The Chrysler Cordoba Was The Poster Child For The Personal Luxury Coupes of the Malaise Era

[Music] so good morning this is bill from curious cars and auto house of naples on a delightfully animal-free morning i haven't even seen a cat this morning there have been a couple of birds up there chirping away doing their thing but you know with few exceptions you're not going to avoid that but there have been nothing else and again the deers are history apparently they've been taken out like the goats maybe they're together somewhere and deerville or goat them or you know who the hell knows they're frolicking in fields having fun they haven't been ground into sausages which is actually what i think has actually happened but either way they're not around and that's a good thing for me i haven't even seen a rabbit and that's fantastic one thing that is not fantastic is the weather still sucks absolutely sucks and it's like in you know early october at this stage we should be getting cooler mornings and not humidity filled crappy shitty mornings that you know still feel like i'm in july or august it's completely unfair and it does not bode well for the season that's coming you know i every year i hope for a freezing cold season and virtually every year i'm disappointed so it looks like this season is going to be no different i'm going to be miserable and not get these little freezing cold snaps that i'm looking for and you know i see in the comment sections people saying oh it's cold and wet here and you know god am i jealous uh one of these days i'm telling you i'm gonna get the hell out of here and i'm gonna go somewhere where it's nice and cold you know 365 days out of the year like a radar tracking station in the north atlantic the south pole uh alaska i don't know if it's cold there year round but it's probably better than here for sure so anyway one of these days that's going to happen but unfortunately not today and in the interest of time in the interest of appeasing the people who may want a shorter video including myself honestly i mean i look at you know i think i do like a 20-minute video i get into the editing program and the thing's like 50 minutes and oh god what the hell happened i i mean obviously like some people say i do have this tendency to just sort of ramble on so we're gonna try and you know cut that down a little bit and there again didn't uh mute the phone anyway muted now um so anyway we're gonna leap diving straight into this car and this is a seminal moment because i've been promising this car for a long time and it's finally here and i know i know in my heart of hearts that it's going to be a giant and terrific let down for a variety of reasons but it doesn't matter because here it is and i don't have to hear about me letting everybody down anymore this is a 1981 chrysler cordoba uh known as the doba by i guess the people who are fans of them and god help them i wouldn't put them much higher than the people who are fans of this particular channel but god bless them they're out there and they exist and this is a car that they may like i don't know maybe not they may just be first gen people but either way we'll get into it the name actually first appeared in 19 was it 1970 as a trim package on the enormous chrysler newport so it was the chrysler newport cordoba and uh it was it had really baroque themes i mean it was finished in cordoba gold as they called it uh it had an antique gold interior and vinyl roof an aztec eagle hood ornament and uh driving it it felt like ponce de leon on his way to the casino or asian massage or a badminton tournament or something i mean it was obviously very spanish-themed but it only went on for one year and wasn't a very big deal although i sure wouldn't like to get my hands on one now the name cordoba of course comes from a city in spain which is also a province in spain but the gold medallion on this car and it does have a few of them because again it's the 70s well this is the 80s but uh when it emerged it was the 70s um it was again it was pulled from the uh a coin that was robbed from the not robbed that's not a good word to use in this day and age a coin's design was bastardized from the uh argentinian province of cordoba and uh those are the badges that appear in this car so there's a little bit of confusion in my mind that medallion was directly off the hairy chests of 70s dudes heading to the disco tech to try and hook up with you know ladies who looked like they could have been part of abba and uh i don't know why they didn't use like a spanish galleon coin instead they used one of these argentinian coins but and they did what they did so um it was obviously a spanish theme and that continued on through the years this is a second generation cordoba it's based on the j platform that was shared with the dodge morata if you remember that car and nobody does and also the chrysler imperial which we did a review of not that not that long ago that also shared the smaller j platform and i'm gonna link to that in the um in the description section it replaced the first generation cordoba uh which were pretty big shoes to fill because that thing was an absolute hit that was based on a larger but still intermediate b-body platform which it shared with the whole pile of mopars including the charger the fury the monaco monaco and coronet at even the chrysler 300 and and some others so the bee body was pretty prolific uh mopar by the way states had a confirmation a molding and merging of the words motor parts and it first started getting banded around in the 1920s and chrysler service centers but it didn't appear officially until 1937 on a can of antifreeze and it's been around ever since an official sort of way that took me like five years to look up for like five years i was wondering what the hell mopar stood for and i just never bothered to google it and then a few years ago i did so you know there's probably another 20 things that i keep meaning to google and never do but mopar i finally did the first cordoba was a hit it was an absolute giant hit in the blooming blossoming personally personally personal luxury car market that was you know you could almost say the person in luxury car market was as hot as the suv market of today i mean it was enormous when it started coming out uh it basically replaced the muscle car era which of course died in the early 1970s with all the insurance and fuel crunch and ralph nader that came out and sort of ruined it for everybody so people moved over to personal luxury coops and the cordoba fit beautifully into that um and the first cordova it was supposed to be a plymouth but you know the at times collaborated to make it a chrysler you know the exact same chrysler corporation said you know look we really don't have the personal luxury coupe sorted we need one you know even though chrysler prides itself on building only large cars i mean pridefully they only built large cars they went against their grain and they decided to release the cordoba as a chrysler product in 1975 and it worked for them although i will say i think they just sort of you know it's like short-term cashing in for long-term pain and that's kind of what happened to the cordoba but when it came out in 75 bam i mean people really wanted it they went absolutely nuts for it and the supply couldn't even keep up with demand they sold like 150 000 in 1975 by the time 1977 rolled around that was up to 180 000 they had ricardo montobon pitching the car for them uh you know kies most macho fernando and llamas or ricardo montalban but um but anyway it really helped what was then a troubled company i mean they weren't making a ton of money they were going further in debt and all of a sudden this cordoba came out and started selling like hot cakes and it really helped them out it directly competed with the olds cutless the monte carlo and the cougar and uh obviously a whole grand prix bunch of other person luxury coops but those were its direct competitors and uh it just seemed to work extremely well for them uh given the spanish name the macho theme so they did hire ricardo montobon and i mean who could forget that it's become sort of a pop culture thing uh with him hawking the car railing about the corinthian leather if you remember that uh which um you know it was you had corinthian leather and i mean it it evoked these images of like nomads and flowing robes bringing very fancy hides across deserts and ox carts until they got to the coast when they went on wooden ships that sailed across stormy seas all the way to windsor ontario where they went into the cordoba factory i mean that was all crap it was actually designed by an ad agency came out with the name corinthian leather it was the same crappy leather used in every other chrysler product and uh it was made by the um the radon leather manufacturing company in newark new jersey it is about far from you know posh exotic leather as you can get but it worked i mean people went absolutely nuts for it everybody oh my god it's got the corinthian leather monobond went on the letterman show a few years later and you know was it was just absolutely grilled by dave who finally got it out of him that the thing meant absolutely nothing it meant nothing but it was terrific advertising and people who were driving cordoba's back then people thought they were kind of well to do i mean obviously it was sort of a middle class upper middle class car anyway in terms of positioning but man if you had the corinthian leather in that thing you were you were one sleek and badass mofo but in 1977 um this was interesting 77 the thing was available in seven i'm sorry 16 different colors actually 18 different colors six of which were shades of brown so i had 12 normal colors and then six brown colors there was night chestnut caramel tan coffee sunfire golden fawn inca gold and spanish gold oh god the 70s must have been absolutely fascinating but um that went on yet this first gen or sorry i have a second jet here so the first gen went on through 1979 and it was redesigned in 78 because sales had started to mag off you know there was a lot of competitors that were frankly just better at that point and the redesign was supposed to boost the image and get the sales back up well it didn't it failed uh people didn't like it it looked like it got a little bit larger at a time when cars were getting smaller they went to these stacked rectangular headlights which were kind of popular at the time but you know in retrospect they don't look as nice as the round headlamps that the earlier versions had and uh it just didn't work that well for them so by the time 1980 rolled around it needed a redesign chrysler was um you know trying to pump up the sails again and this is it so this was the second gen came out in 1980 had a sister car in the dodge mirada uh for 80 and 81 there was an ls model which was the luxury sport and it had this weird sort of cabriolet top if you wanted it and uh had a peppy actually it did the same engine choices as this one but we'll get into that it was originally going to be badged as the 300 which was an historical chrysler name but they did away with that and made it the ms instead for whatever reason and uh it was um you know i think they did a nice job of designing it it was supposed to go to a younger and more sophisticated looking crowd than you know some of the bigger stuff uh i thought it had nice sharp creases good lines you know i think they did a really nice job and the public did not respond to it at all i mean sales pumped up a little bit in 1980 as it does when you pump up any new model but they instantly declined and in 81 when this car was made they only made 20 000 of them and i mean compare that to the you know 160 000 or so in the second year of the first gen production 20 grand is pretty low and uh by the time the third gen by the time it wrapped up in 83 only like 12 000 people bought one of these things so there just weren't many out of them you know many of them going it was unceremoniously replaced by the chrysler laser uh if you remember that thing that was a front drive car based on the uh k car platform in 1984 and uh crazy just left the cordobas to die on the vine they were considered old chrysler lee iacocca had taken over the company the k car had come out in 1981 and was selling like hotcakes and chrysler decided that it was going to be focused in on the front wheel drive stuff the modern stuff turbocharged four cylinders that sort of thing and uh instead of revamping the cordoba they just let it die you know like the thunderbird got revamped and it did quite well and so did the monte carlo and you know some of the other competitors they went on to do great things not the cordoba this was the end of it icemer just let it go away and i think that's a shame i you know obviously uh when i look at this car today and i compare it to a k car i would much much rather have this thing so rear drive you know proper uh engine choices up front and so on and so forth so all right look anyway i've got one quick thing they did run some of these in nascar uh buddy here and i mentioned that when i did that um imperial video that i'm going to link at this from about 82 to 84 buddy harrington drove the j platform as in nascar and he did him with miradas with uh cordoba's and with even some imperials which were hilarious that they ran in that thing but apparently they were kind of they weren't great aerodynamically and none of the cars ever did better than 13th so poor buddy you know he probably moved on to bigger and better things when when time progressed so i'm going to pause there for a minute before i get into this specific car and again in the interest of keeping the video a little bit shorter after that 50 minutes sucker on the mark 5 the other day and i'm gonna dry myself off because even though it's october it's still humid and hot as balls and miserable so uh anyway there it is i'll get my together and then we're going to keep going all right so let's do a quick jam around this car and then i'll get my crap inside and we'll go for a spin and this video will be like 30 minutes tops tops anyway you see the very look the second gen this one the first gen was absolutely epic i mean if you remember herb tarlick drove one you've got ricardo montalban selling them i mean everybody really liked the cordoba and it fit beautifully in with the person and luxury coop setup that was starting to wane by the time the second generation came along even though it retained much of the stuff that uh personal luxury coupe should have if you remember the mark 5 we did the other day that was to me the peak of the whole personal luxury coop thing that was retired in 79 so this thing's coming out in 80 in the middle of all the downsizing and even the sort of entry into the people wanting european stuff i mean if you remember in the movie vacation which i think was around 1980 or so he went to get the euro sport wagon at the dealership before he ended up with the family truckster you know the people were moving towards a different breed of car than the big dinosaurs of the past and this was a smaller version of the big dinosaur and there was nothing particularly special about it which is probably why it essentially failed and has now been forgotten i mean when i saw this thing i was reminded that it even existed so that's just the way that it went um the styling of the car i think is quite nice i mean it's very angular it's got those slab-sided front fenders that i like i love the turbine looking hubcaps it has that sort of remind me of those mark v alloys it's got chrome around the windshield it's got chrome mirrors uh this one's two-tone it's european taxi beige with government worker beige beneath so it's you know very posh looking as such although it's not particularly highly optioned this car and i know i'm going to get for it but the hell with it they had very nice setups around the the side windows again with more chrome nice looking door handles on there love the cordoba badging with the script and that medallion from the hairy chests and the discotheques you've got a rocker panel chrome strip or at least a stainless looking strip which looks nice you've got white walls uh you could get opera windows into at least in 1980 maybe they did away with it in 81 i don't remember where you see this as the vinyl quarter top with a big filled inside of it and some of the earlier versions or at least maybe an upmarket version i noticed you could get opera windows in those but they're not in this one instead you get those rear windows in the back which are fixed in position and don't go down and of course you know chrysler was in financial trouble at the time so they're not really on the cutting edge but running around the car you've got more chrome trim everywhere i do think the quarter top looks quite nice you could get a cabriolet roof on the ls version which did a pretty good job of simulating a convertible top you know people owners could say look if you think it looks ugly now where do you see it with the top down which of course would never happen i do like the body color impact strips and the chrome bumpers i think that actually is kind of a cool feature even with those little silly looking bumper rats you got big giant tan lights for whatever reason uh with uh vertical slats in them in body color reverse lights around the uh license plate pin stripes everywhere one of the issues with these cars are the body fillers these things right here and they are extremely hard i mean there are the ones that came out on it were all rubber and they disintegrated overnight and there's only one company now making these things and they make them in fiberglass which is a miserable product to work with and that was one of the things that held this car up was the original fitment of those panels was so atrocious i couldn't even look at the car couldn't even look at it finally we got an eastern european mechanic a very nice guy and no he's not actually he's a horrible terrible person but uh he does have that eastern european pluck i mean these guys can make carburetors out of a bunch of wood scraps i mean they're unbelievable and he refit all of these panels and i mean even though i mean like you look at it now and it looks a little bit screwy with this thing bumping up and whatnot if you had seen it before you would have been absolutely horrified he did a tremendous job fitting them and they hadn't been painted so i had to bribe our painter jeff by the way the vendors at ottawa house i tell you what you've never seen richer guys none of us make any real money but the vendors oh my god the guy who does the wheels sean he works like 20 hours a week and makes six figures jeff who paints the bumpers he has a seaplane he just bought i mean sean the wheel guy has a new 911 targa so if you have any wonder where the money at auto house goes look no further than the vendors and of course peter who's probably still having a nice beauty rest as i'm out here in his driveway filming uh but of course he sold out and you know here i am but uh but anyway through the eastern european mechanic who i won't name and through the vendors who i will name uh yeah the other one uh what the hell was his name ben he replaced a guy named todd who went off to become a prepper somewhere ben just bought one of these uh backdraft cobras i mean i i jus i'm telling you this is what i need to do for a living instead of whatever the hell i am doing because it ain't working for me uh and now i don't even remember where i am the body fillers so anyway now they're fit a little bit nicer they look pretty good i did the pinstriping myself i did a shitty job of matching the pinstripe but the hell with it it's done and i'm not going to change it now and honestly this car which was always nice uh frankly for what it is i think it came together really really good uh the so the front cap looks good with the square surrounds over the square headlights you've got a waterfall grill you've got a nice big chrome grille again the the 300 or the ls version had a one of these sort of plastic rubbery front bumpers not unlike the firebirds at the time and i think it looked good but it's not as elegant as this and this also does of course have the body color strip again and the bumper with the little bumper rats the hood has all sorts of nice styling and the lines in it you know there's a nice body line down the side i just think it's a much more handsome car than it gets credit for and even though it failed at the time basically i think it looks good i really do yeah i mean you know look you can argue with i don't care it doesn't matter i think it's a pretty good looking car and it's rear-wheel drive and it's kind of fun to look at so i tell you all right let's get inside the trunk i'm just going to start and get right into this this is such a unmolested piece too it really is i've got four sets of original keys for it with the uh maybe we don't yeah we do four original keys or two sets anyway uh somebody instructed me on chrysler keys i said they were upside down which obviously shows that i'm a gm guy but in fact i have to admit it's pretty clever they said by being in this direction with the cut edges up the tumblers don't get a bunch of crap in them and they stay clean so yeah kudos to chrysler on that one so you have this nice big trunk one thing i don't love about it is it's got you know the taillights up here so you've got this big overhang so if you have to lift crap up and put it in there uh you've got um you got a pretty big way before you get it over the trunk uh this one came with these two uh big service manuals which is nice you're gonna need this as you start repairing the car but it's got all the crap in it for the whole car uh you've got a 1981 north carolina tag which i think somebody sort of spiked me on because the car was actually sold in pennsylvania in 1981 so i think someone just had this laying around to pretend it was a north carolina car but man what the hell i'm gonna leave it in there and then you've got this terrific 81 cordoba um i thought i put this thing on mute and it's banging away like crazy anyway um so here it is here's uh the cordoba brochure you've got um you know all the different there's that nose i was talking about with the ls model uh there's uh something that looks like the bill blass mark seven and uh here are all the different packages and radios and other you could get in the car so that's kind of cool and it's nice to see it with it i also do like the black carpet which looks nice in here you've got a full-size spare tire and otherwise you know pretty nice trunk i have to say in many ways it's certainly as nice as that mark five we had the quarter top i don't know i just i i kind of really like this car i hate to admit it uh with the imperial let's share the dashboards you've got these weird modular looking it's actually a whole modular dash but uh so what's this the brake release is here this is the hood release what a big giant hood release and over on the other side you have the world's most over complicated uh rear window defrost thing but um anyway let's get in here and here's where i'm gonna get even more i know the car doesn't have corinthian leather but this might even be worse okay so here it is yes it's got the 225 slant six engine and we'll get okay first of all i'm gonna throw this out the 225 slant six is a terrific engine or at least it was in many incarnations in fact i don't think there's ever been a bad inline six-cylinder engine in any car pretty much i mean whether you're talking about datsun or chrysler or jeep or amc mercedes bmw the inline sixes are just fantastic engines and only because everybody's gone to these sort of cab forward things to increase the interior space i have the sixes the inline six has gone away uh you know you might as well have a 12 cylinder because you've got two of them together you got a 12 but it's a long engine and that's the only reason they've lost favor mechanically they're fantastic they run forever they're pretty reliable and the slant sex particularly in this version is terrific however in 1980 you could 80 only there were three engine options 81 on there were two in 1980 you could get this this was the standard engine the 225 science x i'm going to quietly mention that it was rated at 85 horsepower with 120 pound-feet of torque i mean i think my dad's isuzu imar diesel had a higher horsepower rating but anyway we'll get into that they had a 120 horse you want to talk about seriously detuned uh 318 v8 uh that option cost 64. okay uh which is like 200 in today dollars i mean it's it's nothing 64 how cheap did the guy who ordered this car have to be to not spend the 64 bucks to get a v8 i mean this guy was cheaper than even my dad i mean holy 64 bucks you could have had a 318 with another 35 horsepower and then yeah yeah smart six is good enough for me it's a good motor so anyway you just absolutely have to love it and i want to say it's like the a904 if i remember right uh sort of a good old bulletproof three-speed automatic than any of the engines were mated to there was also a 360 v8 that you could order uh in in 1980 uh it had 185 horsepower i don't know what it cost but less than a hundred people or dealers ordered them less than 100 ordered them so i mean you talk about have one of those you got a unicorn and due to lack of demand christ did away with that motor for 81 and you could only get the 318 as honestly most people probably got or this uh standard slant six you can see under the hood this thing is a 42 000 mile car very very original very lovely all the right stickers are on there all the right markings all the right plaques i really have to admit to being a little bit enamored with this thing there's just something very honest about this car and i've enjoyed driving it yeah as much as just about any other old honestly probably even more than some of the cutlasses and and um uh the monte carlo we had this thing's just kind of fun to drive and nobody knows what the hell it is but uh the science 6 engine you can see it's 30 degrees off kilter from being straight up and down uh it's an engine that dates to like 1950 not that bird is going pissed of right there right there there's two of them staring get out of here go on you know they have the height advantage and they know it they're not scared of me the minute i turn around those things could swoop down and start pecking into me anyway um now i don't remember the hell i was anyway since 1959 chrysler had been building versions of this engine you could have them with aluminum blocks or iron blocks i believe this one is iron and the thing is bulletproof i mean even 85 horsepower which is pathetic one barrel carburetor but it is simple it's easy to maintain and it's just a damn good old engine and of course this one is air conditioned that's been converted and looks like and uh the air i can report is pretty good on it so uh there it is and uh we're just gonna keep going so i tell you what i'm gonna get my crap in the back now at this stage what is that with moths do not like moths uh i'm gonna get my crap in the back and um then we're gonna hop in i'll show you the interior and we'll go for a spin look at this ship right overhead right over it now look they're all staging in that tree right there waiting for me to not keep an eye out for them and then when the minute i look away they're going to swoop down and start pecking at my parts that look soft and fragile bastards they seem to be going away thank god anyway let's just get into this thing so look as i learned you know i've gotten into that i've always been around cars obviously and i'm pretty good at looking at a car and uh frankly that's something that served me well over the years but only recently only in the last three to four years have i started sort of zeroing in on this sort of collector car stuff uh because i just find it a lot more fun than the cars that i've been doing before i've really enjoyed it and it's great fun as i've done it though that i've learned that there is a wide variation in the stuff that comes up for sale in the auctions you know when you talk about mecum or barrett-jackson or any of the other collector car auctions there's a whole pile of cars that come through there and i really feel sorry for your average consumer who's not a car guy who decides he wants a collector car he trusts the name of the auction so he goes there and starts buying things and it would be really easy to get stuck with something that's a polished herd piece of cake i've been stuck with a few of them myself and you know i have to spend gobs of money to make them you know decent enough to put out on the market uh so it's it's been a learning curve this one i am happy to say this particular cordoba is what i would consider a truly honest wonderful old car and uh you know obviously there's some people that have 81 cordova's desired by exactly nobody yeah that's fine but you know it's still friggin what 40 years old uh you know it has a true 40 000 miles which i've determined they don't all you know people roll back miles there's all kinds of shenanigans that go on uh it has original paint for the most part which again is a little bit of a rarity because 40 years of paint you know the thing's outside even a quarter of its life it's been out in the sun for 10 years so you see a lot of repaints very very few i would call this in the top 10 of preserved cars and it's a joy to me when i get one it just absolutely is and this cordoba honestly despite its anemic sex cylinder and uh you know whatever else it's lacking in terms of panache uh this is a car that i would own personally i would love to play if i had a big building like peter or some other wealthy guy i would have a bunch of cars inside of it as it is i don't have that so anything i buy is going to be kept outside or in a carport or under a cover which means i just don't own stuff personally it's good for me in a way because i don't have to collect things and i can just know that i can't key i can't be a good steward for them otherwise i'd end up with all these orphans so it it's actually worked out to my favor but if i did i would have no trouble throwing a car like this in there because it's cheap you know for a car of its age and it's miles it's cheap and uh it can only go up in value it really can't become worth any less and it's just a true honest car that's kind of fun to drive and when you're on the streets nobody knows what the hell it is so um anyway it's just sort of fascinating to get into this world of collector cars uh let's get right into the inside of this thing [Music] okay so here's where i'm gonna get i mean finally i look at this stupid emergency brake thing falling off this pad this is the kind of stuff that just anyway we'll get that back on later this is where i'm gonna get some because i finally get a cordoba a it's not a first gen which are the ones that people really like and b it doesn't have corinthian leathers ricardo montalban uh you know or the khan or whatever the hell he was in the star trek movies would be very disappointed uh that this thing has velour which is actually nice maybe it's even just cloth i don't know it looks very to me uh but there's the tag for the keys i'm telling you uh but uh so anyway there it is so it's got a six cylinder it's got friggin window cranks which actually i'm gonna put down before we go for a drive although the thing does have air conditioning so i won't put the passenger one and the ac actually works which is shocking uh but uh anyway so there it is velour and an inline six cylinder and uh you know doesn't even have an eight track but what the hell are you gonna do you get the ones that you get um the door panel treatment i think is actually quite nice you've got the standard little rear ashtray thing i like the way it works doesn't look it's been used but hasn't been used that much uh which means that it wasn't really used as a cordoba and now i've got um no more time on the video so i got to delete a couple of videos to keep going hold on a minute now i'm glad i saw that red time thing flashing or i've been doing a damn i'd been talking into the video for five minutes while it wasn't recording hopefully it did record up to this point i'm not even sure that it did but i'm gonna go with it and hope it did but anyway the door panel treatment is nice again you've got acres of fake wood as was common at the time uh here's that hilarious medallion which you could just picture on the hairy chest in the dancing suit with the gold chain around it uh and apparently that's some sort of argentinian thing not a spanish thing for whatever reason here's a remote mirror and here's your window crank back seats your canadians you know what they're going to be just fine you got all this plush padding you've got room for three you've got a decent package shelf up there to stick an infant or toddler in you've got decent leg room more than that stupid hyundai for andrew we did the other day and uh otherwise everything looking nice and tight back there you can even see where it might have had an opera window that's been filled in on the inside panel that's hilarious that would have been cool if it did have one but not with this package apparently maybe this was a rental for hertz or something oj was jumping over counters to get to it on the way to the knife store front seats you've got sort of a split you know it doesn't really look like a split bench i mean it is 60 40 but you've got all this padding on the bottom seat um i'm sure it's three across i'm sure you can fit a canadian in the middle of that thing but he's going to have to have an ass that's like three inches wide if he's not going to be having one cheek elevated on each side of the padding so um but anyway this these personal luxury coupes again were the suvs of their time so this was a six passenger car uh essentially which we just don't really have anymore uh thank god it does have a tilt steering wheel it's got um what i'm sure was the base uh steering wheel with the uh wood grain inlay which is all in very nice shape uh it does have crew i tell you why let's just hop in the thing and fire it up and see what we got and i guess every cordoba came with gauges of some sort so we've got our chrysler key here which we put in what i consider upside down but apparently is a uh it doesn't immediately go in easy apparently is a good thing there's that in mine 225 slant six fires right to life so you've got this big giant dashboard on this thing that angles up and towards you some people didn't like that but i do i think it looks pretty cool also i do like all the different gauge pods you have a true temperature gauge you have a true volt meter over here and well i guess that's it otherwise you've got an oil pressure idiot light this is going to warn you if your belts are on you've got high beams and that seems to work there you see just 42 000 miles on the clock 85 mile an hour speedo with 55 circled because of course that was the law at the time over here this giant gauge which could have been attacked if it had an option as just a fuel gauge with your pr ndl indicator uh here's your tilt wheel which has yeah works good you got your cruise control and wiper stock here and uh when do we have a horn yeah horn works pretty good and here is that argentinian gold medallion staring at you uh over here you have a digital clock with the um uh it's telling look at this giant thing to tell you it's got a chronometer uh which is of course uh advertising agencies speak for clock and if you go in the glove box that's how you adjust it uh here you have an am am radio which obviously a base radio actually this is am fm stereo let's see what we got missing you yeah you know you're old when the oldie stations is playing that you remember from like yesterday uh here's your uh climate control you got a nice big uh cigarette lighter which again it doesn't look like it was used which is criminal at a cordova holy okay well you don't obviously want to pull the ashtray out too far or that's where it ends up so um [Music] i'll give that one a tug but you've got his and hers ashtrays plenty of spots to put your cigarettes here's that ridiculous defrost button i was talking about i mean so here's the hieroglyphic you've got up i mean it looks like something the side would run like a dump bed on a pickup truck and instead it's just the defrost which is just insane to me uh let's get a little bit of ac going oh god that is actually nice look over the glove box here's how you set the clock with this thing here and here is a book set and you do have pretty good room in the uh in the glove box for weapon storage you got a revolver a nine millimeter up here where this book set is uh down here you could even get like a longer maybe like a target shooting 22 or something that's a nice big swoopy uh area down there for god knows what um i presume if it had a trunk release that would be here but this one wasn't optioned as such and here's the book set where you've got that's the guy who apparently originally bought it you see he's in webster pennsylvania it's not rusty underneath it it has 42 000 miles so he was probably 110 years old and never drove it he kept this was the jacking instructions why am i revving them uh wheel cover removal instructions that looks like a serious pain in the ass anyway there they are and a variety of other little bits and pieces that go with it so nice little book set with the car and uh happy to have it so all right well look let's just go for a spin uh dalton's windshield it might actually look better today because i actually cleaned it myself well look up here you got a mirror and you've got um vap lights nice uh i had to clean it myself because it was so bad on my right end that i knew it just wouldn't wash i knew it so while i was sitting here waiting for the sun to come up i just said the hell with it i'm just gonna clean the damn thing and i did and uh so don't think he did a good job for once he really didn't it was even shittier than usual which is saying something for him because it's almost always i do like the uh look out the front uh window the vista if you will with those uh knife edge fenders on either side the little hump in the middle you got your pentastar you know mercedes and looking horde ornament leading the way and uh you know everything's nice uh pretty good assist for the power steering nice little thin steering wheel you know perfect for the 80s and let's see what this 85 horsepower can do yeah not much but i tell you what before i read that it's 85 horsepower i would have guessed higher i mean i know you're going to think i'm full of because the car is for sale and i really do want to sell it and move on but it is not as anemic as 85 horsepower would suggest i mean the kick down is terrible terrible i mean it's not putting you back in the seat by any stretch of the imagination but i mean if you're just looking to cruise the boulevard i'll give you this it's way way better way better than like a 1981 mercedes 240d signal look at these people these hats and do they have mirrors at home yeah hi apparently not anyway um you drive at 81 mercedes 240 d diesel and tell me this car isn't quicker so you at least have that going for you uh you also have the idea that if you look if you're sitting at a traffic light next to a you know police car uh you can race him you can wide open race that police car as much as you want and uh well he'll never notice he just won't notice i didn't clean the outside of the windshield and it turns out dalton did a shitty job on that so we're still not looking good oh god all right so again not the fastest car out there but you know look there it is in 10 seconds or so i'm pretty much up to highway speeds i'm doing 65. uh it could be much much worse it's telling me to slow down even my cordoba is too fast for the uh for the nag things that the uh call your sheriff's button out there hammer it too fast to get a kick down that one barrel carburetor sucking high test race fuel anyway there it is so you know it is still a personally a personal luxury group you've got these sort of over assisted brakes you've got this over assisted steering uh you got this nice thin steering wheel um you know had chrysler lost something in terms of luxury by this point yeah i mean unquestionably i don't that the window cranks for god's sake but it still feels nice you've got all this wood in front of you you got your little digital clock you got radio do we have now you know we appreciate nothing i actually programmed this the daniels yeah commercials everywhere uh but anyway it's not that bad and it's really a fun car to drive it really really is i enjoy moving this thing down to boulevard i have to admit i mean look it would be fun to buy this thing and put like a hellcat motor in it you know obviously you have to tune up the suspension and but some kind of hemi or hellcat would be a lot of fun to put under the hood of this and get rid of this 85 horsepower science six but if you're just looking to have something that's kind of cool a good cheap entry-level connector car that nobody really knows exists anymore and uh guess you questioned cars and coffee or traffic lights uh you could do a lot worse you really really you could be in that van for instance so it uh it definitely isn't all bad and uh it's just fun to drive some look i'm not gonna keep rambling on this is an 81 chrysler cordoba finally you can stop nagging me about it two or three guys and you know who i'm talking about it's here video's up and um it's going to be for sam at auto house of naples and uh i'll be got the over-assisted brakes chrysler did that man you got an old fifth avenue and for whatever reason you hit the brakes that like put you through the windshield until you got figured out what was going on this car is a little bit like that um so there it is if you have an interest give them a call autohousenaples.com or uh by phone two three nine two six three eighty five hundred i think i'll be able to get a highway run in today so uh we'll do that otherwise thanks a lot appreciate it uh we're gonna keep plugging along and i will see you at the next one take care [Music] so so you

Channel: Curious Cars

Views: 131,228

Keywords: 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, Chrysler, Cordoba, Newport, Monaco, Charger, 300, Mirada, Imperial, Fury, Personal, Luxury, Coupe, Ricardo, Montelban, Star Trek, Kahn, 225, Slant Six, Dodge, Plymouth, Chevrolet, Chevy, Monte Carlo, Olds, Oldsmobile, Cutlass, Ford Thunderbird, Mercury, Cougar, Bill, Autohaus, CuriousCars, Test Drive, Review, History, Humor, Doug DeMuro, Hoovie, Jay Leno, Top Gear, Tavarish, Donut, Garage

Id: RqYgcE02dbM

Length: 49min 56sec (2996 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021