1978 Chrysler Cordoba

The Chrysler marque only sold full-size Mopars in the U.S. during the postwar years. While Dodge and Plymouth offered a full range of compact, mid-, and full-size autos, the flagship label only peddled 300s, Newports, New Yorkers and other big C-body cars.

After the first fuel crisis of the Seventies, and with the burgeoning popularity of the personal luxury coupe, however, it was decided to bolster the lineup at Chrysler dealerships with something smaller and more modern. For the 1975 model year the full-size behemoths on the lot were joined by a B-body coupe, kin to the Dodge Charger.

The new luxury two-door was marketed a compact Chrysler, and by the marque's standards it was, riding on its 115" wheelbase and with an overall length about a foot shorter than a Newport coupe. It debuted with a standard 400 cubic inch big block V-8 with a two-barrel carb and single exhaust, rated at 165 SAE net horsepower. There were a variety of optional 2- and 4-barrel small block 318 and 360 V-8s on offer, and a top option of a four-barrel 400 with a dual exhaust making 185 ponies.

The interior could be had with either a 60/40 split bench seat or buckets and a console up front and the dash came with a full set of gauges, with only the tach being optional. The dash trim was baroque, with lots of faux Brazilian rosewood burl plastic wood and weird faux-Aztec motif edging, and of course the ad campaign is famous to this day for Cordoba pitchman Ricardo Montalbán extolling its optional "rich Corinthian leather", a term made up by an ad copywriter out of whole... er, cloth.

The 1978 models, like the Caramel Tan Metallic one in the photo, had a heavily-restyled front end, with stacked quad rectangular headlamps that did nothing for the car's looks. By this time, the 2-barrel 400 had left the lineup and the base motor everywhere but California was a single-exhaust 400 4-bbl making 190 horsepower with an optional 200hp Heavy Duty version at the top of the range.

Sales had been strong, but the homelier snout and the availability of a new, svelter LeBaron coupe on Chrysler lots caused the big B-body Cordoba to get a downsizing after the '79 model year.

This one was snapped in November of 2016 using a Sony NEX-5T and a 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens.

1993 Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue

The Chrysler New Yorker nameplate was moved to a front-wheel-drive stretched K-car platform for the 1983 model year, but the old rear-wheel-drive M-body car, a platform mate to the Dodge Diplomat and Plymouth Gran Fury, soldiered on through the rest of the decade as the New Yorker Fifth Avenue.

For the 1990 model year, the old RWD platform was finally put out to pasture, having lived long enough to become the last passenger car in the US with a live rear axle located by a pair of semi-elliptical leaf springs. 

The New Yorker Fifth Avenue nameplate was now used on a FWD New Yorker that had been given a 5" wheelbase stretch for more rear legroom. It can be distinguished not only by the "Fifth Avenue" script badges, but by the longer rear door with its opera window, like on this Bright White 1993 car. This sample has aftermarket wheels, the headlight doors have packed it in, and it's a little tatty around the edges, but it's still out there fetching groceries.

So in the early '90s the New Yorker nameplate was used on the cheaper New Yorker Salon, the regular New Yorker Landau, and the glitzier, stretched New Yorker Fifth Avenue.

Under the hood was Chrysler's all-new 3.3L pushrod V-6, featuring sequential multiport fuel injection and making 150 SAE net horsepower.

1993 was the final year for the C-body New Yorker. It was already sharing space on the lot at Chrysler dealerships with the new cab-forward LH-platform Chrysler Concorde and would be replaced with an LH-based New Yorker in the 1994 model year.

This one was photographed with a Sony a700 and 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Zeiss lens in June of 2025.

1986 Chrysler LeBaron Convertible

Chrysler inherited the LeBaron nameplate from the defunct Imperial division of Mopar in 1977 and originally applied it to a car that shared the new rear wheel drive M-platform with the Dodge Diplomat and Plymouth Gran Fury. The M-cars were derived from the Aspen/Volare compact sedans, which were themselves evolved from the Dart/Valiant twins.

The LeBaron was the smallest, lowest-priced Chrysler, intended to do battle with the Cadillac Seville. With the dawn of the FWD era at Chrysler in the early Eighties, the LeBaron became Chrysler's version of the new K-car platform: It was the glitziest variant of a trio that included the Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant.

Along with being the Chrysler marque's first FWD luxury car, the new 1982 LeBaron saw the return of the factory convertible to Detroit.

For 1986, the base engine in a LeBaron convertible was the SOHC "Trenton" 2.2L four cylinder with throttle body electronic fuel injection, rated at 97 horsepower. The next engine up the options list was the 2.5L Trenton four, which had the same bore but almost a half-inch longer stroke, giving a three-horsepower increase to an even 100, but bumping torque from 122 to 136 lb-ft at 2,800 RPM, four hundred RPM lower than the torque peak on the 2.2L mill. The increase in displacement necessitated counterrotating balance shafts to keep things acceptably smooth in the cabin.

The top of the line powertrain, as found in this Gunmetal Blue Pearl example, was the 2.2L Turbo, indicated by the fender badges and hood louvers. It came with 146 SAE net horsepower and torque steer for days.

Among other options to let you know that it was the Eighties was a voice alert system that used a speech synthesizer like the one from the old Texas Instruments Speak & Spell to let you know when a door was ajar or your seat belt was unfastened.

This one was photographed with a Canon EOS 40D and an EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS zoom lens in May of 2025.

1965 Chrysler 300L

The "letter series" Chrysler 300 began as a high performance coupe spinoff of the New Yorker in the mid 1950s. From the 1962 model year on, the 300 badge was used as a line of sporty coupes and sedans from Chrysler with the letter series continuing as a limited production performance version. Sometimes called "The Banker's Hot Rod", the letter series Chrysler 300s were expensive, exclusive, and had explosive performance by the standards of the day.

The 1965 model year saw all the Chryslers get a serious restyling, and the 300 was no exception. Period ad copy described the 300 as "The sports-bred Chrysler. A brawling, hustling brute of a car with a heritage ten years deep."

The Formal Black '65 300L in the photos represents the last of the letter series cars, since plans for a '66 300M never materialized.

The 300L came with bucket seats split by a center console and a heap of luxury options as standard equipment.

For 1965 the only engine option was the 413 cubic inch "Golden Lion" Chrysler V8 with a single 4bbl, 10.1:1 compression, and dual exhaust, rated at 360 SAE gross bhp. The standard transmission was a 3-speed Torqueflite automatic, and the Hurst-shifted 4-speed manual, like the one in this car, was a no-cost option. The cars came with a 3.23:1 final drive ratio standard.

Only 2,845 examples of the Chrysler 300L were produced for '65, and only 108 had the four-speed transmission, making the car in the picture a rarity among rarities.

Motor Trend tested a 300L with the automatic and recorded an 8.8 second zero-to-sixty run and a 17.3 quarter mile at 82 miles per hour. Top speed was noted at 106 and the 4-wheel power drum brakes took 176 feet to haul the 4,660 pound test car to a stop from sixty. Price as tested was $5,931, or just short of sixty grand in today's money.

This one was snapped while parked with an Olympus E-5 and a Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 II zoom lens in October of 2022. The picture in motion was taken in November of 2023 using a Canon EOS-1D Mark III and an EF 28-70mm f/2.8L zoom lens.

1990 Chrysler New Yorker Salon

The K-car front wheel drive platform arguably helped a moribund Chrysler battle its way back into the black from near-bankruptcy in the early Eighties, after it had been pulled from the brink by a government loan.

Other than trucks, the legacy RWD sedans, and the L-body compacts (Omni/Horizon/Charger/Turismo), pretty much every vehicle made by Mopar in the Eighties and Nineties was on a variant of the K-car chassis. The K-car platform was to Chrysler what the ground-beef patty is to McDonalds; shuffle a few basic ingredients around it and you can come up with a pretty good-size menu.

Need a sporty coupe? Shorten the K-car for the Daytona. Need a minivan? Stretch the K-car for the Caravan*. Need a largish sedan to replace the Diplomat & Fifth Avenue? Hey, check out the stretched K-car in the picture above!

That's a 1990-1993 Chrysler New Yorker Salon in Black Cherry Metallic. The Salon was a sort of base model New Yorker introduced in 1990, that deleted the hidden headlamps and the half-vinyl roof off a New Yorker Landau, had a simpler taillight treatment, and used a bluff chrome grille similar to the cheaper Dodge Dynasty. The corner of the car you can't see in the photo is all stove in, but it's in otherwise nice shape, including all four fake wire wheel hubcaps.

Power would have been provided by Chrysler's port fuel injected 3.3L 150bhp pushrod V-6, and sent to the front wheels via a 4-speed A604 Ultradrive automatic transmission made right up the road at the plant in Kokomo, Indiana.

When Car and Driver hung their test instruments off a regular '89 New Yorker, it turned in a 10.8 zero-to-sixty time and made it through the quarter one tenth under the eighteen second mark. Not any kind of race car, but enough power to merge safely.

Base MSRP on a New Yorker Salon was $16,342, which was several thousand cheaper than the Landau and came to $39,500 in current dollars.

This photo was snapped with an iPhone 13 Pro Max in December of 2023.

*To head off the tidal wave of ackshyually emails, the minivans didn't technically use the K-car chassis. They had their own platform...that used K-car drivelines and suspension.

1930 Chrysler Six Series CJ Royal Sedan

Chrysler's Six was thoroughly revamped for 1930 with the CJ series cars. Smaller than the full-size Chryslers and Imperials, the CJ sat lower to the ground and featured hydraulic brakes and suspension dampers.

Under the hood was the same trusty Chrysler flathead inline six, now displacing 196 cubic inches and rated at 62 SAE gross horsepower. Unlike the previous year's model, the new 1930 Series CJ sported a pressurized fuel system with a mechanically-driven fuel pump driven by the engine's camshaft, rather than relying on gravity feed from the tank to the carburetor float bowls.

With its combination of updated mechanical systems and wooden spoke wheels, the 1930 CJ was straddling the line between antique and more recognizably modern auto designs. In fact, Chrysler was a bare handful of years away from introducing the Airstream.

This example was spotted in Rochester, Indiana in September of 2013 and photographed with a Samsung Galaxy SII cell phone.

1991 Chrysler LeBaron GTC Convertible

Yet another derivative of the ubiquitous K-car platform, the J-bodies were used to underpin the third generation of the Chrysler LeBaron, now a sportily-styled coupe and convertible, for 1987.

It was initially offered with the gutless normally-aspirated 2.2L and 2.5L inline fours, or turbocharged variants of each, which required driving in a fashion unbecoming of a Chrysler customer in order to keep the motor on boost and derive any benefit from the turbo.

For the 1990 model year the 3.0L Mitsubishi 6G72 SOHC V-6 was added to the powerplant roster. While giving up a few horsepower to the turbo fours, the Mitsu six produced comparable torque and, more importantly, delivered it without having to rev it like a banshee, which was important given the buying demographic and the fact that the vast majority of LeBarons were sold with automatic transmissions.

By 1990, the vast majority of LeBarons were also convertibles. The J-platform had been designed from the jump-off to be sold as both a coupe and a convertible and, while in that first model year of '87 Chrysler sold 75,000 hardtops to 8,000 ragtops, by 1991 the convertible was outselling the coupe by a three-to-one margin.

The 1991 GTC convertible in the photo, in the eye-catching Radiant Fire color, has the 141 horsepower Mitsubishi V-6. Figure a zero-to-sixty time somewhere in the eights if you were willing to brake-torque it away from a traffic light.

It was photographed in October of 2024 using a Nikon D300S and an 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II zoom lens.

1966 Chrysler 300

With the demise of the high-performance "Letter Series" Chrysler 300 after 1965's 300L and its Golden Lion 413 cubic inch V-8, the non-letter 300 continued on as just the most sporting variant of the full-size Chrysler lineup. It was more upmarket than the Newport, but zoomier than the New Yorker.

New with the '65 model year was a long, clean, chiseled body style by Elwood Engel, replacing the more baroque Virgil Exner lines of the previous generation.

A 1966 Chrysler 300, like the Ivory hardtop sedan in the photos here, would have had a Chrysler Firepower 383 4-barrel V-8 rated at 325 SAE gross horsepower as the standard motor with either a 3-speed manual or Torqueflite automatic transmission. Optionally, a buyer could order a Firepower TNT 440 V-8 instead, which bumped output to 365 SAE gross and came with a mandatory 3-speed automatic.

Car Life's road test of a '66 300 hardtop coupe with the 440 motor returned some impressive acceleration numbers for a 4700-pound car that cast an eighteen and a half foot shadow. Zero-to-sixty only took 7.7 seconds and the quarter was put away in 16.1 at 88 mph. The big Firepower TNT motor shoved that boxy grille through the air to a redline-limited 120mph.

The one in the pictures was snapped in Los Alamos, NM in October of 2015 using a Nikon Coolpix P7000. 

 

1949 Chrysler New Yorker

Back in the summer of '21 I motored down to southern Indiana to grab lunch with some friends. On the way down, I noticed something red and old in the grass alongside U.S. 231, so on the way back I pulled over and snapped a photo.

I didn't get out of the car because I didn't want to go tromping around in some dude's yard, but I did have the 24-120mm f/4 VR on the D700 and it had adequate reach.

That's a 1949 Chrysler New Yorker sedan in Pepper Red. Chrysler was the last of the Big Three to tool up fresh designs after World War Two; the '48 New Yorker was basically a warmed-over 1942 model. The '49 had all new sheet metal, although the 135 horsepower 323.5cid flathead straight-eight and four-speed "Presto-Matic" semiautomatic transmission carried over from the '48 model.

Despite the tall grass, the car was in great shape, including fresh-looking rubber, and showed every sign of being maintained and driven regularly.

It was a gorgeous day and U.S. 231 was perfect for a bit of top-down cruising in the Zed Drei...

1984 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country

To someone growing up in 6th or 7th Century England, the world must have seemed overshadowed by a glorious past. Like Tolkein's Gondor, the reminders of a previous lost level of civilization were all around: in grand villas with no-longer-functional plumbing; huge, decrepit public buildings looted for stone to make pasture fences; and ruler-straight, board-flat paved roads, with weeds and trees growing between the frost-heaved pavers.

How similar the life of the auto enthusiast on these shores in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Performance was a thing of the past, strangled by emissions and fuel economy needs and gun-shy insurers. When the last '76 Eldorado rolled off the line, it was marketed as "The Last American Convertible"*. By the early Eighties, the base Camaro and Mustang each came with a 4-cylinder engine and 1980 Corvette buyers in California had one powertrain option: A low-tune 305c.i.d. mill with a slushbox and fake dual exhausts.

Enjoyable cars were slow to return and the early steps were halting, as witnessed by the '84 LeBaron above. Chrysler brought domestic convertibles back to the U.S. market by giving roofectomies to its highest-zoot K-Car variants in 1982. Initially only available with the 2.6L Mitsubishi "Silent Shaft" 4-cylinder, they soon offered a turbocharged 142bhp 2.2L motor, distinguished by hood louvers as seen on the car in the photo. The incongruous woodgrain vinyl siding on the top-of-the-line Town & Country models was by order of Lido Iaccoca hisownself. The self-consciously retro-themed packaging wasn't a very big hit on the FWD cars, consistently comprising less than 10% of the annual sales total.

Don't see many survivors from that era. Rust-resistance wasn't really a thing yet, and build quality was wildly varying, but the dude in the picture seems to have a pretty well-maintained ride. Bets he's the original owner?

Photographed in a Lowe's parking lot in Indianapolis in July of 2015 with a Nikon D1X & 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D zoom lens.

*There was a lawsuit when Caddy reintroduced convertibles to their lineup in 1984, of course. Because America is the land of the litigious!

1963 Chrysler 300 Convertible Indy 500 Pace Car

Thanks to the fact that it's a motorsports mecca, Indianapolis punches way out of its weight class if you enjoy seeing cool cars. I've joked before that if you sit at my favorite local car-spotting site at the corner of 54th Street & College Avenue, sooner or later one of everything will roll past.

One day a couple summers ago that "one of everything" happened to be a 1963 Indy 500 Pace Car replica.

While the much more interesting "letter series" Chrysler that year, the 300J, had the badass Golden Lion 413cid "Wedge" engine with dual quads on those wild-looking Ram Induction manifolds, it was only available as a hardtop.

Consequently the 1,861-vehicle run of 1963 Pace Cars were built on a regular 300 convertible. Painted Pace Setter Blue, they came with the 305hp 2-bbl Firepower 383 V-8 and a pushbutton-shifted TorqueFlite three-speed automatic transmission.

The photos of this clean example were take in June of 2022 using a Nikon D800 & 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens.