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Junkyard Gem: 1992 Chrysler Imperial Landau

The Chrysler Imperial (sold as a separate marque and called, simply, the Imperial for the 1955-83 model years) was at the top of the Chrysler pyramid for many decades. For most of that time, it was a great big opulent statuswagon, slathered with chrome and powered by some of the most potent engines in the Chrysler inventory. For the early 1990s, however, the Imperial became a member of the many-branched K-Car family tree. Here's a solid-looking '92, now in its final parking spot in a Denver self-service wrecking yard. The 1990-92 Imperial wasn't a bad car, but it also wasn't much like the Imperials of past decades. Under the hood, the Chrysler 3.8-liter pushrod V6, which went on to a distinguished three-decades-long career in Chrysler minivans and Jeep Wranglers. It made a not-too-shabby-for-the-time 150 horsepower in 1992. The padded vinyl landau roof was looking extremely dated by the 1990s, but some Imperial buyers still went for this option. The 1992 Imperial had leather upholstery, but opinions differ as to whether Chrysler still referred to it as Soft Corinthian Leather by this time. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Better than Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Rolls-Royce, and Jaguar, according to this ad. The base price of the '92 Imperial was $26,705 (about 46 grand in inflation-adjusted 2016 dollars). A new 1992 BMW 525i listed at $35,600, while a 1992 Lexus ES300 was $25,250. The $23,500 Mazda 929, with rear-wheel-drive and 190 horses, seems like the steal of 1992 for luxury-car shoppers. Related Video: Featured Gallery Junked 1992 Chrysler Imperial View 19 Photos Auto News Chrysler chrysler imperial

Junkyard Gem: 1976 Chrysler Cordoba

With engine power way down and a sense of malaise settling over American roads, Detroit (and Kenosha) turned to opulent-looking personal luxury coupes on midsize platforms to lure car shoppers into showrooms. While John DeLorean's Pontiac Grand Prix started it all more than a decade before, one of the best-known of all the rococo personal luxury coupes was the Chrysler Cordoba. Today's Junkyard Gem is an early example of the Cordoba, found in a Northern California car graveyard last fall. The first generation of the Cordoba (1975 through 1979 model years) was built on Chrysler's B Platform, making it a sibling to quite a few of the most legendary Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars of the 1960s. This includes the Charger, Super Bee, Road Runner, Daytona and Superbird. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. While French and Italian cities were very popular for use as American-market car names during the second half of the 20th century, Spain wasn't completely ignored by Detroit. Ford offered the Granada, Cadillac had the Seville, and Chrysler decided to go with the ancient city of Cordoba as the namesake for its new personal luxury coupe. As native espanol mexicano speaker and longtime Chrysler pitchman Ricardo Montalban explains in the 1987 David Letterman interview above (skip ahead to 8:10), the correct Spanish pronunciation is really "CORE-doe-bah" with the emphasis on the first syllable, but Chrysler went with a spelling and pronunciation that was easier for English speakers to deal with. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. We can't talk about Ricardo Montalban and the Cordoba without watching at least one of the TV commercials that helped make the early Cordoba such a sales hit and put the term "Corinthian Leather" into everyday American discourse. Sometimes Ricardo described the leather as soft, while the terms rich and fine were applied on other occasions. This car does not have Corinthian Leather, which cost an extra $187 in 1976 (about $1,020 in 2023 dollars). Instead, it has the "Calacia velour" cloth-&-vinyl seat upgrade, which cost just $17 ($93 after inflation). The base seats were done up in "cashmere-like" cloth-and-vinyl.

Minivan market not what it used to be, but margins make up for it

Residual values for last year's minivans are higher than they were in 2000.
Much like the station wagon was the shuttle of Baby Boomer generation, the minivan has been the primary means of transport for Generations X and Y. Just as the boomers abandoned the Country Squire, though, those kids that were toted around in Grand Caravans and Windstars are adults, and they certainly don't want to be seen in the cars their parents drove.