If you won the lottery, I mean really won the lottery, how would you spend the money? If I really won the lottery, I'd take twenty-grand of it and blow it on this gorgeous 1977, "triple-black", Chrysler Cordoba.
Really? Of course not. I mean, there might be worse ways to spend money, found, won or heaven forbid actually earned, but twenty-grand on a mint condition Cordoba? Yikes. Average "high retail" pegs this at $6,400 and I might go $7,500 and the wife, bless her heart, might greenlight $8000 given the condition it's in and what these cars mean to me, but $20,000? Sorry, Mr. Rork. No way that's going to happen.
We've heard the stories how young athlete's blow their unfathomably large bonus checks on cars, boats, houses, trips, blow, women and who knows what else. I'm not saying they or lottery winners shouldn't celebrate their newly found wealth with an extravagant purchase or two, but they have to keep their wits about themselves. And my spending twenty-large on this is not me keeping my wits about myself.
Even in this market I believe buying an old or "classic car", I'll stop short of saying that one of my beloved 1975-1977 Cordoba's are "classic", as an investment isn't the best way to burn a wad of cash. And if this was priced accordingly, I might, just might be tempted to seriously consider it, but I can't do the mental gymnastics work to make this work for me at 20G.
Chrysler introduced these cars for model-year 1975 as a salvo at the burgeoning personal luxury car market that General Motors had a strangle hold on. Using GM's formula of using an intermediate-size platform rather than a full-size one, Chrysler used their star-crossed "B-body" on these, designers whipped up a car that, in my opinion, actually worked quite well aesthetically in spite of not having a single original line on it. Derivative styling be damned, or whether people just loved emulating Ricardo Montalban, through the end of the 1977 model year, Cordoba sales accounted for some sixty percent of all Chrysler sales.
Ah, but of course, Chrysler couldn't leave well enough alone as for 1978, they botched the mid-production-cycle refresh. Any distinctiveness Cordoba had went out the opera window and an already large automobile looked even bigger than it actually was. Sales cratered, the second gas crisis struck in 1979, Cordoba was switched to Chrysler's J-body (think elongated F-body or Plymouth Volare chassis) and the moniker got life-flited to hospice by the end of 1983. Just as well.
I'd love to at least take this grand old dame for a spin if nothing else for the nostalgia trip. Or just to take a selfie with it. I have never seen a Cordoba at a car show. Seriously. Even MOPAR specific shows. I know. Odd. These were like everywhere in the 1970's so you'd think that wouldn't be the case.
I had a 1975 that I've blogged if not waxed about incessantly. It was not a great car, and I had an inordinate amount of trouble with it but it's hard for me to convey just how important that car was to me and what it represented in my life. That being a transition from my woe-be-gone youth into adulthood where anything it seemed was possible. And all that would come to imply.
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