In praise of...wait, WHAT again, now?
The Chrysler Cordoba, of all things.
“I know my own needs,” said Ricardo Montalban. “And what I need from an automobile, I find in this new Cordoba.” He went on to explain the various virtues of this “small Chrysler” two-door, four-seat personal luxury coupe – which made its debut in 1975. Including (most famously) the “thickly cushioned luxury of seats available even in fine Corinthian leather.”
“Small”?
Well, by the standards of 1975.
By the standards used to classify 2023 model year cars, the Cordoba qualifies as a full-sized car. It was 215.3 inches long, which to convey some sense of that, is about two inches longer than a current-year full-sized luxury car such as a ’23 BMW 7-Series sedan – which is only 212.2 inches long. And that is about as big as “full-size” gets in 2023.
We used to live much larger.
As opposed to just the few of us who still can, as now.
Coincidentally enough, my dad very nearly bought one of Montalban's Monstrosities way back when I was a teenager—a car that looked exactly like the one Ricardo is posing with in the photo at the top of Eric’s post, the only difference being that the one my dad was looking over sported a deep, dark red paintjob instead of that Full-Diaper Brown color the one in the picture is cursed with.
The dealership owner being an old friend from way back, he was aware that my dad had been a diehard Ford man his entire life, and therefore was NOT among what one might consider Chrysler’s natural customer base. On the other hand, my mom clearly LOVED the Cordoba, making her feelings about the car known as she walked around gushing about it before she’d ever even climbed inside for that first whiff of the intoxicating scent of Rich Corinthian Leather™. So he had that going for him, at least.
The dealer was familiar with my dad’s habit of cruising around various car dealerships of a Sunday afternoon with the fam in tow, just doing a casual looky-loo type thing without any serious intent at all of allowing himself to be talked into a purchase. Additionally, he’d never been in the least susceptible to the impulse-buying phenomenon, particularly not when the “buy" in question was an exorbitantly-expensive 4-5 thousand dollar (!!!) luxury automobile.
What with all that, plus the dealer’s foreknowledge of my pop’s devotion to the Blue Ovals, this Cordoba was no way no how gonna sell itself. So the proprietor went straight for the jugular with the ol’ hard-sell:
Y'all just take this low-mileage, well-cared-for beauty on home for an extended test drive; bring it back in, say, no sooner than three weeks or so. Here's the keys.
And we did that thing. I woulda been just past my sixteenth birthday, legal driving age in NC at the time, so I got to drive the dee-luxe Chrysler a little over the next three weeks, although I much preferred to stick with my own pristine, nimble ’66 Mustang. My mom drove it some too, but mainly it was my dad taking it to work and other places, since the idea was that this was to be “his” car—even though everyone knew it would end up my mom’s car, and poor old Dad would need to find himself some other way to get around eventually.
I have to concede, albeit under some duress, that the danged Cordoba WAS a damned nice car: plush and comfortable, with that almost-eery way of sailing gracefully and smoothly over bumps and chuckholes that only those big American-made battleships of the era possessed. Although, being your basic young hot-rodder type, I considered the thing to be uglier’n fresh-squeezed dogshit.
It wasn’t though, it really wasn’t, especially compared to the soulless, unidentifiable, no-character eggmobiles being ground out today. Yep, it was a nice car, with its own unique look and style that couldn’t be mistaken for any other automobile, even from a distance. There simply isn’t anything remotely like it around today, which is too bad, really. It can come as no big surprise that there’s a Superstate devil in the details, and Eric knows what that devil is.
But the Cordoba was still a pretty big car for a coupe. There is no modern day comparison because coupes its size are no longer made. Haven’t been made in decades. Because they have been effectively outlawed.
The government never said to Chrysler – and the rest of the car industry: We forbid you to build cars like the Cordoba (which was by the way a very popular car that sold well when Chrysler was still permitted to build cars of that type). Rather – and much more subtly – the government decreed that Chrysler and the rest had to comply with the regulations issued by the government’s regulatory apparat.
The evil genius of this dirty business is that no one can say the government has “outlawed” a particular kind of car. So when cars that can’t comply with the regulations are taken off the market, many people assume it’s because there isn’t a market for those kinds of vehicles.
It is the oily mechanism by which the government subverts what the market wants without the market recognizing that its preferences have been subverted. We can also see this going on today with regard to electric cars. There is very little real market demand for these things. But they are the only things that can comply with the latest round of regulations issued by the government that effectively outlaw anything that isn’t an electric car by requiring all new cars to be “zero emissions” – or average close to 50 MPG.
So this isn’t new. It has just gotten worse.
And not just the Cordoba, either.
All of these personal luxury coupes (and their V8s) went away.
No, that’s not accurate. All of them were regulated away. The Cordoba’s big V8s could not meet the next round of government fuel economy and emissions regs and so – after just four years of success on the market – Chrysler was forced to redesign it to be more...compliant.
And there you have it. More broadly speaking, “compliant” is going to be the death of us all, assuming it hasn’t been already.
BONUS CONTENT FROM ERIC’S COMMENT SECTION: I gotta admit, I did NOT see this coming.
Hi Roland,
Interesting, by modern standards, even those old “boats” were light! A ’76 Cordoba – body-on-frame, rear-drive, with a cast iron V8 engine – weighed about 3,700 lbs. About the same as my ’76 Trans-Am, which is laid out similarly. Today, a mid-sized (and front-wheel-drive, four cylinder-powered, unibody) sedan such as a Camry weighs 3,310 lbs.
You’re absolutely right about height, though. And these imbecile “rims” – which are a manifestation of “ghetto culture” that has gone mainstream. Even minivans have 17 and 18 inch tall “rims.” Many SUVs and trucks ride on “twennies.”
Horst Muhlmann July 23, 2023 At 4:58 pm
2023 Toyota Corolla and a 1964 Chevelle with a small block weigh the same.
Hi Horst,
“2023 Toyota Corolla and a 1964 Chevelle with a small block weigh the same.”
Crazy, isn’t it? The Corolla is a compact-sized economy car; FWD with a small (and aluminum) four cylinder engine. Unibody construction. The Chevelle is a full-sized (by current standards) rear-drive performance coupe with a cast iron V8 and body-on-frame construction. An economy car ought to weigh around 2,200 pounds; less, ideally. In order to be – you know – economical…
Which once again gives the entire game away: this isn’t about “economy,” nor about shifting market preferences, nor even about “saving Gaia” or “fighting climate change.” No, this is about the exact same thing it always is: power and control, and even more importantly, dominance and submission.