior.
Man! The only thing I remember about this car is the soft Corinthian leather made in New Jersey. Damn, the way Ricardo says Corinthian leather makes you want to buy it! 🙂
Check out this dangerously bouncing small land yacht taking those curves there on the You Tube commercial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_leather
The weird thing is most people recall him saying “Rich, Corinthian leather.” It actually sounds even better.
“rich corinthian leather” in Google produces 20,000 results
“soft “corinthian leather” produces just 4,750 results
Fun Fact: “Rich, Corinthian leather” Is so ingrained in the public consciousness that even the Joker (Yes, THAT Joker) says that line while riding in Lex Luthor’s Limousine. It was very surreal watching that.
It is one of those pop culture “things” that has seemed to perpetuate through time, you can mention “Corinthian Leather” in a group of people that weren’t even alive when Ricardo was bouncing the Cordoba up the hills to his private villa and at least half of them would at least sort of get the pop-culture reference.
It is indeed odd how most people (mis)remember Ricardo’s Corinthian leather being either “rich” or “fine” rather than “soft.” In much the same way that Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca never actually says the words “Play it again, Sam,” the public has collectively rewritten the dialog. Just goes to show that humans hear what they want to hear.
“Y’played it for her, you can play it for me” 🙂
So the MOPAR B-body of this era went all the way back to the the 1960-1962 big Darts?
http://www.allpar.com/model/dart.html
http://www.allpar.com/model/rwdbodies.html
That sounds like what you said in your write-up, and allpar.com confirms it. Thing was a dinosaur under the skin even when it was launched in 1975.
Not the 1960-1961 Darts, which were full-sized cars. It’s based on the 116″ wb downsized 1962 cars, which was still called a Dart until 1963, when the name was given to the comport A-body.
That ad is hilarious. “Trimmed of excess sheet metal, overhang, chrome.” Every inch of that Dodge aft of the rear wheel centerline is excess sheet metal, overhang and chrome.
Being an ad copywriter for car companies must have been an interesting challenge back then.
“Every inch of that Dodge aft of the rear wheel centerline is excess sheet metal, overhang and chrome.”
Only if you consider a useful luggage compartment to be superfluous.
In the CC pages the ’62 Dart has been considered to be the prototype for the ’77 GM B body in terms of general dimensions, hard to argue that point.
Under trim and sculpting, the trunk is actually a pretty basic box shape, much different from the finned and deeply sculpted overhangs that came before it. Inches were truly trimmed away with a minimal reduction in utility.
Look at the windshield, that still looks like the 1971 version.
Everytime I think of Ricardo Montalban I think of Star Trek the Wrath of Khan
KHAAAAAAN!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54
I do think the first generation Cordoba is much better looking then the 2nd generation. While from the side the first generation doba does look like a gussied up Volare, it has enough changes in the front to make it look good. The second generation Cordoba looks like a Dodge Mirada with a new grill.
Those of us of a certain age will remember Ricardo Montalban playing Khan in the 1967 Star Trek episode Space Seed.
I know about the TOS episode Space Seed but he was not selling earth based vehicles with rich Corinthian Leather then.
A little after he was Khan, he guest starred on an early episode of Hawaii Five-O where he played a Japanese mobster that was the target of a Yakuza hit squad. The episode is titled “Samurai”
Montalban-san.
A Mexican being the closest thing to a Japanese actor available in Hollywood at the time.
Not really, there were a few available.
Marlon was considered
“…While from the side the first generation doba does look like a gussied up Volare…”
But it’s NOT. It predates the Volaré by a year and is actually a gussied up 1975 Plymouth “Small” Fury which is a gussied up 1971 Plymouth Satellite. The underneath-guts date from 1962 but the Cordoba is actually built on the 1971 “small fuselage” body shell.
The Volaré had nothing at all in common with the Cordoba and the other B-bodies.
I owned a 1979 version bought used in 80 of the Chrysler lease lot in Warren, Michigan. The Chrysler exec that owned it said it was the best car he ever had. Of course: Worst car ever. Every part on it replaced under warranty by dealers that didn’t want to touch it because I bought it ‘direct’. I’d watch the lens covers fly off it on the freeway as they were glued on at the factory and the glued dried out. Actually my 1970 challenger was worst because it rusted from under me and the Cordoba didn’t.
Paul, I’m aggravated with myself for not noticing. I’m going to simply delete my comment.
Gerardo, my sincere apologies. This was a terrific article and it had me thinking about my wife’s stories in her grandmother’s Cordoba.
Stories you must now write for great justice. Not to mention Broughamism.
Gerardo, that is a great idea. If I cannot get her to write them, I will at least convey them. She talked about a 12 hour trip with five full-sized people in that Cordoba. Stay tuned.
The Cordoba is one of my top five 1970s cars.
Nice post, and that’s not a dumb dream at all, do it!
What’s the worst thing that could happen, that you’ll buy a nice Cordoba for $10k, enjoy it for a while and sell it for a small loss. A small price to pay for an interesting experience.
I think the dumb dreams are the ones where you have your heart set on a Ferrari Enzo and there’s no way it’s ever going to happen so you never do anything.
Speaking of never doing anything, the DougD VW Project got packed back into the corner of the garage on Sunday, another year gone…
I think it’s natural for everyone to have some kind of irrational lust for certain cars. I know I do.
The original Cordoba, with the round headlights was attractive car. Given their limited resources at the time, I’d say that Chrysler did a reasonable job with it. A large amount of credit has to go to the marketing and advertising men and women who came up with the “Corinthian Leather” campaign. It undoubtably made this car a lot more popular and memorable, which in turn, probably kept Chrysler on life support until Lido arrived. If Chrysler had gone bankrupt a few years earlier, they might have simply just closed doors.
Matthew McConahghey is the new Ricardo Montalban of celebrity car advertisements.
Love Ellen deGeneres’ spoof of that commerciaL!
Genius insight! Allow me to elaborate with a historical comparison.
Wooderson, 1976 in Dazed and Confused:
“Let me tell you what Melba Toast is packin’ right here, all right. We got 4:11 Positrac outback, 750 double pumper, Edelbrock intake, bored over 30, 11 to 1 pop-up pistons, turbo-jet 390 horsepower. We’re talkin’ some f*****’ muscle.”
McConaughey, 2014 in Lincoln Commercial:
“Let me tell you what MKC is packin’ right here, all right. We got 3.51 fully independent multi-link outback, high pressure direct injection, MMR Intake, 2.3L EcoBoost® I-4, 9.3 to 1 aluminum pistons, 6-speed SelectShift automatic transmission, 240 horsepower. We are talkin’ some f*****’ gas mileage.”
Most people forget that Mr. Montalban continued to pitch for Chrysler well into the 1980’s, even after the Cordoba sailed off into the sunset.
Mr. Montalban also did have a custom Cordoba made especially for him as part of his deal,
it was black with a silver insert in the hood and roof, with real wire wheels and a smooth top with no landau, plus it had custom silver all leather interior and a sunroof. Montalban drove into the early 80’s,
I remember him saying in a interview somewhere that he liked it more than his XJ6….
Probably because it started more often.
Was it actually possible to get a first gen Cordoba without a half vinyl roof from the factory? I know you could get the same era Dodge Charger without one but I can’t recall ever seeing a Cordoba sans vinyl roof and, frankly, after seeing Montalban’s car, I can see why.
It’s probably like the standard vinyl roof on the Plymouth Superbird, which was done solely to more cheaply hide the roof welds which then didn’t need to be finished.
I think that the top was standard, I’ve never seen one without it either and I imagine that it was for the same reason that you mentioned, to hide the changes that were done to the roof on the “quick and dirty”, Cadillac did a similar thing with the Seville for first production run and then it started to offer slick top by 1977.
I don’t recall seeing one either. Of course, the vinyl roof was a hugely popular “extra cost option” in the 70s, so offering it standard (or building it on every car and charging for it) was not a risky move.
I remember his E-Body “Turbo Power” ads from the eighties. Always classy.
Turrrrbo Powerrrr……everything sounded great when said by Mr. Montalban. Its funny that you mentioned Fransisco Scaramanga in your article, I always thought that Ricardo Montalban would have made a great Scaramanga, even better than Christopher Lee, after all, part of Scaramangas backstory was that he was half Cuban. It’s funny though that Mr. Roper sort of dressed like Scaramanga and had the same sidekick.
At the moment I can’t think of a better person to have played Scaramanga than Montalban. I presume the timing didn’t match or they didn’t think of him at the time. Missed opportunities…
Mr Roper?!
I think you mean Mr. Roarke.
That would make a funny spoof of TMWTGG, with Mr. Roper as Scaramanga…
Arrggh, Why did I type Roper?
I’d see that.
It doesn’t really show in that photo, but I believe the black paint also has metal-fleck in it. I’ve seen Ricardo’s Cordoba twice at the Chrysler museum and I forgot that it’s riding on a set of Vogues.
Don’t forget his Volare in Fantasy Island!
WOW, I totally forgot about these!
These cars made no sense to me when I saw this show as a kid, what where they supposed to be? Pseudo Jeep-Thing wagons? I wonder if any of these survive somewhere?
I also always wondered if they were Volares because of Ricardo’s Mopar endorsement deal or just a coincidence?
The car in the lead photo looks stunning in brown metallic. In my mind’s eye most Cordobas were that blue color, the one with the big metal flake, and had a white vinyl top.
I seem to recall most of them were that ’70s brown. Kind of root beer colored.
As a 20 year old I’ve owned my 1975 Chrysler Cordoba since I was 16. It’s just so different from anything else my generation drives, that’s why I love it! In the summertime it’s my daily driver. It’s all original with only 40,000 miles!
Here it is.
Nice Cordoba! It’s always heartening to see someone from the younger generation who sitll has an appreciation for older cars, especially ones that aren’t of the muscle- or sports- variety.
Nice!
Nice DOBA!
Very nice. Take good care of it. 🙂
Beautiful car!
She’s a beauty!
Nothing says the seventies like the Chrysler Cordoba. It’s particularly noteworthy for several reasons. Now, all three of the Big 3 would have a huge hit in the personal luxury class, similar to how each company would, at some point, have a memorable musclecar in the sixties.
It would also be the true beginning of the end for Plymouth since, unlike Dodge, the division would not get a version.
Then there’s the whole quality thing, which makes the Cordoba akin to the Forward Look days, when Chrysler had such a huge hit the first year, but quickly took a nose-dive in sales as the horrid quality in lieu of production numbers raised its ugly head. It wasn’t as bad as 1957 (second year Cordoba sales were still pretty good) but, as usual, quality was bad enough that yet another golden opportunity was squandered as any former Ford or GM owners quickly went back.
This sounds dumb, but I both like and hate these cars. I like most Chrysler products for the way they are different from their GM and Ford competition and hate them because GM did everything so well….and so easily, or so it has always looked.
My favorite Cordoba? A “series 2” car with that “fake” /convertible-look vinyl roof…..especially a triple black example.
My Grandmother’s car!
She had a gorgeous (at least in my mind) 1976 Cordoba. Dark green, with dark green vinyl, and green interior. Hers had a 360 in it, and she had slot mags too (aftermarket). Grandma had a lead foot, and would always say how the car really liked 80 mph or so. She didn’t have Corinthian leather, instead was velour. One of the most impressive features was the infinitely adjustable power seat. If I remember correctly (as this was 30+ years ago) the seat control was a joystick. My brother and I would almost drain the battery we were so fascinated with it. Sadly, the gigantic doors got to be too heavy for a frail old lady and she traded it in for a Gutless Cierra.
The Cordoba was a nicer, more classic riff on the Monte Carlo. Despite some awkward dash detailing, the interior was light years nicer than the Monte Carlo’s though. Once again I’m always impressed that Chryco managed to get the 5 mph bumpers flush with the car, rather than resort to fillers on their ’70’s models.
Actually in the desert, but that’s OK, it’s 75 here today and 1 in Castle Rock! I’ll be back to the cold and snow for Thanksgiving & Christmas and hopefully some skiing. Working at IBM in Denver in the 70s a new salesman was in the office, his father was a sr rep in Colorado Springs, he bought his sun a blue Cordoba, with white vinyl roof as a car he needed to drive to show success and take his customers out to lunch. It was quite the boat. I was driving a red 70 VW beetle and a school bus yellow 76 Rabbit. FYI, the rabbit was a piece of junk!
We’ve made it all the way through a Coroba post and no one has mentioned Herb Tarlek?
What?
Thanks! I was just thinking about him. Probably the most famous Cordoba driver outside of Ricardo.
You’re right, Carmine. A huge oversight on everyone’s part. Thanks for bringing it up. I could picture Herb, after a long hard day hocking WKRP ad slots to all the local Cincinnati merchants, dealing with Dr. Fever’s insanity and being driven crazy by Jennifer Marlowe’s… presence… just breathing a sigh of relief and swishing out to the parking lot in his salmon colored leisure suit, polyester flapping in the breeze. Towards his escape machine, a 1977 Chrysler Cordoba. He puts key to lock, opens that gigantic door, and slides into those Rich Corinthian Leather seats. He’d go for a saddle brown / burgundy interior with a beige vinyl top.
There is no better example of Chrysler striking marketing gold with the Cordoba than matching-white-shoes-and-belt, sportcoat-made-from-horse’s-blanket Herb Tarlek. Consider putting up Ricardo Montalban in the commercials, Hollywood star who, in reality, had been reduced to doing bit parts on television for years. Yet he still had the looks, accent, and aura of a suave, sophisticated Latin gentleman.
And what else would a big-mouthed salesman like Tarlek fancy himself driving but the same car as a continental lady’s man like Ricardo. Surely, Tarlek could get Jennifer Marlowe with a car like that. It seems an outrageous joke now but, at the time, it was pure, brougham-tastic, advertising genius.
Think about it. In today’s world, what car is pushed as that being driven by a cool guy like Ricardo? Even Lincolns are being hawked by…Matthew McConaughey?
I wonder what George Clooney drives…
Pretty sure Clooney walks, rides a bike, or in a pinch borrows a Prius.
I’m thinking that if they remade WKRP, maybe Tarlek would drive a Lincoln MKC?
Though as much as it might have put the Cordobas name out there, by the time WKRP in Cincinnati premiered in 1978, 3 years after the Cordoba came out, it was more of a parody of the Cordoba( and the 70’s in general) by associating it with a tasteless salesman, than a celebration of it, still, as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Lots of the WKRP characters were based on real people in the radio business in Atlanta and in other locations, meaning that there was a “real” Herb Tarlek out there somewhere.
Off-subject, but I hear you’re considering a move to NY.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/12/godfather-home-market-new-york-staten-island
Actually I’m selling it and all my interest in the olive oil business and moving the family to Lake Tahoe….
I hear the fishing is good down there.
I vaguely remember an episode where we see Herb’s car. A local TV “news magazine” crew is profiling him, and he’s forgotten, and they show up at his house on Sunday. He tries to impress them by taking the family to church…which is locked…because it’s a synagogue. 🙂
HA!
6 degrees of Cordoba?
I think that everyone here has at least known someone who owned, ridden in or actually owned a Cordoba?
I remember carpooling to school with the neighbor girl, her dad was a Herb Tarlek type guy with a silver Cordoba with a dark red leather interior, in the afternoons we would get picked up by her mother, who drove….an orange Pinto Squire Wagon, most 70’s driveway ever?
There is nothing wrong with wanting a car like that! I lust after third gen. Chargers, and someday I hope to own one! Make mine a ’74 SE, with a vinyl top and opera windows, please.
Great article!
*Picture from google images*
I was jealous of these, but I had a square sealed beam triple avocado Monarch, and the seat’s vinyl lacked a snazzy name. And there was no special crystal key, nor suave spokesperson a la Versailles (she was sexy.) It did have 45 degrees of tilt steering, with the neutered small V8 with a low 2’s ratio rear- a four speed AOD sans first!
Give me rich Corinthian leather over mouse fur…..anyday.Chrysler said they would never build a “small car”, but the Cordoba was more of a midsize,but today it would be considered “full size”. BTW there was a Cordoba option on full size Newports in `69 or `70. It was a trim option ,a kind of semi Arabic-Aztec design pattern in the interior, dash and door panels.
Any particular reason why American auto manufacturers hated independent rear suspension so much? It added cost but really not that much, ride better, lower cg, and more interior space. Even the “premium brand/models” were denied IRS. This traditional carried all the way to current Mustang, for a saving of $50, Ford insisted on solid axle.
Some sort of fetish for having a long hard one in the rear end?
Probably cost. They’d been using a solid axle in the rear for generations, and the tooling had been paid for probably before we were born. Getting a decent ride out of a solid axle had been figured out long ago.
IRS would be venturing into uncharted territory engineering-wise – that’s IF the accountants would let them do it..
Likely, durability issues as well. Vettes had them with some success but for robust strength thatll stand up to big power, you just couldn’t beat a live axle. AND, it was a cost issue as well. Nowadays, any halfway self respecting performance car with a live rear end just seems wonky. Im looking at YOU, Mustang. FWIW, the Challenger has more power and more weight and yet rides at least as good with competitive handling. The chally needs Jenny Craig, but that’s easier than swapping in IRS to a Stang.
The new 15 Mustang is IRS now, the thing is that even with live axles in the rear, you could still make a car handle, see the F-bodies(IROC-Z) as an example, in many cases they were the best handling American cars with the exception of the Corvette, and even with a live axle they were able to beat several IRS cars around the track.
A well engineered solid axle as the last generation of Mustangs had were pretty much the best of the best and just as Carmine mentioned with F bodies, outhandle a lot of vaunted euro cars. In a car like the Mustang which enjoys probably a larger enthusiast demographic of tinkerers than most cars the SRA was a smart choice. They’re cheap to build, easy to work on, are bulletproof at 4000rpm clutch dumps
I think the blogger love fest of IRS is as overblown as their fascination of shooting brake designs. The difference is barely perceptable between my IRS Cougar and a S197 Mustang unless it’s on the bumpiest of bumpy roads, and you know what? It’s not like IRS makes that experience THAT much more pleasant. The Camaro and Challenger effectively inherited IRS from their European/Australian platform doners and just kind of lucked out in the most overopinionated era of them all. I’m grimly looking forward to the actual sales numbers of the S550 Mustang as the years unfold, I’m sure the 2015s will get a bump like most hyped cars in their first year but I doubt the IRS will be the revelation everyone expects it is.
Anyone else ever contrast the how the contemporary personal coupes from Chrysler and AMC were received by the market? The Matador after it’s first year sunk like a rock, while the Cordoba sailed on in continual popularity. While it’s true they weren’t strictly in the same price segment, the market generally responded positively to the neo-classic styling but quickly decided Teague’s approach wasn’t something they wanted to encourage.
While we’re indulging in alternative dreams, wonder what would have been the results if the designs got mysteriously switched…….and we got an AMC Cordoba and a Chrysler Matador!
Carmine wondered if everyone here had known someone who owned a Córdoba, or had riden in one or even owned one themselves… And I havent. In fact I haven’t even seen one in the flesh since I’ve known what they are. I remember the ads with “the guy from fantasy island” as I wasn’t more than 7 or 8 and I remember the Dan Akroid spoof from Saturday night live in which he extolled the fine Corinthian cardboard and finished the fake ad with the line “just as good a car… As I am and actor!”
But now I want one!! I’ve been checking them out online all year!! Seems like you can get a lot of car for the money!!! I’ll take mine with a steel roof if it’s possible (like the 300) and leather and a console shifter!
Really? Never? Wow.
I think it was something about growing up in Connecticut. In the 70s, there were lots of American Station Wagons, as well as Jeeps, and some Cadillac Sevilles, but most of the sedans around were Volvos, BMWs, Mercedes, even Fiats, Toyotas, Saabs and one Alfa that I remember, etc. Very import buyer oriented, as I think the dealer networks and incomes were strong enough to support that type of distribution. I only remember one Chrysler from before I was ten and that was a friend’s family’s mid 70s town and country wagon.
This Tommy Hilfiger Ad is sort of an exaggerated version of what Connecticut looked like in the 70s, in fact it shows a Wagoneer and a Mercedes wagon, and our family wagons in the 70s went 1970 Buick Sportwagon (with the stovebolt six), 1974 Vega (Axle cracked), 1975 Jeep Wagoneer, 1979 Mercedes 300td (non-turbo) wagon.
One of my law school roommates was from Connecticut. It was in the 80s, and your picture makes me laugh at how true your statement is, even with my limited sample size. 🙂
As a life-long CT resident I can tell you that this photo represents only a small part of CT – the SW “gold coast” and some rich towns in the center of the state in the CT River valley. The rest is a mix of poor cities, some pretty small cities and towns, and some poor rural areas that mimic anything in northern New England. For a small state, it’s got a lot of variety.
This is funny because none of my CT-based extended family drove foreign cars until the ’90s. Maybe an Eyetalian thing? GM, Mopar, a couple Mustangs, but alas, no Dobas. Now they all drive black SUVs, of course.
There was a strange phenomena, they all seemed to vanish around 1990 or so. And all the ones I recall were driven by either my teachers, or the elders at Temple. It was still taboo back then to drive German cars, or Fords. Buicks, Aspens, and Volares also were common. Cadillac was pushing idolatry. They were ignorant of all the VW bugs and Kombis putting around Israel since the 60s.
My Rabbi has a black E-class, and there are plenty of Audis and BMWs at every Friday night Sabbath Service; although I’m Reform, don’t know what the Orthodox drive- or even allowed to after Friday sundown.
Belated reply here, but do the Greeks even have a cattle hide industry outside of New Jersey? Sheep or goat hide I can see. Unlike a Saudi pig skin industry. Rich Barcelona, Basque(though they hate Spain) or Habana Leather would have sounded better.
A friend of mine had one in college back in the 70’s. It was not based on an “A body Dart. I had one of those and the Cordoba was way bigger. Hers had a 360.
Nobody said it was based on the A-Body Dart. It’s based on the “full-size” 116″ wb 1962 Dart.
Chrysler wrung as much use from that ’62 downsized platform as Ford did the ’60 Falcon and its off-springs.
Another irony, it started out in ’62 with long hood/short deck proportions!
I admit to having an irrational appreciation and attraction to these cars also – and I think it’s mostly based on marketing. Chrysler did pretty well with its marketing efforts in the late 60s, but seemed confused and unfocused in the 70s – the exception to that was the Cordoba and Ricardo Montalban – a brilliant marketing strategy. What company wouldn’t want one of it’s advertisements become ingrained in our culture.
Mr Montalban was a very talented actor, under appreciated in my view. He always gave a great performance, even if it was in, to quote his words, “crap”.
Nice car but the best version was the 300 which, as a teenager in far-away Israel I coveted through the adverts in Road & Track bought at a specialist shop in Tel Aviv…
I love the first year model. I don’t care for the ’80 at all, beyond the fact that it has 2 doors. Way too square looking. The first model has an elegance that no other American auto maker could match in the ’70s. It harkens back to the coachbuilt luxury cars of the ’30s, like the Cord and the Duesenberg. I have always been a sucker for ’70s personal luxury coupes, like the Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, ’77-’79 Thunderbird, Gran Torino Elite, Lincoln Mark 4 and Mark 5, and several others that used basically the same formula. TWO doors, a landau roof, opera windows, long hood short deck, a luxurious interior, whitewall tires, etc. Many people back then considered a Mercedes or BMW to be a luxury car, but I never saw it. Bland styling, usually 4 doors, very spartan interior. Expensive yes, luxurious no. Most of todays cars, even Asian models, all look alike to me. Modernized versions of the ’70s Benz and BMW.
That 1979 300 would be the way to go if you could find one. We had a 1980 at our dealership back in the 90’s and drove that car around for several weeks because it was something different. Had only 62K miles, tan with tan vinyl bucket seat interior and deluxe wheels just like in the picture above. The bumper fillers were already starting to deteriorate and the interior was falling apart with the headliner sagging and many loose or rattly components but boy did that old Slant six run amazingly well. The drivetrain was easily the best part of the car! Apparently an old timer just got through adjusting the valves because this was still a solid lifter engine in 1980 and went through the ignition and carburetor. It ran like a swiss watch, could easily break the rear tire loose and had plenty of grunt up to about 60 MPH. This always struck me as odd considering this engine put out only 90 HP and 160 torque at a tractor like 1600 RPM’s and was pushing around a car that weighted well over 3300 LBS. Apparently this was either an abnormally good running example or that old mechanic knew a few tricks to get more grunt out these trustly engines.
This love for Córdoba is so wrong, yet so right.
It sounds better in Ricardo Montalban’s voice.
The Cordoba had style and class, something that is sorely missing from the millions of small look a like 4 door sedans we have now. It had substance, it had a presence. It was a work of automotive art.
Chrysler is guilty of reusing the same body for many different cars. The Cordoba, the Magnum, the Charger, and the 300 were all the same car. I laughed when they came out with the new Charger, and it was a Cordoba body. I’m not laughing now. Look what we have for a Charger these days 4 Doors!! Yuk. Same with the current 300. I would love to have this car in any of it’s versions over any of the 4 door junk Chrysler makes today.
My father (whose best friend owned a Chrysler dealership, meaning we always had at least one Chrysler product in our driveway) was one of the first to grab one when they came out in ’75. It replaced a Satellite Sebring, with the annoying habit of losing its own side windows when they fell off their tracks about every third time you hit the big chrome toggle switch to roll them up or down.
The Cordoba, as I recall, was well-optioned, but did not have power windows as a result of the aforementioned Satellite. What it did have was an Aztec Indian inspired interior design in velour. The car was white with a maroon half-top and this crazy-ass interior fabric that gave everyone who ever rode in it an experience not to be forgotten. It was plagued with transmission problems, as was the one that my grandparents bought about six months after we got ours. It was a pretty car by standards of the day, but was replaced in 1977 by a Monte Carlo Landau (further evidence that it was much-loathed, as our usual vehicle purchasing timeline in those days was 3 years. The Cordoba only lasted 2).
I’m a big fan of the Cordoba! My dad helped me buy a 1976 Cordoba with a 400 engine and I loved it! At the same time my dad bought the Chrysler Córdoba 300 and both cars ran well even though I thought the 400 cubic inch had more power but not by much! I still have the 300 today and the car only has 6000 miles on it and it’s been in the garage siting with original Poly glide GT 60 Goodyear radials and yes they are still inflated but with cracks in the side walls!! Once my dad got a truck he left the car sit in the garage and only took it out for road trips on Memorial Day and through out the summer through out the early 80s. It never saw a winter except the first year and yes it was Rusty Jones proofed from the dealership! The rubber fuel line between the engine and metal line got a creak in it and the car sat for 5 or 6 years with out starting. I fix the fuel line, got a new battery added some marvel mistery oil to the cylinders, changed the oil and air filter, and left it sit for a few days, Turned the motor over with out spark to work the oil through out the engine and once the distributed was connected it started right up!! I added some additive to disparate the lacquer build up in the carb and it’s been running great!! One thing about the 360 four barrel duel exhaust is you could tell it had a beefed up cam and once the four barrels kicked in the car would go!! I can’nt imagine what this engine would be like if it had twin turbo chargers on it with intercoolers and functional side vents for the coolers!
“Small” car? 115″ wheelbase??
Could easily fit a ’77 Caprice on that platform and none
would be the wiser! 😀
Love these old cars. I have a 79 Chrysler 300 that runs great. I have it for sale now because I need a truck but I sure will miss it.
Six years later and I still can’t believe this was my father’s first car!
Memories.
I was a freshman in college in 1978. A dorm-mate, physically small guy with a big personality, a foreign student from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told us repeatedly and emphatically that his highest ambition was to transport a white Chrysler Cordoba to Ethiopia to use as his personal transport.
My uncle had one & I rode in it. I recall the engine pinged a lot. Other than that, it struck me as a Chrysler copy of the Monte Carlo / Grand Prix.
I know it was the late sixties when go-go performance was still everything (and Chrysler just had a big hit with the 1968 Road Runner), but just imagine if, instead of dumping a ton of R&D into the development of the E-body, Chrysler had, instead, opted to bring out the Cordoba a few years sooner. The earlier success of the Cordoba would have given them the money to move the seventies’ models (including the Omnrizon) ahead at least a year or two and could have made all the difference in the trajectory of the company during the malaise years. I dare say that it might not even have been necessary for Iacocca to have been brought onboard.
Great piece. Haven’t seen one of these in ages. These were a good looking car, the redesign for 1980 was poorly done. They just planed off the curves and made it all straight and square. I never got a ride in one, and they were out of my price range when new, but a buddy had a ’76 or so, in Navy Blue. He always got to work early and got the premium parking spot to show off his wheels.
This may have been the last one I have seen of these, in the wild at least. Square quad headlights make me think this is a 78 or 79. This one carries a historic vehicle license plate.
Chrysler so needs a game changer like this in 2021. Even just a verification of a pulse would be newsworthy.
My brother had a 78 I think Cordoba he toured the US west coast in it never missed a beat but handled like a bag of shit compared to what he was used to, but from A to B via XYZ &Q it was a comfy reliable ride.
The first gen was one of the best looking cars of its time, which admittedly is a very low bar. I agree with the posters who think it’s a great candidate for an engine swap. I’d skip the manual tranny, though; a personal luxo coupe needs a slushbox for cruising, one arm resting on the sill.
I had a second generation 1980 Cordoba Crown that replaced a ruined by freak accident at home ’67 Sport Fury. The Cordoba came from a used car lot and it looked really nice and did well on the test drive. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a journey of mixed feelings about this car. People I knew who had them loved them and I knew for a fact they had trouble free experiences with their Slant Six and 318 powered Cordobas. I was not to have that experience. Between weird engine compartment wiring gremlins, the nightmare smog version of the Carter BBD and the rust my dad and I found later underneath along with figuring out all of the emission control gremlins I missed that Sport Fury even more.
That said, as a time traveller if I could have bought the car new, I would have ordered a 1980 Cordoba very carefully and also at the top of the list do a vinyl top delete. They look better as a slick top and would have spared me the rust later. Would have also double checked the panels comprising the rear wheel well and make sure there were no gaps to throw water under the back seat down into the driver side rear floor board. Imagine how I felt when I found how bad it was under the carpet.
While I had the car, I did swap in the 318 my dad and I built for my ’67. The engine came from my ’70 Fury parts car and got bored out thirty over, the crank turned and a mild cam so I still had good idle at stoplight. The pre-smog 318 with a 1967 Stromberg 2bbl doing temporary duty was like warp drive compared to the original engine. Between that, and supplementing the front sway bar with a rear one and gas shocks and better than Walmart quality tires, the Cordoba suddenly became fun to drive. That said, I could not get rid of the electrical gremlins and the rust was spreading so I traded it in for a ’89 LeBaron Coupe. During the fiasco with the floorboard, I bought my dad’s ’79 St. Regis which I have to this day. The heads from the 1980 Cordoba 318 cured a problem I was having with the St. Regis valves rattling. (the ’79 heads were under a recall as it turned out that never got corrected until my dad and I did it in 2007)
The Cordoba was gifted one of the all-time greatest television commercials in the history of autodom; 45 years later EVERYBODY remembers it, it’s hard to think of the Cordoba without recalling those adverts, and they undoubtedly did much to help sell the car in its time (when every other Chrysler was flailing). The only oddity is that they didn’t fit the car with the Soft Corinthian Leather that Mr. Montalban was extolling.
The car itself would have been good if not for the industry’s troubles with meeting the stiffening pollution, safety, and fuel economy standards. Looking back, it seems the necessary tech was there but they were reluctant to use it. In particular, why wasn’t electronic fuel injection fully adopted by 1976, at least for upscale cars like this one? Even with crude 1970s electronics, they had to be more effective than carburetors.
For American eyes a Chrysler Cordoba is a compact sized car , yet is measured as standard . For the other continents’ people around the world , a car like this means impossible sized . Althought every now and then these mobiles were offered to be ordered by special clients in Europe and elsewhere , facts said they were quite rarely seen . But when you saw one down the curb , this is because only one owner per year had ordered it : the US’ Embassy personnel , diplomatic license plate of course
I have no shame for my love for the Cordoba. The ’76, with its slim vertical bars in its grille, is my favorite model year. Impractical? Probably. I still occasionally daydream about taking a cruise in one into downtown Chicago via Lake Shore Drive to Michigan Avenue. One day, perhaps, though it would be tricky to fit one in the parking below my building.
Stupid Chrysler was so confused by the exploding brougham market, and so NOT A PLAYER, that originally it planned to bring out the Cordoba as a PLYMOUTH? What was wrong with those fools?
Chrysler didn’t seem to want the brougham market at all. They were so late, they nearly went under. Cordoba saved them, but then, Cordoba, had it been released five years earlier, would have prevented Chrysler from ever getting into that marketing hole to begin with.
Ford’s Thunderbird and Gran Torino, Mercury’s Cougar, Lincoln’s Mark, Oldsmobile’s Cutlass, Chevrolet’s Monte Carlo, and Pontiac’s Grand Prix all precedes Cordoba by years. Yet Chrysler still attempted to sell intermediate coupes that look like they were designed for drag racing, not boulevard cruising. Chrysler easily could have sold 300,000 Cordoba in the years between 1970 and 1975 – but didn’t.
Even with the success of LTD and Caprice, Chrysler’s lame Dodge Monaco and Plymouth Fury III were half-hearted attempts at luxury. Chrysler seemed to believe that a stripper New Yorker and a stripper Newport Royale were a good idea at a time when their competition was LOADING UP THE FAUX LUXURY that sold cars and earned profits. Our 1970 Chrysler New Yorker was about as brougham as a Chevy Impala. People were willing to pay for faux luxury, but Chrysler couldn’t deliver it – amazing!
It is as though Chrysler wasn’t even trying.
So Cordoba was a hit because it was always going to be a hit. What happened by 1980? Chrysler never established itself in the brougham coupe field well enough to keep Cordoba going. Dodge still couldn’t sell a Charger SE, a Magnum, or a Mirada to save its life while Mercury couldn’t meet Cougar demands throughout those years.
Cordoba was the perfect Chrysler. Too bad Chrysler was too stupid to figure that out until practically too late. Sheesh. By 1981, that group of clowns deserved to file bankruptcy. They failed to see the NEON writings on the wall.