If you’re an owner of multiple cars, that doesn’t necessarily make you a hoarder. It does, however, allow some level of diversity in your fleet. This could be by country of origin, type of car, price range, or other factors. And if you’ve already got a couple of old sports cars to fling through the curves, why not try a walk on the mild side? American personal luxury cars are the absolute opposite of a compact sports car, although Chrysler’s torsion bar suspension was said to provide surprisingly good handling. You can find your luxury car, upholstered in vinyl, velour, and 24-ounce shag carpet, in this 1975 Chrysler Cordoba, available for $2300 in San Francisco, CA.
The earlier Cordobas have a more elegant front end, with the big-and-little dual round headlights aping classic British luxury cars, while the later cars have stacked square sealed beam units. It does appear to be in pretty good shape, as you’d expect from a car bought new in Arizona and spending most of its life between Colorado and San Francisco. Most of the 101,600 miles were accumulated on freeway runs, so that gives hope for future reliability.
Oops! Looks like grandma had an encounter with, err, someone else’s bumper, or perhaps the corner post of her own carport. If you’re lucky, you might get a paintless dent service to tidy those up. Or just leave it as is, and don’t worry about using this as your city runabout (good luck finding parking!).
The engine looks like that of a working car. Unfortunately, it’s the cash-back 318 option instead of the 360 or 400 that were also available. The seller suggests a 440 with Tremec 6-speed, which sounds exciting if not downright scary. Either way, the car is said to run well and be in generally good condition, with plenty of tread on the tires and no smog check required.
As you can see, the rear bench likely suffered sun damage. The dash is also cracked, but the interior otherwise looks to be in good shape for its 38 years. The seller started driving the car in 1983, and inherited it in 2005, so it was likely a grandparent’s car. He also has the purchase history back to when the car was new. Will the personal luxury car ever come back?
And with that, this post is complete, without a single mention of Corinthian leather (ah crap!).As it happens, this car is local and the seller is an acquaintance, so if you are interested in hearing impressions based on an in-person inspection, please comment below or use the Contact Us button to make arrangements.
Rusty But Trusty 
October 17, 2013 at 12:57 am |
My cinematography teacher at film school shot the original commercials for these things with Ricardo Montalban. Not really a proud moment for anybody when he brought those up at school.
October 17, 2013 at 2:03 pm |
At least he didn’t pay to buy one new without any sense of irony…
October 18, 2013 at 1:43 pm |
Mine had the “rich Corinthian leather” and I bought it from my buddy’s Mom for $500 in 1984. It was a nice car until I left it in my Dad’s care for about 6 months when I moved to Atlanta. I needed to find another car when I moved back.