For anyone who aspires to review new cars, there are certain people that you should aspire to be like. Csaba Csere, Bud Lindemann, John Davis, Brock Yates, and David E. Davis, Jr., a man once known for mentioning that if he had his own coat of arms, the motto would be, “No More Bullshit”. I like that. And that’s why I like these Bob Mayer reviews from Miami. Every last one I’ve watched, Mayer reviews the car with a gentle mannerism that reminds me of MotorWeek’s John Davis, but with the kind of blunt honesty normally reserved for the sharper tongues. Mayer comes across as a squeaky-clean 1970s newscaster, but his reviews, while positive-sounding, actually come off like a roast. If something on a car was wrong, of things weren’t right, if the paint sucked, if the interior rattled, he called it out with no mercy shown, no quarter given unless there was an actual reason discovered…and then he would explain what happened. He might have been just a regional guy, but imagine magazine types tearing into cars like he did back in the day. The Big Three would’ve yanked their marketing dollars so fast it wouldn’t even be funny.

For this round of Mayer’s reviews, I’ve decided to go ahead and put up his take on what many would think is my sacred cow. The second-generation Chrysler Cordoba is the only J-body Mopar type I haven’t owned, but really…it’s a Mirada with wood-like stickers instead of silver-faced dash fakery, nothing really worth mentioning. And really, to be quite fair about it, the J-cars were not Chrysler’s best foot forward in many aspects. Even as the Cordoba and Mirada were being introduced in 1980, V8 rear-drive cars at Chrysler were pretty much out and if it wasn’t the New Yorker/Fifth Avenue gold mine or a cop special, it would get the short end of the stick. Did Bob take a shine to the dead-man-walking Cordoba or did he tear it to shreds?