1979 Chrysler Corporation…in short, a dumpster fire mixed with a car lot. The company had been flagging since the 1960s in many aspects, but the real plummet kicked off right about the time of the first oil crisis. Chrysler really didn’t have a good answer for the immediate shock…their smallest car worth mentioning at that time was the A-body platform, which had a good reputation, but there was no Vega or Pinto fighter, just Mitsubishi products that were being imported and land yachts as far as the eye could see. By 1975 Imperial was dead, the new “small” Chrysler, the Cordoba, was proving that smaller was smarter, and the A-body was ending in favor of the upcoming F-body, a car that was eagerly anticipated as the savior of the company. 1979 saw the company just about slip under the waves: a second energy crisis doubled down on Chrysler, who was reeling from the recall damage that was done to the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré. Richard Petty, Mopar’s top-bill racer in NASCAR, had up and walked off to GM products after he blasted the Dodge Magnum’s abilities on the track. In the third quarter of 1979, Chrysler posted a $160 million dollar loss. Not good.

Sales banks, low morale, security issues, fire-sale cycles, and lease debt like you wouldn’t believe – $88 million in debt on leases written off in 1979 alone – showcased that Chrysler Corporation was in dire, dire straits. If things were to change, leadership had to change. Lynn Townsend had been a headstrong leader starting in the early 1960s, but by 1975 he had created the sales bank, had tried expanding globally, and when he left the position to John Riccardo, all hell broke loose within the corporate system. Riccardo, a CPA, would run the financial sector while Gene Cafiero would run the operations. If it wasn’t for the Omni/Horizon program, there would be nothing positive to say about Riccardo’s tenureship. Actually, there was one other bright spot in Riccardo’s time at Chrysler. He willfully stepped down so that Iacocca could step in, which was instrumental in helping gain the government-backed loans that the company desperately needed.

Hindsight being 20/20, it’s difficult to look at this 1979 advertisement featuring astronaut Neil Armstrong and wonder just how desperate of a play this actually was.  Look that the vehicles that surround him: there’s the Omni and the Colt, the Town and Country wagon and the Dodge Tradesman van, the Plymouth Scamp pickup and dead-center, the Chrysler New Yorker in it’s forgettable R-body form, loaded to the nines in all-white, like an angel being protected from the outside world.