So far in this series, I’ve had no luck finding Chrysler Cordobas from the first couple years of production. We’ve seen this ’78 (which provided me with a beautiful Corinthian Leather garage couch), this ’79, and this ’80 prior to today, and now we’ve got a genuine, Ricardo-approved 1976 Cordoba.
I spotted this car during my trip to Southern California two weeks ago. Rust-free California car, right?
Well, sort of. The rainy winters in coastal California tend to keep the metal beneath vinyl tops moist, and cheap weatherstripping (i.e., just about all the weatherstripping used by Detroit during the Malaise Era) tends to let water into the trunk. So, on cars like this you’ll see pristine quarter-panels and nasty roofs.
Check out the heraldry on the taillight lens. Such class!
Hmmm… the other taillight doesn’t seem to match. Which one is correct for 1976?
318 or 360, you don’t want to know the horsepower numbers. Move along.
Wire wheels and Radial T/As!
Fiat needs to bring back the opera light.
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Y U NO SAVE DIS KLASSIC HOW DARE YOU SIR.
WOW MUCH CORINTHIAN
SO RUST
Cooordooobhaaaa…..dah…nah…nahhhhhhhhhh
A few years ago I bought a 1975 one of these. It was white with Cragers and yes, it has red Corinthian Leather. The car was very cool and different. My $3,500 74k mile original Cordoba got more action at the local cruise nights than cars 10 times its value. It was a fun car to say I had my collection. I do miss the raw muscle car like fumes of that 360… I drove it for a year and sold it… I didnt want to invest too much into her and she started showing her age…
Ahh,CoRINthian leather, which only CorDOba can give!
I have to bite on this one.
Kahn!!
…And of course,
“De plane Boss! De plane!
Nu uh.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141175251619?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649
360 with a thermoquad, shame its not in NJ. Would make a great 408 for my 68 dart.
I always thought these came with Lean Burn standard but I guess that was not until 77-78. My next door neighbor had a 76 in light blue with the all important ‘soft Corinthian leather’ in white. They got plenty of years out of it but IIRC the Lean Burn became an issue.
Man such class, what other car offers mismatched taillights, cheap weather stripping AND wire wheels… THE CHRYSLER CORDOBA. But Corinthian leather is a deal breaker.
Provided that is an original California E56 360 4-bbl, it would have made 170 hp when new.
So a whole *10* more hp than my 1.4L FIAT. Very impressive.
Friends of my parents had one of these and its Dodge Magnum sister as his ‘n hers big coupes when I was a kid, both in matching white on red coRINthian leather.
My 1976 FIAT 124 Sport Spider made 86 hp from the factory.
And that is STILL more hp/l than this turd, and by a lot, no? And one heck of a lot more efficient.
These sorts of cars seem completely silly to me. Half the length of a football field, but with the interior accommodations of a VW Rabbit. And all performance of an ocean liner. The 70s were a strange era. My Stepfather sure loved his Grand Prix though.
They were the CLSs and Gran Coupes of their era; big on the outside, useless on the inside. They did have more carrying capacity than the efficiently packaged 124 Sport Spider, and this Cordoba weighed less than twice as much while having double the horsepower. When I was a kid and these were new, I hated them for their irrational proportions, obscene level of ornamentation and complete lack of authenticity in design. Just like I feel about the German cars of today… The funny thing is that the BMWs and Mercedes of the ’70s were the complete opposite of what they’re building today. Every property they have today, they had the opposite then. And that is what drew me to them.
If you set out to design the equivalent of a 2002 today, meeting modern expectations as to safety, efficiency, performance, and equipment, I fail to see how the result would be much different than a 1 or a 2-series today. Similarly, the history of the 3, 5, and 7 sure looks like unbroken evolution to me. I have not much use for the GTs and Gran Coupes either, but they are hardly mainstream products for them. The X cars are, sadly, but you really can’t blame them for following the market there. But somewhere along the line BMW stole your ball, so you believe whatever floats your boat.
Better than the 140HP my ’77 Camaro 5L put out! My buddy had a Cordoba with the 318 and it would roast the dang tire off.
The tail light with the round chrome trim with a gold “coin” emblem in the middle is correct for 1975 & 1976.
I’ve never seen a 318 with a factory thermoquad – so I would suspect any small block so equipped was a 360.
A lot of these had 400 CID big blocks, with the thermoquad and dual exhaust they made something like 235 hp – not very much these days, but not bad for the height of the malaise era. Like a diesel, these malaise era big blocks made torque, not horsepower – and it was easy enough to wake up a bit with some cheap aftermarket parts.
But where did the other lens come from? My BIL says it’s an Oldsmobile lens, but I can’t imagine it would fit a Chrysler.
It’s probably from a different model year Cordoba. In spite of the cars looking very much the same over the first generation, they did change tail lamps, bumpers and other items frequently between years and models. It could even be dependent on what package was ordered in the same year.
I believe the other lens is from a ’77 Cordoba.
A google image search reveals this to be the apparent answer.
I remember seeing more than a few of these mismatched tail lights on Cordobas back in the day, especially when they began to age. I think the lens was installed with some sort of adhesive that would let go and the lens would simply fall out. People would pick up one at the junk yard and didn’t care if it was an exact match.
As I commented in this weeks Sunday story, my dad worked for several different Chrysler dealerships throughout the 70s and 80s. We had our share of Cordobas in the driveway during that time. The most memorable was a ’76, dark blue with a white landau roof and white Corinthian leather buckets. It was a real beauty. Years later, we had a white ’80 model, white with red vinyl interior and a factory CB radio. It was crap compared to the ’76 but the CB kept me and my friends busy.
As for the tail lights, as others have said mismatched lenses were pretty common back then. When I was 17, my dad’s dealership had a few cars in the local mall for display. One of them was a Reliant and upon further inspection, I noticed that it had one Reliant tail light and one Aries lens. Now that’s kwailty! The best part was dad recruited me to drive the cars out of the mall and back to the showroom when the show was over on Sunday night after hours. Having seen the Blues Brothers a few years earlier, I did my best Jake and Elwood imitation cruising through the mall in a new Turismo, albeit in slow motion.
You sure the mismatch isn’t just a factory-installed option?
Well this was the kind of times where your Buick could have a Pontiac dashboard and Chevrolet trim if the factory workers had a low enough “give a f**k” level…
I worked at a Lincoln/Mercury dealer back around 93-94 and on multiple occasions we got Villager minivans with Nissan Rims (or center caps…cant remember if the actual wheel was different) and at least one Mercury Quest.
I recently read a story on Allpar about Dodge and Plymouth cop cars of the 70’s about how Mopars were the dominant police cars of the era, but as the 70’s progressed, Chrysler’s quality slipped more as the decade went by.
One view point was from a police fleet manager who bought a fleet of the much heralded ’74 Dodge Monaco police car (ie- the Bluesmobile) while usually Mopars had the best performance (even the smogger E86 440 in ’74 still made 275 hp, before cats of course)the quality was abysmal. He noted that one particular Monaco had Monaco badges on one side, but the other side had Plymouth Gran Fury badges, whoops.
If you think was that was bad, another person remembered having one patrol car that didn’t have the rear brakes adjusted from the factory….. minor detail of course.
Also Lean Burn was a nightmare from the era as well. I think the term half baked would apply here.
My dad bought two Cordobas. One I think was a 1977, and the other, I think was 1979 when Chrysler was having some kind of blow out sale to avoid bankruptcy. Imagine buying a car specifically because the company is talking about going bankrupt!
The second one had nice white leather and the “lean burn” engine. It might have been “lean burn” but it was still a gas hog. Even with a 360 V-8, the car was anything but fast. The steering was slower than the car. The front seats were comfortable, but the rear seats were poor for the size of vehicle. I much preferred driving the Pontiac Sunbird that we had at the same time, with the manual transmission and the “Iron Duke” 4-cylinder engine.
A co-worker bought a new one in 76. Looked a lot like this one and probably had a 318. In 79 he traded it on a new Chrysler 300. That one brought back a little of the muscle that Mopar was famous for. It had a 360 with dual exhaust and an unsilenced air cleaner. It make impressive power for the late 70’s. I got to drive it some and it sounded great. Reminded me of the earlier Mopar muscle cars I was used to. It would be a collector item today.
Just looked up what a 1979 Chrysler 300 looked like since I’d never heard of them. Nice looking car, but holy side marker lamps!
I guess it was a limited run special series based on the Cordoba. Should’ve made the 300 the volume seller and the Cordoba a special edition.
Curbside Classic has a nice writeup.
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/cc-capsule-1979-chrysler-300-red-white-and-brougham/
The front side marker lamps did double-duty as cornering lamps, if so equipped. That is way the lenses are large and clear.
“The front seats were comfortable, but the rear seats were poor for the size of vehicle.”
Cordoba: the small (lol) Chrysler.
Funny, just a couple years earlier, a Chrysler big-wig said there would “never be a small Chrysler”. The Cordoba had to be in development at the time, so why did Chrysler let people out of the loop talk to the press? Or did he anticipate that the Cordoba would be bigger than most full size cars in the 21st century?
The Cordoba was originally planned to be a Plymouth.
Supposedly the car was intended as a Plymouth, but late in the game somebody decided to take it upmarket to bag some personal luxury coupe margins.
My father’s first car was a ’76, already 4 years old when he bought it. 318 and white, I think. Cloth seats. Nothing too special.
But one of the guys he knew from school (graduating class of about 75, so you know everyone by name) had a ’78 in black with the 400, center console and floor shifter, and T-tops. And that was probably the sweetest car anyone had. Dad always asked the guy if he would ever sell it, and the guy never did until years later, to someone who probably drove it into the ground.
He doesn’t talk much about it–no one in my family has ever been much of a “car person”. I think he got it because he wanted a T-Bird, but in 1980 the “basket handle” T-Birds were still commanding pretty high premiums, while Cordobas were being sold for a song. He had a Kawasaki 440, too, so it wasn’t like this car was the be-all and end-all of his transportation options. After the Cordoba was a maroon Dodge Mirada, the Cordoba’s uninspiring 80’s brother. Since he was a farmer, he also got his hands on a white Dodge D100 Slant-Six. In fact, it wasn’t until he finally got a T-Bird in ’87 or so (and by then he didn’t have much need for it, so he sold it to Mom’s high school-age brother) that he started making the switch “back” to Ford from Mopar.
Rich.
Yup, 360 as pointed out by others. That was the standard engine in these in these years. The 318 and 400 were optional.
This is right up my alley, I have a ’76 Charger SE (floor shifter and buckets, baby!) that I’ve had for about a decade that I bought off the second owner, an old man who was downsizing homes. I could really resist it at that price and used it as a daily driver for a time.
It’s got an 8 3/4 rear axle instead of the factory 7.5, and a solid valve train 371 with a fairly aggressive cam. It’s different than the other cars at the drag strip and cruise-ins is about all I can say.
I had a ’77 Charger SE back in the early ’80s. It had a 400 4V with 727 and dual exhausts. Mine was originally equipped with Lean Burn, I ditched the Lean Burn system and replaced it with a junkyard electronic ignition from an earlier big block Mopar, which helped performance and also made it easier to live with. Mine was black with Rallye wheels over a red interior with buckets and console. I also had factory T-Tops which seemed common on Magnums and later Cordobas, but must have been reasonably rare on Chargers as I never saw another T-Top charger, although Drzhivago138 mentions a T-Top equipped Charger above.
Even though it came out at the height of the Malaise era, I thought it was a fun and somewhat unique car at the time. I haven’t seen a Charger SE in ages, although I do still see early Cordobas from time to time.
I love the Magnum, especially with wide Rally wheels, fender flares, and some window louvers.
My neighbor had one of these in the very common gold color. I think that POS spent more time at the dealer than in his driveway. I remember him complaining about the reliability of it and I had to remind him his previous car was a Austin Healey 3000. I’d think he would kill for his Healey again, not so much the Cordoba.
I believe these, for the most part, were rolling pieces of junk. However, you took your chances with just about any car from the mid-70’s to around 1980 or so.
Chrysler had good intentions, but couldn’t quite make the deal – produce an up-scale fancy car, but the quality was abysmal – much worse than anything else by every other carmaker, it seemed.
Having said that, I don’t know if the Japanese cars were much better at the time, either. Probably.
Better quality? Probably but at a few sizes smaller. A Cressida (that even looked a bit like this!) is the closest jap competitor IMO.
A guy that shows up to the Friday night car shows in Denver has a cherried out Cordoba. Midnight blue. I have no idea if it has Corinthian Leather, probably been removed for Recaro buckets long ago. It’s got some sort of big block with lots of chrome and all that smog stuff removed. I’ll have to find out what exactly, there’s always a crowd around it. I think it’s got a roll cage if I remember right.
The lean burn system in these cars was a disaster and many a Chrysler dealer spent numerous hours trying to get these cars running right to no avail during the warranty period. The best thing was to ditch the lean burn and run a normal Thermoquad and run some more timing and swap out the lame rear gears. Power and mileage both improved considerably.
Interestingly , the Cordoba shares the front shock absorbers with my Metropolitan Nash , a good thing because KYB makes good quality gas charged shocks for them .
No one else does .
So far no other vehicle I have found , uses these funny looking shocks .
-Nate
I’m surprised the Nash doesn’t use lever-arm dampers as its upper control arms.
Well ;
Austin Motors (proud parent of MG) did do that but Nash always had better suspensions than the rest of the Big Three Americans so they designed Metropolitan specific upper A-Arms and gave it something like 18″ of front wheel travel , this ensures that when new , they didn’t have the pitching motion all other tiny cars did .
It’s a fair bit of work to tighten up the suspension of a Met but it’s do – able using MG suspension up grade bits and Bilstein HD gas shocks from a BIG Panther in the back….
=8-) .
-Nate
It wouldn’t be that surprising to learn this was a late 1976 car and the mismatched taillights came from the factory that way. Chrysler’s (and all of Detroit, for that matter) quality control was really that bad back in the mid-seventies and, with the success of the Cordoba, it was like 1957 all over again, when Chrysler was building all the ‘Forward Look’ cars as fast as they could with no regard for quality, whatsoever.
The standard engine for the 1976 SS Cordoba was 400 ci, 175 hp. The 318 and 360 were optional. Weight was 4130 lbs, cost $5.4k, and 120k were produced. Chryslers best seller. The company then was four years from bankruptcy bailout.
Rem that HP 1976 was SAE net having changed from SAE gross around 1972.
I have to be nice to Chrysler on this one, because while I was in the US Army – I really wanted a 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix – which predates the Cordoba by a few years.
So in order to say something nice – I see the Cordoba has power disc brakes and factory installed Air-Temp air conditioning. Nice.
Ugliest engine ever. Woof.
I had forgot how much these things and Monte Carlos looked alike.
Which came first? I don’t remember.
Monte Carlo came out in 1970. the 1973 redesign is what this Cordoba is aping.
My preference was and still is the 69 through 72 Pontiac Gran Prix – which were in my opinion a better looker in this genre – but you are correct, the 73 Monte Carlo pretty much set the trend for the Cordoba.
These sleds were great on the LA to Phoenix run. Then again on the Phoenix to El Paso run. Cruise control, factory air and a instrument panel that was driver centric instrument panel made the long desert expanses less tiring.
By the way, the original Monte Carlo weighed about 3500 lbs – which seemed massive – but is pretty much the norm today for front wheel drive sedan.
The Monte Carlo debuted for the 1970 model year, but the 1973 redesign of that car is really what seemed to have set the styling pace for intermediate coupes of the 70’s, including the Cordoba.
Then you had the front end redesign that gave the Cordoba stacked headlights just like the Monte Carlo of the same vintage…
There’s something I LOVE about these, and ’73-’77 Monte Carlos and Grand Prix, and ’77-’79 Thunderbirds and Cougars, and anything else that fits into the category of long-hood-short-deck-neo-baroque personal luxury coupe.
But then, I’m that guy who’s always had a thing for fat chicks, so make of that what you will…
I have a 71 360 in the dart now. 9.5 pistons, stock crank, reconditioned rods,XE 268 cam, roller rockers, mild blend and ported 587 2.02 heads, edelbrock performer and thunder 650. 355 horses for less than 3k. Love that engine. Just not in stock 70s form.
I had a 77 Monte Carlo that I bought new with power everything and swivel seats. I had some issues with it but it was much better than the Cordoba. I worked with a guy that had a new 78 Cordoba which was a real piece of junk. Beautiful looking car but he could not keep a transmission in it and it had constant electrical problems. Chrysler had horrible quality and the Chrysler’s of the 80’s although not great were much more reliable than these. Cordoba was a beautiful car which was very poorly made.
It’s too bad this junkyard doesn’t sell whole cars. With the technology available today, and if I had the money and means, I could turn this Cordoba into a high-performance G-Machine while making it look stock on the outside.
I always thought that the early Cordobas were actually the most attractive of Detroit’s personal luxury coupe . Always thought that the 1978 restyle with the square headlights was a major mistake . They were quite the breakthrough for Chrysler, and were quite popular.
First attempt at the back-story of a car.
Rich was a teen, a teen with his grandfathers old Chrysler Cordoba. Old, underpowered and broken, the old taillight stopped working (he replaced it with some old 1970’s taillight of some old Oldsmobile, Ford, just something. As the Chrysler rolled into the parking lot of the local McDonalds. Later on that day Rich came out and hopped into the ripped leather seat. As he turned the key the car began to rumble then died, then he tried it again it finally started. As his song came on the radio he turned it up as loud as possible. He then shifted onto the highway (still with the radio loud) as the car began to drastically slow down. As he was passed by not 1 not 2 but 3 cars he finally turned the radio down. He heard the grinding, hammering noise the old V8 was making. Rich just kept on going, as soon as he made it to 40 mph, the engine made more muffled bangs and grinds. Finally after 38 years the old Chrysler died. All the luxury, all the years with his old owner the engine could go no farther. As the flatbed came to get the Chrysler, Rich thought “Man that thing was comfortable but a piece of sh*t”.
What do you think?
I’m not sure if you were aware but CrabSpirits already writes a fine series on the subject of the junkyard cars’ “last rides”. I have penned a few as well.
Needs polish but not so bad .
Since you’re a Mercedes Man , why not find a Murilee writup on an W-116 300S (maybe a Diesel or Diesel L body) and have at it ~ don’t forget the wretched Klima I’s evil servo from hell , the failing vacuum central locking and engine shut off systems , maybe it’ll jump a timing chain as it clatters to death….
Most of my long Automotive Career has been spent in junkyards or working on dilapidated junkers .
Wouldst I had the writing skills , I could write volumes .
Have at it son ~ I love reading the end stories .
-Nate
I didn’t mean to ignore the request for feedback, but I basically did. I would expand on this a little, who is Rich exactly? What happened at work on the day in question? What was on the radio?
So Rich is a 17 year old who’s grandfather gave him his Chrysler. He was just an average teen who needed a car and his grandfather didn’t want it so that’s how he got it. His day at work was slow at first but then changed as it was a lunch rush, then his shift ended and he walked to the car. And the song on the radio was We Can’t Stop- Miley Cyrus. Yeah first song I could thing of.
Awesome vehicle, vying with the ’74-75 Monte Carlo for best of the personal luxury breed. The Cordoba did details better than the MC. Notice the simulated stitching aroudn the opera windows? And the way the battering ram bumper is flush with the grille, not using cheap plastic panel fillers like its GM counterparts? Sweet!
Isn’t it odd that forty-year-old car commercials are seared into our brains?
What is “Corinthian leddahr” anyway?
There is no such thing. It was a Chrysler marketing gimmick…
IIRC the numbers for the 1975 318 were 255 lb-ft torque at 1,600rpm (yup, 1,600) and 145hp @4,000rpm while the 360 4bbl was 170hp (I think??) at 4,400rpm. I have some old 1975 Dart and Valiant sales brochures somewhere. The pictures in them are very “period.” The poor smogged-down Slant 6 was advertized to make what amounted to almost exactly 2/3 the torque and horsepower of the 318 for that year (95hp at 3,600rpm and 170 lb-ft at 1,600).
Not to divert attention away from the car, but I think the scratchbuilt stands it’s perched on are unique– most self-service junkyards use stands built from two steel rims welded together.
@ IluvmyV8
”
I recently read a story on Allpar about Dodge and Plymouth cop cars of the 70′s about how Mopars were the dominant police cars of the era, but as the 70′s progressed, Chrysler’s quality slipped more as the decade went by.
One view point was from a police fleet manager who bought a fleet of the much heralded ’74 Dodge Monaco police car (ie- the Bluesmobile) while usually Mopars had the best performance (even the smogger E86 440 in ’74 still made 275 hp, before cats of course)the quality was abysmal. He noted that one particular Monaco had Monaco badges on one side, but the other side had Plymouth Gran Fury badges, whoops.
If you think was that was bad, another person remembered having one patrol car that didn’t have the rear brakes adjusted from the factory….. minor detail of course.
Also Lean Burn was a nightmare from the era as well. I think the term half baked would apply here.”
Oh , GOD yes ! we had a whole fleet of B & W + Metro units , St, Regis and the rest of the good looking (O.K. so I like WPC Products) with the abysmal lean burn system , for those who don’t know : it was some sort if rudimentary electronic control computer placed _inside_the_PLASTIC_AIR_CLEANER_ so it heat soaked and warped then fried & died by the dozens if not hundreds .
Cop Cars tend to spend hours and hours parking , idling with the AC on full tilt boogies so they heat soak really badly and cook everything under the hood .
The 1975 > models also had mini – catalytic converters with where the head pipes attached to the exhaust manifolds adding yet MORE underhood heat in a Desert environment .
Then there were the plastic (!) Carter ThermoQuad carbies , pretty good carbies except they had a few parts _glued_ onto the float bowls and even way back then when real Gasoline was available , after about 5 years , the glue failed and you had Gasoline pouring out and all over the engine .
Amazingly , few ever caught fire but I went crazy trying to buy up every ThermoQuad carby and float bowl I could find , anywhere in America , and when Carter suddenly sopped making the carbys and replacement bowls , we had to salvage the entire fleet because we were not allowed to use anything but what the vehicle came with when new .
Go figure .
Interestingly , all these Dodges were very good drivers and ran well if thirstily when you had a decent Mechanic who knew how to peak and tweak them .
The assembly quality was wildly variable but that’s been a Chrysler Corporation hallmark since 1957 that I know of .
’71 ~ ’74 L.A.P.D. had mostly AMC Matadors , also good cars , thirsty but stronger than Checker Cabs .
-Nate
Lean Burn? More like Lean Bog. Had a 360 with this system and at times you’d push down on the gas to pull onto the highway and you’d hear a pop and no forward thrust. Scary with a truck bearing down on you. Ah the ’70s!