George l Still wonder how sporting that 93 Allante with the more powerful Norstar engine and rear wheel drive could have been and you are most welcome my friend.You have a logically factual way of putting things.

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Greg, I want to thank you so much for such a thoughtful note. You get so used to knee jerk anger on the Internet that it was really refreshing.

Cadillac has never been in the business of building race, cars for its customers.

In many ways, the Allante is the perfect car for a Cadillac customer who wants something that has moved beyond the styling of the 1960s and wants a sporty car.

and while front wheel drive might not be the best choice for the Nurburgring, I grew up on Volkswagen Rabbits, Scirrocos, and Lancia Betas all of which were entertaining to drive. The Allantè is very pleasant to drive with excellent chassis, tuning and very direct steering.

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Now there’s an endorsement for the Allante, Kelly Bundy. The quality of that car was probably only slightly better than my infamous 1989 Buick Regal. Boy, was that a turd of a car!

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General Motors was on a crash program to improve its fuel economy, which they feared would reach eight or nine dollars a gallon after the second oil crisis,

front wheel drive allowed GM to provide American customers with the space that they were accustomed to within a smaller car and on that level it was a great success.

back in those days, before electric nannies, front wheel drive was vastly better, incomparably, better in bad weather than rear wheel drive as well

I often wonder as I look back if the prejudice against front wheel drive was as strong in the late 80s as it is now, and actually, I don’t think so.

This platform may not be the best for a road rally, but for the General Motors customer, it is actually ideal. It is also a refined chassis that provides excellent handling in normal, driving and bad weather, and remarkably smooth ride.

I have read that it was actually Pininfarina that wanted to use that particular chassis because of its packaging advantages

with the XLR, they use the Corvette platform and it did not sell as well as the Allantè so there’s that, too

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I acquired my ’87 from a neighbor, almost by accident. I always liked the Pininfarina design, but it was never on “the list” of cars I wanted.

Its combination of elegance, comfort, practicality, and suspension tuning is hard to beat. Would it set lap times at the race course? No. Did any Cadillac customer in history look for that? Absolutely not……and R107 owners didn’t get a race car, either.

If they made a 2024 with all the new modern frills, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

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Even without changes in exchange rates, the cost of air freight would have easily wiped out any cost advantage provided by overseas assembly. The Allante’s V-body chassis was heavily based on the E-body Eldorado, so the cars easily could have been built at GM’s Hamtramck plant. The capacity was there – the shrunken Eldorado, Seville, Riviera, and Toronado weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. Just like the Italian design, the Italian assembly was a vanity item for Cadillac

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I agree.

Pinninfarina actually did a lovely five-spoke wheel that was not used. A lot a local Allanté maven has some on his car and they are striking.

that said, the design is ever so slightly top-heavy, and the larger wheels chosen tend to minimize that effect

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It’s only real failure was not one single good looking wheel was attached to these cars. Nice looking example here.

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2. People go nuts about the Italian assembly.

When the car first was proposed in the early 1980s, the dollar was very high and this was much cheaper than building a new factory for a new product in an untested segment.

It looked like a great idea, but when the dollar collapsed in the mid 80s, the car suddenly became far more expensive to build in Italy than it would’ve been in Detroit. This is probably one of the biggest reasons for its failure. General motors had no pricing flexibility once the dollar collapsed.

Allantés are actually very good cars, They is far more spacious, comfortable and practical than any R107 derivative. It’s only real failure is Pininfarina’s cumbersome, leaky top

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You think $9900 for a car with 75000 miles is overpriced? Those are used car prices for ten year old Subarus with175000 miles. Anyway the Malaise era was ending in the nineties as manufacturers figured out how to squeeze more power out of smaller more economical engines. And, it’s a Cadillac convertible. What’s not to love?

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