“I know something of those years. Remember, it was a time of great dreams, of great aspiration.”
Ricardo Montalban as Khan
Some of the most interesting characters in movies and shows are the tragic ones; their triumphs are matched only by even greater defeats. Meth-cooking assistant Jessie Pinkman in the series Breaking Bad is a perfect example; literally beaten to within an inch of his life on numerous occasions but still miraculously surviving to see another day. In the automotive world, easily one of the greatest long-suffering-but-still-standing figures in the smallest of the Big Three: Chrysler. Well, I mean Daimler-Chrysler. Sorry, Cerberus. No, it’s Stellantis now, right? See what I mean?
Chrysler has certainly seen peaks and valleys, including some big-hit automobiles just like Ford and General Motors have had. The difference is while the Blue Oval brand can proudly display something like a shiny 1965 Mustang as one of their greatest successes and have the public fawn all over it at a museum, the biggest sales winners from Chrysler tend to be cars people either forget about today or simply don’t look back on with great fondness. Sadly, few found big hits like a Dodge Aries K, an Omni, or the off-the-charts market dominating 1984 Caravan minivan to be ultra-desirable cars then or now, and that’s a shame (word of note: I’m aware that Jeep products were smashes but I consider things like the CJ/Wrangler, the XJ Cherokee, and even the ZJ Grand Wagoneer as creations of the Willys and AMC brands that did the initial development).
In fact, one of Chrysler’s true sales juggernauts and bright spots from the otherwise very-dark-for-them seventies was a car that’s often the punchline of jokes. Despite strong six-figure production numbers in each of the early years it was offered, it’s a car that embodies all that some see as being wrong with the automotive malaise disco era. Like a Pet Rock or polyester suit, it’s something people wanted to hide in a closet a few years after they bought it. However, like everything else, that age is now seen as “cool” and “retro” by those who didn’t live through it. Is it time for this forgotten Chrysler sales star to come back? Let’s take a look.
Battery Charger
No, the nameplate I’m talking about isn’t the 2024 Dodge Charger EV. The latest “first electric muscle car” edition was unveiled with much hoopla last week, the latest of many cars that have revived (or attempted to revive) Chrysler’s storied muscle car names.
The latest Charger harkens back to arguably the most celebrated iteration of this nameplate; the sinister-looking Coke-bottle-shaped 1968-1970 model popularized in mainstream media like the Bullitt chase, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Fast And The Furious, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, and even oddball appearances in things like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. This generation of Charger was a sales success with over 96,000 sold in the first year alone.
Of course, this success was rather short-lived. By the time the more luxury-oriented 1971 model appeared, the golden era of the muscle car was ending with rising emissions control requirements, higher insurance rates, extra safety equipment, and ultimately soaring gas prices after the 1973 energy crisis. Charger sales steadily declined.
In 1975, the Charger moved entirely into the territory of the new category of “personal luxury” car. Popularized by entries such as the Chevy Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix, this segment took off and pretty much trounced the remaining so-called “muscle cars” that were now often not much more than pathetic sticker packages. With performance no longer an option, manufacturers embraced the cushy luxury coupe where the “sportiness” was confined to the fact that they had two less doors than the mom-and-pop sedans they were based on. Sales of this Charger were dismal, with only 30,000 leaving dealers.
Oddly enough, Chrysler sold a nearly identical version of this car that, in contrast, completely exploded on the marketplace. If we brought it back, would lightning strike again?
He Said “Soft” Corintian Leather, Not “Rich”
Product placement, image, and marketing is everything. It’s been said that in interviews for hosts on the Home Shopping Network, candidates are given a simple number 2 pencil and told to wax eloquently about it for five minutes (“This is a precise tool for putting your thoughts and dreams into reality…”). Indeed, a two-door Dodge Coronet with some extra chrome is hardly something special, but people might think it is if you make a fancy crest logo, sell it under the “Chrysler” brand and call it…Cordoba:
Look what happens when you park this “small Chrysler” in front of a lovely casa grande, play a flamenco guitar, and make it appear to be owned by Ricardo Montalban, one of the most suave and self-confident looking actors of all time.
Damn, that’s pure magic; it’s not the actual car that’s being sold but the idea of the car and the lifestyle it purports to be a part of. Mr. Rourke wafting along the Pacific coast in this elegant brown machine? Watch that a few times and you actually want one of these things. It certainly worked at the time, even though today the whole “Corinthian leather” line is used as a joke in situations where someone might be trying to talk up some substandard product (Not in the case of Autopian membership of course]. The impossibly elegant and gracious Montalban fessed up to the ruse in an amusing interview on David Letterman’s show years ago:
Despite its humble origins, the Cordoba sold more than 150,000 units in 1975; that was over sixty percent of all Chrysler division cars sold that year and five times the number of almost identical Dodge-branded Chargers. Cordoba sales remained strong for the next few years, though they wouldn’t be enough to keep the company from approaching bankruptcy (uh, for the first time) in 1979. Like most tragic heroes, the brand lived on, and oddly enough the Charger name was reborn again several times. The Cordoba name, however, did not survive, a victim of changing trends that killed the original Charger. Still, it’s 2024; wallpaper is back in home décor, people unashamedly wear platform boots with flared pants, and a network even made a Bee Gees documentary. Could a new Cordoba be far behind?
“I Like What They’ve Done To My Car”
Ricardo unconvincingly uttered those words in the ads for the last-gasp downsized 1980-1983 Cordoba with a standard “leaning tower of power” slant six-cylinder:
However, I do believe that the great Fantasy Island star would legitimately dig our proposed rehash had he not passed on in 2009. Considering that the original Cordoba was almost identical to the concurrent Charger, I think the launch of the new Dodge muscle car means this is an ideal time to bust out a new Chrysler-branded luxury coupe.
(Full disclosure: I did this as a complete joke, egged on by our Thomas Hundal, but actually started to like the results. This only shows you how troubled I really am).
Here’s that new Charger again:
There’s no way a Cordoba would be a fastback like the Charger, so I showed the new Cordoba as not only a notchback but as a full-up convertible coupe. Up front, the new Charger has sharp-edged “pontoon” style fenders that are shockingly similar to the front profile of the 1975 Cordoba.
Additionally, this forms a hard break line for us to drop in a Cordoba-style nose with the Jaguar XJ6 rip-off round headlight and upright grille nose. The headlamps are not sealed beams (they’re XJ8 units photoshopped in, you Parts Bin junkies) and the grille surround is body-colored instead of chrome, with the hood faired into the shape. The distinctive side marker lights from the old car are used instead of the new Charger’s ubiquitous throw-them-in-the-wheel-arch units.
Those same sharp-edged fenders are used in back on the 1975 car, there’s a protruding “box” shape on the trunk lid from that car:
We’ll do the same thing here, with Cordoba-style taillights and that protruding surface on the trunk lid faired into the horizontal surfaces.
You can see owners of this updated Cordoba telling their friends that “it looks a lot like a Bentley coupe if you squint real hard”. In reality it appears more like a Mustang before they started adding concave taillights and other shit in attempts to make it different from last year’s model. The important thing is that it’s clean and would appeal to the target market of “Blue Bloods” watchers and shuffleboard players that lament the loss of the Sebring drop-top. You can see that despite the rather minimal differences between the Cordoba and Charger we’d be talking about a car for a totally different kind of buyer that finds the Charger seen below to be “greasy kid stuff”.
Now, I know what some of you are asking for, and here it is:
For many of you, a Cordoba without large B pillar “opera” lamps and landau vinyl roof would be like seeing Saturday Night Fever era John Travolta in a tweed jacket, so hopefully that gives you the option you want.
Smiles, Everyone
The Chrysler brand is sort of on life support now, and it’s hard to say what (if anything) could breathe new life into this nameplate. Nobody’s gone broke going after Boomer nostalgia; just like when the Cordoba was released, it was never really about the physical attributes of the car itself as much as the way it made the buyer feel. If this silly revival could take a sixtysomething back to the time when he was smoking like chimney, thirty pounds lighter in a polyester shirt and buying that first nice new car from the Chrysler/Plymouth dealer down the street, I’ve already sold the thing.
Better yet, the Cordoba solves one serious hypocrisy of this new Charger. You might remember that our Jason reported on a system the new EV model has which includes fake exhaust sounds and even devices to make the car shake as if it had a V8 with bad motor mounts under the hood. As he pointed out, it’s rather absurd the lengths Stellantis is going to in trying to reverse the pure silence of the electric Charger. Seriously, my kid’s PowerWheel Ram truck toy had simulated engine growls and he thought it was a bit stupid at age eight; he turned it off.
Ah, but a Cordoba would thrive on such absence of road or engine noise and take advantage of the inherent qualities of silent performance and a chassis that could make your ride quite (Ricardo dramatic pause here) pleasant. If it’s good enough for Mr. Montalban, it sure as hell has to be good enough for your pedestrian self, dammit.
Or does our hypothetical Ricardo need a 1981 Imperial revival instead?
The front fender line in the new Charger looks bloated. It works much better on the Cordoba. Well done.
As someone who learned to drive on a Cordoba, I love it. Especially the landau/opera window version. Give me the Hurricane please.
The PLC’s revenge is a dish best served cold. It’s very cold 50 years later.
OMG!!! There are two of us!!! My mom’s car was a 1st gen Cordoba, white with burgundy landau top and interior. I took my driver’s test in that car. Somehow, I made it through the parallel parking without hitting anything.
Yup, dad’s was an ’80, the second-gen, square-Doba. Black with maroon velour. I also took the driver’s test with it, but I couldn’t wait for dad to get home from work so I stole it from the train station and drove myself to the SOS’s office. Kinda illegal.
I was born just past past the middle of the Boom generation in the fifties. I – and most of my friends – despised these cars.
For the most part, Boomers didn’t buy these, their parents and grandparents did, you know, the Greatest Generation and their pre-Boomer kids (though my own parents shunned these cars, too).
I hold no good memories of these, so it strikes me as somewhat false to anticipate that late 60 something people would fall all over themselves to own one.
All of those personal “luxury” cars of the mid 70s and beyond – Monte Carlos, Grand Prixs, Thunderbirds, Elites, Cougars, Chargers, Córdobas, etc. – we considered poser mobiles.
Perhaps, those not born until the latter years of the Baby Boom generation, which ended in ‘64, have fonder memories of these as they would have been nearly ubiquitous during their adolescence, but older Boomers, not so much, at least in my experience. I don’t think I’m atypical, but I’ll concede my experiences likely aren’t universal. Maybe my pragmatic parents had a lot to do with forming my opinions, though that’s somewhat disturbing, too.
All of this is not to say that The Bishop didn’t do a fantastic job (as usual) of distilling the essence of the original Cordoba into his design. I’m just saying it still smells off to me and that if Chrysler did execute such a car (there’s a thought), I don’t know that it would resonate with Boomers.
I agree; the oldest boomers would have been just around 30 when the Cordoba was released. However, I work with a guy born in 1955 that had a series of personal luxury coupes. At the same time, my parents were born in 1940 and had zero interest in this kind of shit.
Certainly, nothing is absolute and there were Boomers that loved these cars.
My personal opinion of them, and one widely shared among the majority of my high school and college friends, was a solid negative.
However, it’s entirely possible that was more of a regional bias. This was the Northeast during the Gas Crisis years, so car diversity ruled. Lots of Hondas, VWs, Toyotas, Datsuns, badge swapped Mitsubishis, Volvos and early Subarus in the Boomer population. My general impression is that this was not the case in other regions, especially the Midwest.
I worked for eight years through school and college in a service station, so I saw literally thousands of cars pass through, including plenty personal luxury style cars, as this period extended from the early 70s through 1980. The typical owner/driver of these cars was early to mid forties, mid level management types and their spouses who’d attained a comfortable level of economic success and, for some reason, cops. Our local police officers loved these things.
The subset of Boomers I knew in college who liked these cars tended to be from close-in big city suburbs and favored disco style clothing, flashy jewelry, and platform shoes, and/or they were daughters from upper middle families living in the wealthier suburbs. Except for cops, most of the people I personally knew who drove these cars were women, including those in my generation.
I don’t have much personal reference for most of the 80s because, following college, I was overseas until the end of the decade. By the time I returned to the states, it was whole new world, automotively, speaking.
So, that’s where my viewpoint originates. Always glad to hear another’s take. Thanks for the reply.
This actually works for me. Chrysler is already on life support anyway so what do they have to loose? Leaning into a soft luxo-coupe feels right in these troubled times.
That Chrysler Charger will most likely be a 300, as I don’t see them throwing away that brand equity. Whether the electric version will be a 300 C, 300 N/O/P/Q/R (depending if they pick up from where they left off with 300 M and how they count generations), or … 300 Cordoba 🙂 is up to them.
Chrysler 300 LMNOP edition.
The 4-door companion could still be marketed as the 300. You are right about that brand equity, and most people now associate the 300 nameplate as a sedan and not a 2-door coupe. Reviving the 2-door coupe for a Chrysler and calling it a Cordoba, I like it.
This is absolutely nuts and I’m here for it. Is it wrong to say I find it intriguingly attractive?
I’m right there with you. I’d tweak the front styling a little bit though. Modern Chrysler (especially the 300) has been known as a knockoff Bentley. Use the headlight treatment of the current Bently Continental, just reversed so the inner lights are the smaller ones (ala Cordoba)
This. Is. Awesome! Bishop, you always manage to find a way to come up with such unique takes, I absolutely love this!
I alternately welcome and fear this. Bringing back “personal luxury ” would make the car world more interesting. It might also spark a revival of ugly gold chains, disco shirts and “the great smell of Brut”.
Needs more Corinthian Leather. As a late Gen-X I somehow always saw the Cordoba as more a joke than the competing GM/Ford cars. It somehow seemed even MORE baroque and I think it’s the then passé’ round headlamps. BTW I owned a ’78 LTDII coupe at 17.
I somehow always saw the Cordoba as more a joke than the competing GM/Ford cars.
If you watch the Letternan Show interview linked above Ricardo says he was driving his Cordoba when some kids pulled up next to him and asked if he had driven a Ford lately?
He replied “no, that’s probably why I haven’t had a recall in 13 years”.
How many times do you think he was asked that slogan? did he come up with the riposte the first time, i wonder, or the 1000th?. and how much have times changed, that i can’t picture someone as recognizable in our day, as he was in the ’80s, driving themselves around in a personal car with the windows down.
Not nearly as many times as how soft was that Corinthian leather.
The Bishop has mad skillz, of course. Here’s an instance where we need to give it up to the 1970s designers, marketers and ad execs who made a silk purse out of sow’s ear. That The Bishop can translate a 50 year-old design into something that should be prompting Chrysler product managers into meetings today gives credit to The Bishop and Chrysler’s original team.
I’m not in the market for this kind of car, and yet I want it.
thank you!
When I was born, my parents brought me home from the hospital in a Cordoba. They then decided they needed a 4-door and bought a new Chevy Cavalier. The bad, early 80’s kind.
Nice job… this would fill an American niche I think if they did it. But they won’t–it’d have to be the Cordoba SUV all hunchback looking.
Yeah, I thought about a Cordoba Cross but I thought better of it
I know this stuff is tongue-in-cheek, but I will never be on board with bringing back this era of design nor its cues. I was born in ’76 loving cars, but I found this kind of styling and the hideous common browns, mustards, golds, and Exorcist-vomit greens distressing and depressing. There was the stuff from the earlier eras, but Boomer dad only brought me to trailer queen hotrod shows and I was over SBCs, tri Chevys, and deuce coupes with polished tires pretty quick (plus, I had no interest in being like my father). It wasn’t until I saw the opening of Cannonball Run that I realized it didn’t have to be that way, but there was an article about that just yesterday.
Hello fellow bicentennial baby! The favorite I owned was my ’94 SHO 5 speed. I fully understand the frustrations of the Boomer domination of the current and past car scene.
It’s not that I hate that stuff (except them being covered trailer queens) so much as it’s too broad of a world to lock oneself into a single, small aspect and it seems closed-minded that the cars they remain stuck on are the ones they grew up with. It’s like those people far older than me who only listen to the music of their youth decades later with almost nothing new added along the way—how do they not get sick of listening to the same 40 songs for the last 50 years? Would the time-out doll brigade have been exclusively into something completely different and disdained muscle cars if they had grown up somewhere else where those local cars were also a strong part of their pop culture? It strikes me that it’s more of indulging in a nostalgia high for a time that very likely wasn’t as great as they choose to remember it being than it is about a love of cars (especially when they aren’t driven) and I’ve always been a bit baffled by nostalgia.
Never drove the SHO, but I didn’t think the regular Taurus was half bad for what it was. SHO seemed like the kind of thing I’d like: a comfortable and practical enough car that’s good to drive, but blends in except for the few who know what it is.
Don’t you know music died when Led Zeppelin broke up? Or was it Bon Scott’s death? Or John Denver eating it in a plane crash? Today’s music can barely be called that! There’s no melody! You can’t understand the lyrics! And the lyrics are all about disrespecting women!
Give me Whole Lotta Rosie over that woke crap they play on the radio!
My problem with newer music is finding the good stuff. The good thing about the democratization of creation is that all kinds of people can get their work out. The flip side is that anyone can get their work out and it’s tough to pan the giant river of content for the few nuggets of gold (and the algorithms I’ve tried are all terrible), so I get discouraged and rely on the winds of Aeolus to find the new stuff I like. I was never big into pop music, though there were always a few songs I didn’t mind, but the fragmentation of entertainment delivery vehicles and common cultural events means it’s not as pervasive as it once was (plus I don’t go as many places that might still play it), so I rarely hear it. I do find stuff, but it’s not that often. Anyway, certainly I listen to more older stuff than new, but I certainly not because I feel that music died, it’s that it’s tougher for me to find new stuff I like and being older, I also don’t have the kind of powerful experiences accompanied by outside music that might endear a song to me that I might not otherwise care for.
Oh my god I need this to be a kit
The opera lights and landau roof are the way to go with this one.
Cordoba
Hot siesta at high noon
Cordoba
Oh, she takes me to the moon
Cordoba
Oh, estienda ma chi esta que
Cordoba
El puentes masto meta
Ricardo says “soft corinthian leather” in the first commercial, but in other commercials he describes the leather as both “fine” and “rich”. Also, in that first commercial, the car Ricardo’s sitting in doesn’t actually have the soft corinthian leather, but the fact that it’s even available is impressive to Mr. Montalban.
No Opera Windows?
Lido would be sad.
you didn’t see the last rendering? That window in the Landau top behind the coach lamp almost certainly fits the description of “opera window”, I think.
I suppose. But I think Iaccoca would have preferred an oval window, with discreet etching to give it that extra dose of “Luxe.”
party over, oops, out of time
so tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1975.
Dad had a 77 Cordoba when I was a kid. Maroon inside and out. Grandma had one, too! Hers was white, with a sunroof! We loved standing up through it. We sawzalled a ’76 into a landau convertible in high school shop later! So, many Cordoba memories here!
I literally cried when he traded it for a 77 Mercury Marquis in 1980. My little brother had come along late in 79, and the two door Cordoba didn’t handle the 3 of us kids too well. But, the Marquis had hidden headlights, those were cool!
I dug that Charger replacement, the Magnum. Again, virtually identical to the Cordoba but with clear headlight covers that retracted since covered lights were illegal in the US.
My dad had an ’80, Grandpa had a ’77, and uncle had a ’78. Sunday dinner looked like a ChryCo dealer lot.
Had a friend in high school and his first car was a 78 Cordoba 2-door, if they do like that one they don’t need a convertible, his had a manual crank moonroof that at least 3 of us full sized juniors could stick our head out of!
Too bad it didn’t have the rare T-top option. Actually, not too bad at all since I’ve heard that wtih those if rainwater wanted to get in it easily could.
T-tops would be sweet, I occasionally find myself perusing the FB Marketplace for 80s cars with t-tops, and I think you’re right, they almost all leak at some point.
I hope Montalban has a grandson that would be willing to appear in the ads (like Steve McQueen’s granddaughter in the Ford ad), wearing a skinny suit, matte-finish dark shirt, and wink/nodding through the rizz this car would most certainly bring its owner/riffing how it stabs at his heart.
Ricardo was apparently every bit as classy and kind in real life as you would hope.
And I remember seeing that Letterman appearance first-run when I was in college. Dave wanted to be sarcastic what with the Cordoba ads and the Fantasy Island stint, but Ricardo maintained complete control of the interview from start to finish and maintained elegance and dignity as he mopped the floor with Dave’s attempts at snark. I gained mad respect for him that night.
Nimoy said that too, so I believe it
Anytime I see the word Cordoba, all I hear is Montalban’s dramatic “Cor-do-ba”
–I may have watched a few Lemons Race Wrapups 😉
These days they’ve shortened it to just the music (complete with poor-casette-copy-warble). It’s like a modern day Pavlov, they play the music, we all think “Cordoba!“
This is like if Mitsuoka was American and had their way with a Charger
I had the same thought, at least for the front end. I’d imagine if this became real, the headlights would take on a design more like the outgoing Charger with a grill more reminiscent of the outgoing Chrysler 300. For the rear end, I rather like the changes The Bishop made.
I have no love or energy to spare for landau vinyl roofs, though. While Ricardo may have oozed class and refinement, landau roofs absolutely did not.
Oh, and once again, my appreciation to The Bishop for another thought exercise I’d otherwise never have had!
Thank you! Realistically, I think it’s more like an example of “you spent all of this time wondering if you could draw something instead of asking whether you should”
When it comes to Corinthian leather and Ricardo Montalban, I do believe it is always appropriate.
You have NEVER wasted your time when honoring the Rich Corinthian traditions of our insanity.
For a second, I thought this was an exclusive for the top-tier subscribers because of the image. Glad I clicked anyway.
Also, I think I would rather drive this Cordoba over the new Charger.
should have gone with Kirk screaming KHAAAAAN! as a topshot
DOOOOODGE!
I would program the Fratzonic Whatchamicalit to scream this every time I mashed the pedal to the floor.