1980 Chrysler Cordoba - Clanging The Land Yacht Bell

Chrysler was more than fashionably late to the key party that largely defined domestic automobilia in the 1970's. Recycling the name of a trim level Chrysler used on 1970 Newport's, Chrysler found themselves, and almost inexplicably so, with a hit on their platform shoes with their 1975 Chrysler Cordoba, hawked flawlessly by a pre-Fantasy Island Ricardo Montalban, in a series of cinematically delightful commercials. Whether it was Tatoo's boss, the styling of "Cordoba" or a combination of the two, Cordoba sold so well from 1975 through 1977 it accounted for sixty some percent of all Chrysler sales.

Maybe it was planned obsolescence rearing it's ugly head but as was often the case years ago, Chrysler couldn't leave well enough alone. Subtle as the changes were, a thorough updating of Cordoba's styling for 1978 botched Cordoba's handsomely clean, distinctive good looks. Combine the update, what even a Chrysler designer described as tacky, along with Cordoba having to share showroom floor space with the new, far more manageably sized and almost as luxurious Chrysler LeBaron and sales of "soft, Corinthian Leather" dropped faster than sales of pet rocks. 

The personal luxury car market being as lucrative as it was back then, Chrysler stayed in the game through the great downsizing epoch. Like General Motors and Ford, by 1980, Chrysler had to downsize as a new wave government mandated fuel economy regulations went into effect. Mr. Roarke was back on TV pitching an all-new, smaller Cordoba, albeit sans the exotic locales of the first series of commercials, and claimed to have "liked what they did to his car". Ha. Amazing what we'll say when someone is paying you handsomely to do so.

For us fans of the bigger is better idiom as it once applied to cars the 1980 Cordoba should have been a (sorry) huge hit.  Losing just two inches of wheelbase and not even six inches of overall length, on paper, this was our kind of downsizing. So, what the hell went wrong?

Frankly, in general the problem was the styling. Or lack thereof. Whereas the original Cordoba was arguably a tastefully restrained 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the 1980 Cordoba looked as though it was designed by engineers who wouldn't know a Mahl Stick from a T-square. Aside from the fender arches, horrible fake wire wheels and tires there isn't a single curved line on this car. Interestingly, the fake convertible top on our 1980 here, what was known back then as a "carriage top", actually helps to make it appear not quite as boxy as it actually was.

The 1980 Cordoba's problems were more than sheet metal deep too. In an age when folks were seriously fuel economy conscious, not unlike how these days how seriously we take being safe if and when we have to go out and into public, Cordoba's mediocre (at best) gas mileage and clumsy handling dynamics, thanks to its 1960 Valiant derived underpinnings, further curtailed sales. These cars were still too heavy and their crude engines, not only provided stone slow performance, they slurped gas only marginally less so than Cordoba's of old did.

Chrysler built two other personal luxury coupes off what they referred to as their "J-body" chassis (aka stretched to the max '60 Valiant) and in my opinion both the 1980-1983 Dodge Mirada and 1981-1983 Imperial by Chrysler had a sense of dangerous, cool elan, especially the Mirada, that the previous Cordoba had in spades; well, the 1975-1977 versions did. Both sold like ice tea to eskimos just like the Cordoba. did. Sales of GM and Ford's smaller (and ugly) personal luxury cars were way off too clanging the land yacht bell that the days of the personal luxury car were numbered.

Chrysler pulled the plug on all three after 1983. The market segment that was once so hot in the 1970's shrank to a niche and died a miserably slow death finally petering out when Chevrolet rolled the last Monte Carlo in 2007. Ricardo Montalban, who was a somewhat known screen actor who was doing traveling stage shows when he was discovered by Chrysler executives when on tour with a traveling show in Detroit in 1974, continued to work for Chrysler pitching their myriad K-car wares through 1993.