1979 Chrysler Newport Commercial w/ Hal Linden star of Barney Miller

During the late 1970's, Chrysler used a celebrity spokesperson for each of it's model ranges. Hal Linden for the Newport, Ricardo Monteban for the Cordoba, Frank Sinatra for the Imperial etc. etc. This commercial is for the R bodied Newport which replaced the C Body from 1978. The R body cars from Chrysler, the Dodge St Regis, Chrysler New Yorker and Chrysler Newport are very underated and very rare. They were not big sellers. Rather than do what GM did and drastically reduce the size of their Full Sized Cars- to achieve better gas mileage, Chrysler made their full sized cars a bit smaller but filled them with light weight material. In some cases the light weight meant Aluminum and plastic which didn't hold up well quality wise. I recall many coming off the Trucks from Chrysler already broken, door handles, glove box doors. Plastic and Aluminum parts in the window relys and windshield wipers wore out extremely fast Handles breaking off in your hand didn't really instill quality in people's minds. The R body would completely disappear midway thru the 1981 model year, a mere two and a half year run Many were used in Rental fleets. They are extremely rare and hard to find now. this would be the final version of the Newport and the nameplate has since been retired from Chrysler in the USA since 1981

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• 1979
• Chrysler
• Newport
• Commercial
• Hal
• Linden
• Barney
• Miller
• advert
• promo
• werbung
• pub
• publicite

[somewhatlongdong]

Thanks for the interesting background on the R-bodies. I always thought they were a good looking sedan for the era. The Chevy Caprice was hard to beat back in those days though.