Final Parking Space: 1987 Cadillac Allanté

Would you believe that after nearly a year of the Final Parking Space series, we still hadn’t admired a discarded Cadillac? That changes now, with an example of one of the most interesting and controversial Cadillac models of the 20th century: a first-model-year Allanté roadster, found in a Northern California car graveyard a while back.

General Motors offered a fascinating mix of low and high technology in its United States–market offerings during the middle 1980s, from the primitive Chevrolet Chevette (originally designed by Opel for the Brazilian market but hurriedly rushed into American showrooms after the innovative Vega acquired a bad reputation) to some of the most advanced automotive hardware in the world, including touchscreen and heads-up displays. The Cadillac division was losing customers to high-end European machinery by 1986, so something had to be done, preferably combining European styling with GM techno-wizardry.

That car ended up being the Allanté, a radical two-seater built as a partnership between GM and Pininfarina. It debuted as a 1987 model, with production continuing through 1993. Yes, you need the accent for correct spelling, just as you do with the Plymouth Volaré and Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo.

The Allanté was a real beauty, and it made the rest of the Cadillac lineup for 1987 look like a bunch of grandfatherly throwbacks to earlier decades. Unfortunately for GM, there were some sales-inhibiting challenges with this car.

First of all, the Allanté was staggeringly expensive to build. The bodies were assembled by Pininfarina at a dedicated facility in Italy, then flown from Turin to Detroit in modified 747s, at which point they were trucked to Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly to be united with their chassis assemblies.

The list price for the 1987 Allanté was $54,700, or about $155,277 in 2024 dollars. Meanwhile, a new 1987 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL roadster had an MSRP of $57,980, and the second-most expensive Cadillac model (the Fleetwood 75 limousine) cost a mere $36,580.

The Allanté had electronic gadgetry galore, which looked cool but could be off-putting to more “traditional” Cadillac buyers (the company encountered the same difficulty with the similarly advanced Buick Reatta).

Worst of all, potential buyers of sophisticated German luxury cars were dismayed by the old-fashioned pushrod V-8 under the Allanté’s hood, which drove the front wheels. This is Cadillac’s 4.1-liter High Technology V-8, rated at a respectable 170 horsepower and 235 pound-feet with its Allanté-specific tubular intake manifold but still a museum piece next to the high-revving, overhead-cam engines from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi at the time.

The Allanté got the 4.5-liter version of this engine for 1989 through 1992, finally receiving the DOHC Northstar engine for the final model year of 1993.

The only transmission available in the Allanté was a four-speed automatic, which wasn’t as big a sales handicap as the front-wheel-drive powertrain layout; most American buyers of Mercedes-Benz S-Classes/SL-Classes, BMW 7-Series, and Audi V8s were insisting on automatics by that time, anyway.

The Allanté was based on a shortened version of the platform used for the Eldorado plus the Oldsmobile Toronado and Buick Riviera, but it’s not fair to call the Allanté a twin to those cars (see: Chrysler’s TC by Maserati and its K-family relatives). In the eyes of its detractors, the Allanté was just another cynical Cimarron-like GM attempt to print money with off-the-shelf components. This wasn’t an accurate assessment, but, in any case, sales never measured up to expectations. In the end, just 21,106 Allantés were sold over seven model years.

I learned while working as a dignified and respected official with the 24 Hours of Lemons race series that the Allanté actually gets around a road course pretty well. In fact, I’d bet on the Allanté in a 24-hour road race versus a 560 SL, 560 SEC, 635CSi, or XJ-S (given equal driver skill, of course), mostly because the High Technology V-8 holds together amazingly well under endurance-racing abuse (such cannot be said for this engine on the street) and because 1980s GM hardware is much easier to repair in a hurry than anything from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Jaguar of that era.

I’ve documented quite a few junkyard Allantés over the years, and I can say from this experience that parts and entire parts cars are cheap and easily obtained. That makes the Allanté (and the Reatta, for that matter) an excellent choice for a reasonably priced vintage project that will be nice to drive. Just be prepared for the local wags to perform the Bundy Bounce when you bring it to car shows.

Don’t listen to people who tell you the Allanté hardtop roof is impossible to find in junkyards. I’ve seen plenty during my travels.

The new spirit of Cadillac!