The Truth About Cars » Chrysler Cordoba

Junkyard Find: 1980 Chrysler Cordoba

Murilee Martin — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:43 +0000

It seems strange, but sufficient Chrysler Cordobas still exist to provide a sporadic flow of fresh examples to self-serve wrecking yards. In this series, we’ve seen this ’78, another ’78, this ’79, and now today’s personally luxurious blue ’80.
The downsized second-gen 1980-83 Cordobas, which were based on the Volare/Diplomat platform and didn’t differ much from their Dodge Mirada siblings, sold very poorly. You aren’t going to find many of these things today, either on the street or lined up before the Crusher’s jaws.
Soft Corinthian Leather was still an option— Ricardo Montalban would have quit in disgust otherwise— but this car has the more affordable soft Corinthian Velour.
With a smog-o-lated 318 under the hood, chopping a few hundred extra pounds out of the Cordoba for the ’80 model year made this car a much livelier performer.
The landau roof and touch-o-plastic-class grille treatment were properly Cordoba-ish, but where did the “gold” medallions go?

Not to worry, Ricardo liked what they did to his car!

Junkyard Find: 1979 Chrysler Cordoba

Murilee Martin — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 13:00:57 +0000

After yesterday’s Junkyard Find, which was AMC’s answer to the very successful Chrysler Cordoba personal luxury coupe, it seems only right that we look at the car that inspired AMC’s marketers to start searching maps of Spain for car names: the Chrysler Cordoba. Here’s a ’79 that I spotted at a Denver self-serve yard last week.
Cordobas sold pretty well, but they aren’t considered particularly collectible nowadays. This means that junkyard visitors still see a steady stream of the plush Malaise Era Chrysler coupes; I found this ’78 in the same junkyard during the winter.
Unlike that car, today’s Cordoba lacks the optional Corinthian Leather upholstery that we associate with the Cordoba (though it was available in other Chrysler models well into the 1980s). I so admired the Corinthian Leather bench seat in the junked ’78 that I bought it and used it as the basis for a classy garage couch.
The stack of sun-bleached Denver parking tickets tells us the reason this car ended up getting towed and scrapped.

When You See a Clean Corinthian Leather Bench Seat In the Junkyard, You Buy It!

Murilee Martin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:00:52 +0000

When I saw the interior of today’s Junkyard Find, I knew: I must have that Corinthian Leather bench seat! Maybe I’ll put it in the back of my ’66 Dodge A100 van, or maybe I’ll just convert it into a comfy, Ricardo Montalban-grade garage couch. Either way, I returned to the junkyard yesterday with a sense of grim determination: that seat will be mine!
It’s very rare that you find a 34-year-old car in a wrecking yard with a front seat in this condition. No rips, no cracking, hardly any staining. I’m guessing that the car’s owner kept it garaged and safe from the upholstery-frying Colorado sun, and perhaps he or she even kept a seat cover over the front bench.
Those of you who know old Chrysler products are familiar with this seat-mounting system: studs going through the car’s floor, held in place by nuts on the underside of the car. Yes, where they’re exposed to salt, dirt, roadkill, and big rocks.
I knew what to expect, so I’d brought some deep sockets and my grungiest coveralls. The weather in Denver had been chilly for a week or so, but yesterday got into the low 60s. Hooray, icy mud under the car!
I threw some old floor mats under the car and crawled beneath. The bench seat in a Cordoba is held in with four nuts and big washers, just like all the Mopars of its era. While I removed the first three nuts, I recalled a prank pulled on me while driving a ’73 Fury in high school: some clever friend removed all four seat nuts in my car, so that when I stepped on the gas the seat (with me in it) flew all the way into the back seat. I must say that got my attention; fortunately, I was able to crawl forward and jam my hand on the brake pedal before the car hit anything expensive.
When I got to the nut holding the front of the driver’s side of the seat in place, my heart sank. Yes, that’s a junkyard jack-stand (i.e., two steel wheels welded together) blocking access to the last seat mounting nut. Damn.
By this time, I was pretty well chilled by the semi-frozen mud beneath the car (having spent most of my life in California, this snow-and-ice-at-the-junkyard business is still a new phenomenon to me) and started considering my options. The most attractive option involved finding a jack, preferably of the old-school bumper-ratchet variety, in the trunk of a nearby car and just lifting the car enough to move the jack-stand. No dice: this yard clears all the jacks out of the cars when they show up. I considered asking the yard employees to use the forklift to reposition the car, but I’ve had bad experiences with this sort of thing; lots of times, resentful junkyard workers will not only refuse to help, they’ll come back later and vandalize the part you wanted to get.
However, there was a third option. If I cut the parking-brake cables and bent the brake line out of the way, I might be able to sneak a wrench over the top of the jack-stand and get it onto the nut. Here goes the brake cable.
At this point, I should apologize for the crappy quality of these cell-phone photos; I was in such a rush to get out the door and grab my Corinthian Leather prize that I forgot to bring a proper camera. But even with a phone camera, you can see that it is just barely possible to get a 1/2″ wrench onto the offending nut. It turned out that it was also possible to get about 1/16th of a turn with the wrench before it fell off and clattered into the mud. Repeat. Endlessly.
After about 45 minutes of profanity-enhanced wrench-dropping fun, I was able to get the nut far enough down the threads to get a quarter-drive socket onto it. Success!
My junkyard toolbox doesn’t have the 7/8″ socket I’d need to remove the seat belts (which couldn’t be pulled out of the seats), the driver’s-side lap belt had been cut already, and so I sliced them with a knife. I hate doing this, but 70s Chrysler seat belts are easy to find.
I’d brought a hand truck, an old sheet, and some rope, and I hoped to get the seat out to my car without getting it too muddy. This thing probably weighs 80 pounds.
I couldn’t resist removing and buying the opera lights on the C pillars. These will look good in the interior of my A100.
I should have tied the seat to the roof of my cargo-hauling Civic, but instead I got lazy and brought the Outback. Hey, got to keep that white Corinthian Leather in good shape!

Junkyard Find: 1978 Chrysler Cordoba

Murilee Martin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:08 +0000

We all make fun of the Cordoba now, but we mustn’t forget that Chrysler’s personal luxury coupe sold quite well back in the day, helping slow the company’s slide towards what appeared to be certain doom. I’m going to follow up yesterday’s junked early-70s personal luxury coupe with one built a little later in the decade.
Yes, the Cordoba was once a fairly common sight on North American roads. It was based on Chrysler’s venerable B platform, which means this car is a close relative of the General Lee and the Plymouth Superbird.

Of course, what we all remember about the Cordoba (which Chrysler’s marketers decided to pronounce with the stress on the second syllable, rather than the way the residents of its namesake city— Córdoba, Spain— do it) is Ricardo Montalban’s TV ads. Even if your parents weren’t even born when the Cordoba was new, you know about “soft Corinthian Leather.” Yes, that’s soft, not rich. You’ll win some trivia contests with that knowledge.
Speaking of soft Corinthian Leather, check out this comfy living room of a car interior! By 1978, the Corinthian Leather seats (technically an option, but I’ve yet to see a Cordoba with the base velour seats) in the Cordoba were a little less pimpin’ than the ’75 model’s deep-tufted buckets, but they still made shoppers in the Chrysler/Plymouth showroom feel they were being cheap for even considering the Fury and its cheapo vinyl upholstery. Yes, I went back and bought this car’s bench seat.

By the time of the Cordoba’s fourth model year, sales were declining a bit. Ricardo was still helping to move that iron, though!
360 cubic inches. How many horses? Who cares? Soft Corinthian Leather!
What happened to opera lights on Detroit luxury machines? Let’s import some opera lights from Detroit for the ’13 Chryslers!
That’s AM and FM radio right there. There was a time, believe it or not, when thieves would steal factory FM radios.
Including the steering wheel, fenders, door panels, and taillight lenses, I counted seven of these “golden” Cordoba medallions on the car. I believe there should be one more for the hood ornament, but this example (found in a Denver self-service yard) lacks that component.
Then there’s the Cordoba badging on the trunklid, fenders, and dash.
The original Cordoba “chronometer” was a mechanical-digital deal, but Chrysler found a source for an LED (or maybe green fluorescent) version. I might have to go back and get this fine clock for my collection, to accompany the beautiful digital clock I pulled from this ’80 Toyota Cressida.
“I know my own needs, and what I need from an automobile I get from this new… Cordoba.”