That Time In The ’80s When Chrysler Built Cars In Freaking Space And Took Ricardo Montalban With Them

The 1980s were an exciting time to be Chrysler. Thanks to a bailout from the Carter Administration and subsequent K-Cars and minivans, the company successfully staved off extinction and were riding high on cutting-edge technologies sourced from an interstellar alien spacecraft that crashed near their Auburn Hills, Michigan headquarters. Lee Iacocca, then head of Chrysler, ingested some manner of what scientists think was either an alien condiment roughly equivalent to human dijonnaise or some manner of conductive lubricant like MG Chemicals 846-1P Carbon Conductive Grease, or some mix of both.

The substance gave Iacocca intense mind powers and an unrelenting desire to leave Earth, which he did, after kidnapping noted actor and Chrysler spokesperson Ricardo Montalban to act as his public face and voice, as well as becoming his only companion and one last remaining link to his humanity. Iacocca, Montalban, and a team of hyper-advanced robots soon launched into space, where they colonized Mars and Ceres in the asteroid belt, setting up manufacturing facilities to produce Chrysler New Yorkers and E-Class cars, which were then shipped back to Earth on an “Aldrin Cycler” spacecraft set on a continual figure-8 trajectory between Earth and Mars.

While most people were unaware of these events (a stand-in for Iacocca was hired to avoid questions about his whereabouts) a number of commercials shot on the Martian and Ceresian surfaces were released, along with some print ads showing the off-planet locations, without any explanations given. Montalban reportedly was accepting of his new life, thanks to his addiction to a variety of alien-sourced narcotic-like drugs.

Here we see an ad that cheekily hints at the New Yorker’s extraterrestrial origins, with space footage shot from the Aldrin Cycler and a nice image of the Ceres test facility:

The Ceres Test Facility can be identified by the lakes of liquid methane and the large Chrysler logos that were built there:

The test track was a sort of causeway over one of the methane lakes, its edges defined by glowing strips of amorandium, a previously unknown element.

Other ads were shot in the lavish Martian home that Iacocca and Montalban shared, as something like lovers, but with depth and dimensions far eclipsing normal human relationships. This one shows off the Romanesque/Tuscan-inspired architecture of their home, along with the rusty Martian sky and landscape:

Plus, they still enjoyed taking a swipe at GM! Even on Mars, some things never get old.

Here’s another great shot of the Ceres-based test facility and the causeway-track over the methane lakes:

Of particular interest here is the footage of the interior of their main Martian manufacturing complex, which, again, employed many reverse-engineered technologies from the crashed Auburn Hills spacecraft:

The Martian Manufacturing Complex (MMC) was also featured prominently in print advertising of the era as well:

You can see the advanced blinky-lights control panel at the center rear there, and to the left is the corridor into one of the six matter/anti-matter reactors that powered the massive facility. To the right, you can see in silhouette some of the robots that populated the factory building a 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo in their spare time. The robots would often build other, non-Chrysler cars for recreational purposes.

Other, more advanced manufacturing facilities were developed for lower-volume cars, like this facility at the Martian South Pole that blasted Chrysler E-Class cars together with sophisticated harmonically-balanced lasers:

In one notable exception, Earth technology was still retained for the voice synthesizer chips, which were still sourced from Texas Instruments, as alien technology had yet to come up with a superior voice synthesis system to their TMS5110A chip. The chips were shipped on the figure-8 cycler ships along with supplies of food, water, and pornographic Betamax tapes that comprised the regular supply runs to the Martian base.

The lasers were generated from a giant, sentient Chrysler pentastar, which, imbued with bafflingly complex and still yet-to-be-understood alien Soul Crystals, handled all of the Chrysler E-Type manufacturing, building over 70,000 cars before deciding to pursue more demanding challenges at the galactic core.

Chrysler was even still able to source rich Corinthian leather for their cars, using alien DNA to produce a species of Corinthian cattle that could breathe in Mars’ mostly CO2 atmosphere and provide real Corinthian leather, as well as Corinthian beef:

You can clearly see in this commercial that the outdoor scenes were shot on Mars; the inside scenes were shot in the Iacocca/Montalban home.

It’s odd how little this is talked about today; the Chrysler facilities on Mars and Ceres are now long defunct, but still remain largely intact; it is assumed that both Montalban and Iacocca were taken by the Auburn Hills aliens and returned to their home planet, wherever that may be, well over a decade ago.

Perhaps one day they will return to tell their stories; until then, we just have whatever surviving New Yorkers and E-Class cars left to carry on this fascinating legacy.