1984: Ricardo Montalban Introduces Us To The Future

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The Chrysler E-Class— based on the K platform and built for the 1983 and 1984 model years only— wasn’t quite as opulent as the car we associate Señor Montalban with today, but it talked!


Montalban sold Chrysler products for nearly 15 years. Some had soft— not rich— Corinthian leather, some didn’t.

Going from a ’75 Cordoba to a woodie K-car wagon? ¡Dios Mio!

Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Athos Nobile Athos Nobile on Oct 25, 2012

    "Going from a ’75 Cordoba to a woodie K-car wagon? ¡Dios Mio!" The ¡Dios Mío! part was classy. Embarrassingly, I forgot the ASCII sequence for this character: ¡

  • Loki993 Loki993 on Oct 26, 2012

    What no fine Corinthian leather?

  • MaintenanceCosts Poorly packaged, oddly proportioned small CUV with an unrefined hybrid powertrain and a luxury-market price? Who wouldn't want it?
  • MaintenanceCosts Who knows whether it rides or handles acceptably or whether it chews up a set of tires in 5000 miles, but we definitely know it has a "mature stance."Sounds like JUST the kind of previous owner you'd want…
  • 28-Cars-Later Nissan will be very fortunate to not be in the Japanese equivalent of Chapter 11 reorganization over the next 36 months, "getting rolling" is a luxury (also, I see what you did there).
  • MaintenanceCosts RAM! RAM! RAM! ...... the child in the crosswalk that you can't see over the hood of this factory-lifted beast.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Yes all the Older Land Cruiser’s and samurai’s have gone up here as well. I’ve taken both vehicle ps on some pretty rough roads exploring old mine shafts etc. I bought mine right before I deployed back in 08 and got it for $4000 and also bought another that is non running for parts, got a complete engine, drive train. The mice love it unfortunately.
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