Five years before it became Chrysler’s answer to the Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix, the Cordoba was a “Spring Special” appearance package for the full-size Chrysler Newport, the cheapest of the “Fuselage” C-body Chryslers.
I don’t claim to know why Chrysler product planners seized on the “Cordoba” name — perhaps it had tested well in some kind of consumer marketing clinic — but in early 1970, Chrysler took pains to establish a claim, applying the Cordoba name to both a new concept car and a new special edition model.
Introduced at the 1970 Chicago auto show, the Cordoba de Oro — which was painted gold, although I couldn’t find any decent color photos of it — was a car show confection. Chrysler frankly described it as a styling exercise.
The Cordoba de Oro was not a runner, but it featured an assortment of gimmicks, including a rear air brake and a road surface monitoring system. It was also fitted with a prototype airbag system, something Chrysler wouldn’t offer in production until the late ’80s.
At around the same time, Chrysler announced the Newport Cordoba, a mid-year special edition. (Incidentally, in Spanish, “Córdoba” is correctly written with an accent mark (and is thus pronounced “COR-do-ba”) because the accent would otherwise fall on the second “o” (“Cor-DO-ba”), but Detroit was seldom consistent about such things, and Chrysler never bothered.)
In 1970, the Newport was the cheapest Chrysler-branded model, and the bestseller, outselling the plusher New Yorker by more than 2 to 1. A Newport sedan started at $3,514 in 1970, which put it within a few dollars of a Buick LeSabre or a Pontiac Executive.
Since it was offered only on the two- and four-door hardtop bodies, I suspect that marketing objective of the Cordoba package was to draw some attention to the more expensive Newport hardtops, which didn’t sell as well as the four-door sedan. This was typical for the low-end series of mid-price brands, but where Buick buyers who wanted a hardtop often stepped up to the pricier LeSabre Custom series, sales of the Newport Custom hardtops were also weak.
For some odd reason, Krause Publications’ Standard Catalog of Chrysler gets the prices of the 1970 Newport line completely wrong, and they erroneously list the prices of the Cordoba as $4,613 and $4,676. Contemporary sources, like the Automotive News clipping above, indicate that the Cordoba was $3,769 for the two-door hardtop and $3,832 for the four-door, $180 more than a standard Newport in the same body style. They were on sale by late February 1970.
The $180 price of the Cordoba package (which was a technically option rather than a separate model — it didn’t get its own VIN code) included special FL6 Cordoba Gold paint, a gold “Español” vinyl top, vinyl body side moldings, gold-accented wheel covers, a special hood medallion, and a special gold interior (trim code D2TY) in embossed “Coachman-grain” vinyl.
Chrysler emphasized that the price of the package was about what you’d pay to order the vinyl roof, moldings, and all-vinyl interior on a non-Cordoba car.
These features were applied to the latest iteration of Chrysler’s “Fuselage” styling, which had gotten a mild facelift for 1970 with a new grille, decklid, and rear bumper. The Newport was a big car, 224.7 inches on a 124-inch wheelbase. The two-door hardtop had a curb weight of 4,271 lb with power steering, power brakes, and radio, with the four-door hardtop weighing 50 lb more.
Two-door hardtops dispensed with the front vent windows that were still fitted to other body styles.
The standard engine in the Newport was the two-barrel 383 cid V-8, with 290 gross horsepower. The four-barrel 383 and 440 were optional. Nearly all of these cars had TorqueFlite automatic, but it was a $228.60 option.
Chrysler marketing people were clearly not much on history. The ads boasted that the Cordoba had a “quiet Spanish motif,” but the hood medallion and decorative motifs were inspired by Aztec designs from Mexico, which had not been part of Spain since the early 19th century. Since Spain’s acceptance of Mexican independence was laid out in the 1821 Treaty of Córdoba and the Mexican capital was built on what had once been Tenochtitlán, capital of the Aztec Empire, you could argue that conflating them was not completely senseless, but I think it was more likely no one at Chrysler-Plymouth had given it that much thought — it was just another bit of “exotic” cultural appropriation.
The Aztec Eagle stems from a Mexica legend about the founding of Tenochititlán, and variations have been used on the Mexican flag, the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle (the country’s highest decoration for foreigners), and the United Fruit Workers emblem (not an association I suspect Chrysler would have encouraged). There was also a luxury passenger train, the Águila Azteca, operated by the Mexican national railroad.
In addition to the motifs on the door panels and dashboard, the Aztec Eagle designs were also embossed on the seat inserts.
They were also applied, in more abstract form, to the texture of the “Español” vinyl roof and the vinyl inserts of the body-side moldings.
Whatever you may think of the Aztec motif specifically, I’m mildly surprised that this kind of embossing didn’t see wider use for automotive upholstery, since it was a relatively inexpensive way to add some character to an interior. (Probably the most famous application of this era is the “Pony Interior” on the first-generation Mustang, with its embossed horses.) Of course, in a car parked in the hot sun on a summer day, any kind of raised texture could easily become a kind of branding iron, but the same was true of the biscuit patterns and chrome emblems automakers often added to vinyl seat faces.
1970 was not a good year for the Chrysler brand overall. Despite promotional gimmicks like the Cordoba and Chrysler 300 Hurst, the division’s model year production was down more than 30 percent from 1969, and Newport production fell from 156,836 to 110,292 cars.
Normally, finding production totals for cosmetic special edition appearance packages can be tricky, but Standard Catalog of Chrysler quotes totals of 1,868 for the Cordoba two-door hardtop and 1,873 for the four-door version. If that’s accurate (and given how badly Krause flubbed the prices, I’d take it with a grain of salt), the Cordoba edition was actually very successful as these things go, ordered on around 10 percent of all Newport hardtops in 1970.
Although the Cordoba edition didn’t return for a second engagement, there was a similar Aztec Gold paint option for 1971.
There are still a few of these 1970 Cordobas floating around, but their relative scarcity sometimes gives people unrealistic ideas of their value. (The pictures of the four-door hardtop are from a Facebook Marketplace listing from a number of years ago, where the seller was asking a ridiculous $15,000.) They are distinctive enough to be eye-catching, a conversation piece for car shows or cruise nights, although replacing any missing or damaged vinyl bits likely falls into the “lots of luck!” category.
Like most such limited-run special editions, the 1970 Cordoba is now very obscure, and it probably wouldn’t register at all if Chrysler hadn’t reused the name for their personal luxury coupe some years later. Even Chrysler apparently forgot about it. When the company belatedly filed to register the “Cordoba” name as a trademark in 1981, they incorrectly listed its date of first use as September 15, 1974, the debut of the 1975 Cordoba — the automotive equivalent of your parents forgetting your birthday.
Related Reading
Vintage Review: 1969 Chrysler Newport – “Quite A Lot Of Car” (by GN)
TOTGA : 1970 Chrysler Newport – What Beautiful Music This Golden Oldie And I Could Have Made Together (by J P Cavanaugh)
Curbside Classic: 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst – A Spicy Cocktail Created By George And Walter, With Help From Linda (by Jason Shafer)
1971 Chrysler Newport Royal: Chrysler’s Deadly Sin #6, The Underachieving Fuselage Years (by J P Cavanaugh)
I had forgotten all about these! 1970 was a down year for the economy as a whole, and is also one of Chrysler Corporation’s oft-forgotten financial crisis years.
I think any special edition in 1970 had to feature gold paint, in some variation. Personally, I don’t like this color combo much, even among the multiple other gold colors the company offered (both inside and out). And nobody did fascinating vinyl roof patterns like Chrysler!
I’m not really convinced by the patterns on the vinyl and I wonder how Chrysler thought many could be interested in something so unique, but I appreciate the effort of offering it. And Chrysler certainly offered some very interesting colors at the time
The side picture really shows just how big the Newport was; if I am not mistaken, it was quite longer than it’s Chevy and Ford peers
They didn’t. This was a cosmetic special edition intended as a spring traffic-builder for dealers, so if it got the attention of some customers who then bought something else, it served its purpose.
Yup, it was about 274 mm longer than a Ford Galaxie and 221 mm longer than a Chevrolet Impala.
In an old interview on Letterman, Ricardo Montalbán said Chrysler made him pronounce “Cordoba” wrong in their commercials (at 9:02 below):
I believe in 1971, it was replaced by the Royal. By this time the writing was on the wall that these vechicles were too big and dinosaurs. Something that Chrysler did not figure out until two oil crises and the K car.
As a footnote – many call this period the malaise car period. Seems to me that such marketing was a matter of fun. I truly believe we are in a malaise-boring period right now. I went passed a Mercedes dealership the other day. A row of the same looking cars either in black or white. Oh yeah. One gray car.
While there will always be the odd Saudi prince or rapper ordering a purple Rolls Royce, it’s been long known that the old money wealthy prefer cars in no other colors that black or white (and the occasional grey/silver for the really wild rich dudes).
Bright colors are typically reserved for the lower car lines. Chevrolet has a limited-edition Atomic Yellow available on the new 2027 Bolt (along with Habanero Red and Marina Blue).
These would have been pre-Malaise era. While there is no exact definition some say it started with the switch to advertising Net instead of Gross HP, while others point to the reduced compression ratios to pass the stricter emissions regulations, others tout the 5mph bumpers, but most seem to agree that it was in full swing by the time Catalytic Converters and “no-lead” fuel became the norm.
I maintain the begining of the end was the 1982 Mustang GT the first mass produced car/engine to see an increase in advertised HP.
For people who singularly define the malaise era by the depressed horsepower figures, we’re definitely not as horsepower and general high performance is in abundance today….
…but is that all that defines malaise? Horsepower is fun and all but most regular buyers don’t really care, then or now(Teslas are faster than 60s Shelby Cobras in a straight line, yet most are just gingerly driven commuters). Malaise era to me was defined by cars shaped and compromised by regulatory burdens, complexity(in the miles of lines and hoses that now cluttered most engine compartments), lower quality/reliability, the decline/demise of segments, and bloat.
Today we an entire class of cars that were literally built from scratch for compliance whether people want them or not, mechanical complexity has been substituted for software complexity (of which only dealer mechanics have corresponding software to access for repairs), recalls are the norm, there basically are no more segments at all, and bloat? 2+ tons seems to be the norm these days, Civics are the size of old Accords, RAV4s are the size of old Ford Explorers, and don’t even get me started on pickups.
The old malaise era eventually sprouted factory CB radios as a tacked on distraction from the dismal cars, today we have tacked on iPads to distract from cars so boring people can’t even be bothered to drive it themselves.
So yeah, maybe not everyone sees the present as malaise, and I’m sure many back in the 70s didn’t either, but as a general feeling of discomfort and uneasiness being the definition of the word, it kind of fits.
“Surprising is the affordability…” according to RM. However, this was not a “Small Chrysler” like the famous one.
Wow! Some pretty, cool, info. All I’d a known then was that I was looking at a gold, “Newport”. In the comparison, side angle, pics, the “4dor” edition is much better proportioned. (imo)
Got to look, see if there was a “covert”, version of the “Newport” that year..
GM and Ford had their ups and down on quality since the 70s…..Mopar has just been down. They come up with a great new design that jumps the competition then gets let down by dreadful assembly quality……it happened over and over right up to today.
Boring. Plymouth did a better job making their cheap two-door sedan into an upscale model.
This is not an upscale model: It was a paint-and-upholstery dress-up package. Its sole purpose was to draw a little attention during the latter half of the model year without incurring any additional tooling bills.
LIke Aaron says a dress up package. Mopar seemed to like mid-year Spring Specials/White Hat Specials between 1967-1974.
I’m going to gues this coincided with the beginning of the Sales Bank when Lynn Townsend made the decision to keep the assembly lines running, regardless of the levels of sales. It wasn’t a particularly bad idea until the dealers caught onto it and would wait until Chrysler was desperate to unload the inventory and sold them at fire-sale prices.
I definitely like the Aztec interior patterns, the gold exterior less so. Never heard of these Cordobas but I guess few did including Chrysler seemingly. I wonder if when 75 Cordoba hit the streets the lingering 70 Newport Cordoba owners at the time even realized the connection.
I considered the “mailase era” starting in 1973 with the oil crisis. And not ending until 1985 when the Corvette finally adopted multi-port fuel injection and was a HELL OF A LOT FASTER than the previous 10 model years. When detriot FINALLY adopted fuel injection it solved so many woes
Aaron, thanks for the education. The del Oro is one of my favorite concepts, and Engel my favorite designer. I think an opportunity was missed in that the theme could have announced a new mid-size Chrysler or Imperial for ’71 that mated Satellite coupe’s greenhouse to Charger’s lower body, with modifications to the front, taillights, and rear quarter panels to add skirts.
I think the overused Malaise tail could be pinned on every donkey era since the beginning of automotive time. An early Thirties Packard and Cadillac looks down on late Thirties versions as cheap and inelegant, while the opposite disdains the ancient bodies, front shoulder room, driving dynamics and market reach.
Early post-war cars and into the Fitties looked like they were retaining water, while later Fifties cars turned to drugs.
The Sixties point to every generation except theirs, from the 1980s rearward as having massive bumpers, while those generations point back to a decade of interiors that often smelled like (and were) a toxic chemical factory, and a general vehicle style/tech vibe that an artist had married an idiot.
As for the “official” Malaise era, we finally turned the corner.on emissions and F.E, and Chrysler at least did a better job than Ford and GM wrt bumpers. But the latter two sold more cars and thus showed more ugly.
If I had to choose a single era as malaise, it would be the brief years stuck with those stupid seat belt mice. Unforgivable!!!
These are photos of my car.