2003 Chevrolet Malibu - You Can't Ask For More Than That

Back at the end of February, down at Ohio University where our younger son goes to school, the Camaro in the foreground was demolished when a woman suffered a seizure, lost control of what she was driving and crashed into a Toyota Sequoia that was parked in front of it. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. 

The force of the collision pushed the Sequoia into and up onto the front end of the Camaro. To make matters worse, the Camaro was pushed into the vehicle behind it causing damage to the rear end. Suffice to say, our Camaro, the first of the two 1996 Camaro's I had bought for my boys, was totaled. While it was a fitting end to a car that gave us nothing but trouble, the silver lining was that the woman's insurance company paid us over six thousand dollars for our loss and inconvenience. Hot damn. Seriously, my wife and I couldn't have asked for a better end to that car. By the way, we've heard the woman who had the seizure is fine. Godspeed. 

With a wad of windfall in hand, though, you'd think it would be easy to find a suitable and sensible used car to replace it. No such luck. Here in 2019, we quickly deduced that six grand is about half of what you need to find anything decent. However, that fact did not deter my wife and I, actually more me than her, from finding something suitable for less, ideally far less, than what the insurance company paid us.

I learned or relearned some valuable lessons about car shopping in the two months it took me to find this anonymous looking 2003 Chevrolet Malibu for an all in price of $3,500. First, shopping for an inexpensive used car is an arduous, time consuming process that requires an extreme amount of patience - of which I have precious little of. Secondly, this being north east Ohio, most cars up here that are more than ten years old have some sort of rust issue. Shoot, the brine they treat roads with here is so caustic to automobiles and trucks that I've seen vehicles three or four years that old with rust bubbles. What's worse is that often times the body of the car will be fine but the under carriage looks like something brought up from the Titanic. Beware. Thirdly, despite the drop in the number of people who smoke, you'd swear there were more people than ever who still smoke based on the number of "smokey" old and not so old cars I looked at, smelled and walked away from. Maybe it's just that people who smoke drive old cars? Fourthly, small cross overs are extremely popular and therefore very expensive.

Another thing that dragged out out our search was that we had no focus; we looked at not only a large number of different vehicles but different vehicle types. That's not something I usually do since when I shop for a car it's almost always for a particular vehicle or vehicle type. Our younger son, whom the vehicle was for, wasn't picky but he said if we could, find him something that was a "small SUV" like a Pontiac Vibe. Really. A Pontiac Vibe. That was an odd request from a kid who couldn't tell a Buick Century from a Dodge Viper. Turned out a friend of his at Ohio University had one and he liked it. Ever the dutiful parent, I did find a handful of "Vibes" and even the Toyota it's based in our price range but they were mostly all beaten to death. What's more, in the one or two that seemed drivable, instead of a transcendent driving experience like I've had with so many Asian cars, I found they drove like cheap, weird Tupperware bowls. So much for "Oh, What a Feeling".

All our son really wanted, and bless his heart he was not really choosy, was something with four doors so his friends could get into and out of it easily. Also, something he could haul his "stuff" with. In his words, "dad, please - something normal". Ah, the kid knows his old man so well. I found this Malibu for sale. oddly enough, literally around the corner from where I now work. It was listed for $3,295, had "only" 97,000 miles on it and thanks to it being a Pennsylvania car it was rust free. I mean, this thing is all but pristine where it really counts - underneath. They don't use the brine they use in Cleveland to treat their roads. After the scores of rust buckets I'd come across I couldn't get my check book out fast enough to lock this up when I found it. I signed as quick as I could on the dotted line. I even had a mechanic look at it and even he was amazed at how great the car was.

It's ironic I bought this car given that years ago my wife and I had leased one of these brand new. Despite the car not giving us a second of trouble during the time we had it, we despised the damn thing. After three years with a Nissan Maxima prior to that, stepping down to a Chevrolet Malibu was humiliating and I think I took my frustration out on the little car. However, given my modest salary and my wife taking care of the boys full time, it was perfectly fine. I never took to it but in the end it was fine.

Our "new" 2003 Chevrolet Malibu rides and handles just as primitively as I remember our '99 did but this little car has a remarkably spacious interior. Especially compared to a 1996 Camaro. And look! Leather! Well, whatever this rubberized stuff GM called leather back then is. Of course, this car is  not perfect. The driver's seat cushion is crushed, apparently a previous owner was on the large side, and the turn signals worked intermittently. I fixed that. Aside from that it's pretty ok. Best of all our automotively ambivalent non car crazy younger son loves it and is extremely appreciative.

You can't ask for more than that.

1995 Lexus SC400 - Lightening Strikes

Lexus is as synonymous today with "luxury" as Mercedes, BMW and Audi are. In retrospect, it's incredible that Toyota was as successful as they were in launching a luxury brand in 1989 that was an aspirational purchase right from the get to. While there were fewer luxury brands thirty years ago than there are today not to mention fewer vehicle types that could be construed as "luxury",  we only need to look at Hyundai's struggles with Genesis to appreciate how Toyota's success in establishing Lexus as a status symbol. And of all the fabulous Lexus models Toyota has launched over the years, the 1992-1996 Lexus SC was the one akin to striking me like a bolt of lightening. Especially the SC400.

A couple of weeks ago my wife saw what she described as an "old Lexus" for sale in the driveway of this big house on the "lake side" of Lake Road. While I gave her mad snaps for knowing at least it was an older Lexus, she couldn't tell me anything more about it other than it was black. Thinking it had to be an ES300 or at best an LS400, that it was any car for sale in the driveway of a home on the "money" side of Lake Road let alone a Lexus warranted a drive by after dinner to check out. Imagine my delight when I found it to be an SC and not just any SC, mind you, but an SC400. And an SC400 that appeared to be, in the deepening dusk, in extraordinarily good condition.

We honestly didn't plan on buying this car, good lord we have seven cars at the present time, but when we saw it in the daylight several days later and drove it for the better part of an hour, we couldn't not make offer. With a reasonable asking price and a mere 75,000 miles on the odometer, we settled on what we decided was a fair price with the owner. The only thing the owner disclosed was "wrong" with the car, ironically, was that the Nakamichi sound system was not working. How hard could that be to fix, right? And the "TRAC" light came on too. That had to mean something was up with the traction control system; easy stuff, right? Ha. More on that no doubt in upcoming blogs about this car.

During my time behind the wheel we hardly noticed the radio not working as we chatted away admiring the sound of the engine and the near intoxicating aroma of the twenty-four year old leather lined interior. My wife didn't say a word to me during her time behind the wheel. Ever the chatterbox, if she's quite she's either upset about something or intrigued. In this case it was the latter.

If you read vintage reviews of these cars you'd swear they were the second coming of the automobile. And in a lot of ways they were. While they certainly didn't do anything literally different than any other automobile on the market at the time or since, after all it's just a mode of transportation, what they were was as close to automotive perfection as was possible back then. Perfect in terms of combining engineering, assembly, durability and world class driving dynamics. The fact they were also beautiful to behold was the icing on the cake or chrome on the bumper - not that there has ever been any chrome on any Lexus bumper.

The darnedest thing about this car is that it doesn't photograph as magnificently as it comes across in person. Maybe it's because its black subduing its subtle beauty or the fact it has, curiously, no rear spoiler. I don't get it. When I sent pictures of it to our sons, our older son, above, who's fairly ga-ga over higher end anything and especially cars, was ambivalent towards it. Once he saw it, though, there's been no separating him from it.

New York Yankees Top Hat Logo - Yankee Doodle Dandy

To celebrate my New York Yankees loving older son's twenty-first birthday back in March of 2018, I took him to a couple of Yankees spring training games at Steinbrenner Stadium in Tampa, Florida. While we took a stroll around the ballpark, which is a wonderful ode to the New York Yankees rich and glorious past, I took this picture of him under the Yankees "Top Hat" on the back of the stadium. Afterwards he said to me, "Dad, you should make that". Well, son, if you insist. 

Some men work in oil, clay or profanity; I prefer splintering, unforgiving plywood and the thicker the better. While I'm hardly a master at anything let alone something that could be remotely construed as art, over the years I've created a number of wooden wall "art" of our favorite sports teams for our man cave. And although I'm running out of wall space, like the NHL adding another rung to the Stanley Cup, there's always a way to find more room.  

Ever the crack historian, over the month or so I spent sawing, sanding, wood filling, painting and dodging broken jig and scroll saw blades making this, I began to wonder about the history of the Yankees Top Hat. A logo almost as synonymous with one of the world's most famous sports franchises as the interlocking "NY". Interestingly, I came to find out for a team with a history more than one hundred years deep, things being relative, it's not that old.

It all started in 1946 when then Yankees owner Lee MacPhail wanted his team to be at the forefront of a huge wave of patriotic sentiment and a booming economy following World War II. Along with a number of renovations he made to a then twenty plus years old Yankee Stadium, he commissioned renowned sports artist Lon Keller to create a new "primary" logo for the Yankees. One that was, whether intentional or not, devoid of any association with New York. Was this a ploy to make the Yankees the first "America's Team" or a serendipitous marketing misstep? Incidentally, as famous as this logo is, the Yankees have used it sparingly over the years on their regular season home and away uniforms.

While Mr. Keller never claimed his artwork was original, he never disclosed his inspiration for it. As I did my research, I was surprised that it obviously stemmed from a generous amount of poetic license taken with the movie poster artwork for the 1942 film, "Yankee Doodle Dandy".  Note the angle of the star spangled hat on James Cagney's head. Eyes on your own paper, Mr. Keller. 

Further inspiration no doubt coming from a B-17 dubbed "Yankee Doodle Dandy".  Note, again, the angle of the hat on the plane. The baton or "walking stick" was a nice added touch that Mr. Keller re-purposed as a bat for his Yankees logo. Life imitated art when James Cagney christened the plane.

This Yankee Doodle Dandy flew a number of successful missions during the War, particularly during the Battle of Midway in June of 1942. Sadly, it crashed upon take off on Guadalcanal and was destroyed  killing two airmen in August of 1943. 

Not unlike a remake of a song that became a smash hit that only vaguely sounds like the original if at all, it's interesting that something that was clearly derivative become far more famous than what it was based on. 

What's next to jig saw out of plywood to hang in our man cave? Not sure but what's probably for sure is that no matter what it is, it won't be as difficult to do or whose inspiration was as historically significant. But never say never. 

1965 Chevrolet Corvair - Beautiful at Any Speed

In my very humble opinion, the first Chevrolet Corvairs, those manufactured between 1960 and 1964, might as well have been props from a 1950's sci-fi movie. Although...in fairness, I do like the roof line on the coupes but the rest of the car looked like something straight out of "The Thing From Another World". 

The four door sedans were even worse. That backwards ball cap of a roof may have worked on an Impala but on a smaller canvas, much like the over styled and under sized "Valiant by Chrysler", it's just awful. Look, this car is so ugly even the models in this ad can't stand to look at it. Especially in pea soup green and oh, those fat white walls. That these cars had air cooled engines mounted way out back made them even more bizarre. Remarkably, it's said that this design was inspiring to European car designers. Go figure. 

All was forgiven, though, with GM's reimagining of Corvair for 1965. Just like that and incredibly so considering what came before it, what had been a jab in the eye was suddenly the belle of the ball and probably the best looking thing Chevrolet had to offer in 1965; high praise considering how handsome most of GM's lineup was that year.  These Corvair coupes are so elegantly simple and gorgeous, I can almost look past the engine in the trunk thing. Almost.

While Corvair's rear engine, rear wheel drive layout allowed for a nearly flat floor thus giving the diminutive car an abundance of interior room, it also meant that Corvair had an inherent propensity for understeer. Understeer is a phenomenon when an automobile's rear end swings out and over takes the front in turns. It's practically impossible in a car with its engine in the front and is rear wheel drive; same goes for front engine, front wheel drive cars. Possible? Sure. But really difficult to do especially on dry roads. It's the opposite of oversteer where a car continues to go straight after the steering wheel is turned right or left. Some refer to oversteer as "plowing". 

Although GM's redesign of Corvair for 1965 included a rethink of the suspension, the debut of the updated car coincided with the release of Ralph Nader's seminal tome on automotive safety; or the lack thereof on cars so at the time in the United States and The Big Four's arrogant reluctance to even offer safety belts in vehicles. In the first chapter Nader indirectly points to Corvair's understeering when he referred to the car as a "one car accident". 

What exacerbated the 1960-1964 Corvair's propensity to understeer was GM's stunning decision to not equip the car with an anti roll bar to offset extreme changes in camber in certain turns. What's more, all '60-'64 Corvairs employed a semi-independent, swing-axle design which lacked a universal joint at the wheel/hub end of the axle. Excessive camber change, again during very extreme cornering, could cause the rear wheels to tuck under and trigger a spin. GM changed the design of the suspension to a fully independent design for 1965 but Corvair's tailpipe was cooked. 

Despite the changes GM made to Corvair for 1965 that made it a much safer if not excellent car, public sentiment as a result of "Unsafe at Any Speed" dropped Corvair sales by half from 1965 to 1966. 

What's more, although Corvair remained in production through 1969, GM brass ordered no further development on Corvair after 1965. That was due in part, no doubt, to Nader's book but also since GM was developing two cars simultaneously to compete with Ford's game changing Mustang which, ironically, is said to have been inspired by the Corvair. 

Although "Unsafe at Any Speed" made the Chevrolet Corvair infamous, it lead to sweeping changes in automotive safety and the establishment of the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1966. Meanwhile, most if not all of the 1965 Corvair's design cues, particularly its luscious "Coke bottle" styling, found its way onto a number of GM designs in the late '60's and early '70's. That being said and with tongue firmly placed into fender, it's safe to say that the 1965 Corvair was "Beautiful at Any Speed".  

It's been concluded that all rear engine cars, which are not to be confused with "mid engine" cars where the engine is literally in the middle of the car, are, again, inherently prone to understeer. In the right hands understeer can be handled quite easily and in auto racing it's advantageous. However, in the wrong hands even the best of rear engine cars can be dangerous. 

1964 Plymouth Valiant - Defiant

Starting in 1960, GM, Ford and Chrysler began building small cars to compete with  import makes and models and AMC's fairly successful lineup of smaller cars. Chrysler even went so far as to create a new make of small cars they called "Valiant by Chrysler". However, the venture lasted only one year due to designs that were either too avante-garde or just too weird for most people's taste. Certainly not wanting to abandon the burbling smaller car market, Chrysler folded Valiant into Plymouth starting in 1961; easy enough to do too considering Valiant's were sold along Chrysler's and Plymouth's in the same showrooms in 1960. For 1963, Chrysler massaged out most of Valiant's inherent strangeness and came up with a benign if dorky looking little car. Our subject is a 1964 model.

Where the 1960-1962 Valiant's were obnoxiously expressive, the redesigned cars for 1963 were so bland it was as if the designers were defiant in their steadfast execution of a corporate edict to tone things down. The washed out yellow paint on our subject, black biscuits for tires and faceless, drab wheel covers certainly don't help matters either. At least it has vestigial tail fins but those would be sanded down come Valiant's total redesign to a boxy and even more generic model come 1967.

Chrysler's mid year introduction of an optional 273 cubic inch V-8 engine might have made our subject here an interesting little sleeper but, alas, she has but a 170 cubic inch in line "slant six" making all of 101 horsepower and 155 pounds of torque. Those are SAE gross ratings too so real world numbers are even less. If cars today are only considered amply powered if they can go from zero to sixty in seven seconds or less, imagine one that struggled to hit sixty in more than twice that time if not more. That's not to discount the engineering marvel that was Chrysler's first overhead valve six cylinder engine canted (or slanted) 30 degrees so it could fit under Valiant's hood, but still, 101 horsepower even in the early to mid 1960's was not a lot of go.

Our subject can't win for trying either. It's another example of how most sedan based convertibles don't work aesthetically top up or down. And that's to say nothing of how the chopped top makes the car shake and rattle on the road, the added weight of additional bracing impedes the performance of an already under-powered car and the swirling wind with the top down beats the daylights out of driver and passenger(s). Like I've said time and time again, people like the idea of a convertible but in reality they make miserable daily drivers and are best as weekend cars or even better, as rentals. 

Being the son of "Greatest Generation" parents, I was reared on the "Bigger is Better" axiom that "The Big Three" took to the bank for the better part of twenty years after World War II. Coming of driving age during the height of what is referred to as "The Malaise Era" as well, I looked at small cars with contempt - not hard to do given what they looked like back then regardless of the fact they were, relatively speaking, actually pretty good cars. 

But they weren't good enough. With questionable designs and even worse execution, it's not hard to see why the Japanese  have dominated small cars sales in the United States for the last sixty years. Also no wonder that they have done so well in the midsize market. You could argue that today, in general, American cars are the equal or better of imports and that's great and all but they've done so just as consumer tastes have shifted to "do it all and do everything well" cross over sport utility vehicles. A vehicle segment that continues to boom and is also dominated by imports. 

2019 Honda Accord - To CVT or Not To CVT...THAT Is The Question

When I was between jobs I'd taken a part time job working for a company that works with new car dealerships to move cars around. I'd be called to shuttle cars around at a dealership as well as between dealerships and even going to auction to pick up for sale what the dealership bought for later sale. For a car guy like me, the fringe benefit was the considerable wheel time with brand new cars. Fun. Well, that actually got old working exclusively with one dealership and for the most part, save for the time I went to the auction, one line of cars. In my case that was Honda's.

After several weeks schlepping Honda CR-V's, HR-V's, Accords, Civics and Ridegelines (I never got to drive a Pilot or Odyssey although I'm sure they ride and handle very similar to a Ridgeline), I have come to two conclusions. First, if you drive older vehicles like I do, you're missing out on a lot. Cars today, even the biggish Honda Ridgeline that I drove, are magnificent. Overall they perform at levels that would have been considered "sports car like" ten years ago not to mention twenty years ago. However, and I knew this beforehand but now I'm 100% convinced, my feelings about "constant velocity transmissions", or what are referred to as "CVT's" has been cemented; they are the bane of the modern, mostly Japanese, automobile. And depending on the application, Honda's turbocharged 1.5 liter 4 cylinder engine is simply over matched by just about everything they drop it into save for a Civic with a six speed manual.

That's a shame too considering how splendid most other aspects of the Hondas I drove where. Oh, and styling. Nothing Honda makes stirs my drink but that's beside the point. Folks who drive Honda's aren't buying them for their flashy looks. Anyway, oye, those damn CVT's.

I'd find it hard to believe that even the most clueless of drivers would not notice that some thing's askew with, for instance, a Honda Accord "EX-L" with a CV-T. The EX-L I drove yesterday was loaded to the front grill with every modern contraption available today on a car. Adaptive cruise control, lane change monitoring, emergency braking, 700 air bags and who knows what else. The one thing it wasn't equipped with was the optional 2.0 liter turbo engine making 252 horsepower and backed up with a god's green, earth, gear driven, 10 speed automatic. Funny how when it comes down to a vehicle that is supposed to be performance orientated they use a conventional transmission. And one with 10 forward gears. However, Honda uses a CVT in a 306 horsepower version of their venerable Civic Si so I believe Honda is eventually going to use CVT's across their entire lineup.

So, what is a CVT? Well, rather than bore you with a whole bunch of blah-bitty blah-bitty about pulley's and ratios and how CVT's differ from conventional transmissions with gears and fixed ratios, and you can read more about the damn things here, the idea behind a CVT is that they're supposed to enable a vehicle's engine to operate at peak efficiency all the time. Ok. I get that. But that comes at the expense of overall drivability. Especially in a heavy car that doesn't have enough motor; like the new Accord with the turbo 1.5.

For starters, you'd think a modern car with allegedly 192 horsepower would move off the line with some sense of urgency. Nope. Not an Accord with the 1.5 turbo and a CVT. It's almost as if the car's power train is distracted. "Oh, sorry. You want to move? Ummm, ok. Let's see...revs have to hit 3,000 rpm before we have enough torque to really go and...oh, here you go". That unresponsiveness is also accompanied by an engine drone, more like a moan, that if you didn't know better, makes the car sound and feel as though there's something wrong with the car.

There's an "S" and an "L" selection available on the shifter, I assumed they were for "sport" and "low" but putting the shifter in "S", for instance, while it did help improve "pick up" or what is referred to as "step in", RPM's jumped up more than 1,000 no matter how fast I drove the car. So much for efficiency. To get the performance you'd want your wallet gets slapped. This is progress?

On the open interstate and with the little 1.5 spinning freely, a stab of the gas does give you a pleasant push and the car passes eagerly but there's no mistaking the car for a Camaro SS - not that the Accord is supposed to be that but you get my point. As far as I'm concerned it's the mid 1970's all over again with still bloated hulks were saddled with performance robbing catalytic converters, low compression, smog gear saddled engines and microscopic axle ratios. Buyers back then had to be sold on "slow" being a good thing since a slow car was supposed to be good on gas.

Now, a car with a CVT with a really powerful engine, like the Nissan Altima I drove last Christmas, is a different story. That Altima moved with all the verve you'd expect out of a car with an absurdly good power to weight ratio and I was surprised to learn the car had a CVT. No surprise since Nissan finagled that CVT in the V-6 Altima to perform like a gear driven transmission. The CVT was seamless however, that overpowered red lump got only about 24 miles per gallon. Big deal. I have to ask again why so much time and effort is spent on CVT's in the first place. Especially with these crazy, eight, nine and ten speed automatics available today that really deliver on two attributes that years ago were mutually exclusive; performance and economy.

Mercifully, the Big Three for the most part have eschewed the use of CVT's. Ford used a CVT on their "Five Hundred" they peddled years ago, Jeep used one on older Compass' and Patriot's. Saturn used one has well on a smattering of makes and models. Domestics with CVT's have been (mostly) "captive" or rebadged imports.

I find that amazing seeing how for years now The Big Three have looked to Asia and Europe for hand holding on how to design, engineer and build automobiles. That's not a bad thing either but you'd think that CVT's would be coming to a domestic automobile near you in the very near future. But...there appears to be no sign of that. And that's a good thing as well.

As far as foreign makes and models go, well...to CVT or Not To CVT...THAT Is The Question. And I'll pass.

1976 Dodge Charger - Would a Cordoba By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?

 

The Chrysler Corporation certainly took their time responding to the personal luxury car juggernaut in the 1970's, an epoch that evolved out of the muscle car fad of the 1960's. Like a sophomore coming late to a keg stand, when they finally arrived in 1975 they came with four personal luxury cars simultaneously. All of them following General Motor's recipe of a long hood and short decked automobile built on a mid size chassis; Chrysler using their ancient but rugged mid size "B body"  chassis that could trace its roots back to Chrysler's ill fated downsizing of 1962. Chrysler, the division, had the most popular Chrysler personal luxury car with their Cordoba. A lot of the Cordoba's sales success was that it was hawked magnificently in a series of TV commercials by a pre "Fantasy Island" Ricardo Montalban. 

 



 

Across the showroom floor in Chrysler-Plymouth dealerships, Plymouth recycled their "Fury" moniker this time gluing it to a rather handsome hard top. They even peddled, for 1975 only, a "Road Runner" version with a "heavy duty" suspension and a standard 318 cubic inch V-8 with a two barrel carburetor. Somewhat more powerful engines were available than the 135 horsepower 318 but none them came anywhere near the fire breathing MOPAR powerhouses of even just five years prior. By the way, love the hardtop on this car and yes, those rear quarter windows rolled up and down. The 1975 Plymouth Fury was also available as an ungainly looking four door sedan. Oh, and starting in 1975, buyers were asked to not confuse the mid size Fury with the full sized and hold the "d", "Gran Fury".

 

 

Stand alone "middle child" Dodge got two personal cars for 1975. There was the Coronet coupe (above) that not only looked a lot like Plymouth's Fury coupe, the four door version was all but indistinguishable as well from Fury four door sedan. The big difference between the Coronet and Fury lines for 1975 was that Dodge also built a Coronet station wagon. 

 



 Curiously, Dodge also got a personal luxury car that sure looked like a Chrysler Cordoba. Well, for all intents in purposes, it was a Cordoba with save for a different front grill, tail lights and interior door panels. Some versions even had the Dodge trident logo on the steering wheel. To add insult to injury Dodge stooped so low as to call it "Charger". The pain. Oh, the pain. Would a Cordoba by any other name smell as sweet?

 

 

To say the 1975 Dodge Charger was not an attractive automobile is to say the say thing about the Chrysler Cordoba; and you know how I feel about the Cordoba. However, as they say, "what's in a name?" Well, in most cases it means nothing but in the case of Chrysler's four personal luxury cars in 1975, their 1975 Cordoba/Charger (and Coronet/Fury)  was the embodiment of badge engineering gone completely and utterly wrong. In comparison, General Motor's personal luxury cars had a familial resemblance but they were all distinctively different automobiles.

 

 

 

Legend has it that Richard Petty hated the new Charger so much he refused to drive it in NASCAR races. Instead, he drove a 1972 based Charger until, per NASCAR's provincial rules allowing discontinued makes and models to be raced for only three years after its body style is discontinued, 1978. Dodge, perhaps taking a note from "The King", redesigned what was the Charger for 1978 and rechristened it with another famed MOPAR moniker, "Magnum". Mattered little to Mr. Petty. He disliked that car as well and in 1978 switched allegiances to Pontiac and their new "Grand Prix". Taste, as always being like armpits and if nothing, being on the taste buds of the beholder.

 

 

Unfortunately, while 60% of Chrysler sales in 1975 were purportedly Cordoba's, and that success could be directly tied to marketing, Chrysler's quadruplicate of personal luxury cars did little to stave off the company's financial ruin and eventual near death. Cordoba sales dropped precipitously in 1976 and 1977 before a fairly extensive redesign of the original in 1978 that did away with a lot of what made the 1975 model distinctive. Again, that mattered little since they had issues larger than what a phalanx of niche targeted two door sedans could possibly remedy.

 

 

No doubt Chrysler's shameless badge jobs on these cars were due to their being strapped for cash after nearly two decades of bad decisions, horrible quality, bad timing and bad luck. They hardly had the resources to design, engineer and tool up to produce four distinctively different automobiles for their myriad divisions like GM was able to do.