Here's the situation: You're a Chrysler engineer. Your boss Lee Iacocca told you and your buddies to make a sports car that can run with the Trans Am and the Supra. Unfortunately, the year is 1984, so all you've really got to work with is the K-car platform. So what do you do?
You dig your heels in and make the Chrysler Laser, that's what you do. And you put out a commercial where James Earl "Darth Mufasa This Is CNN" Jones tells buyers how the Laser can supposedly beat the crap out of the Mazda RX-7 and the Ford Mustang, even though it's on a front-wheel-drive platform derived from the K.
To top it all off you add some real sweet shit like Mark Cross leather and digital dashboard doohickeys. What you end up with is a recipe for the Laser, one of the baddest, most well-loved sportscars of the 1980s.
Okay, that's not really true. But it is kind of a cool artifact of its era, and its stablemate the Dodge Daytona fared much better in terms of sales and popularity. And it gave us this great commercial! The Laser is alright by me, man.
Hat tip to Asian Martin!