A Passion for Italian Bodies

By Stephen Koepp

The sleek convertible that General Motors is formally unveiling in Detroit this week looks a bit out of place wearing the ornate Cadillac nameplate. The car has no fins, no bulk, virtually no chrome, not even a backseat. In fact, the new Allante (price: about $50,000) looks more like a sports car than the kind of Cadillac young, wealthy car buyers can remember their grandparents driving. But that is precisely what its creators at GM had hoped. Determined to shed the stodgy image that has caused the company to lose so many upscale U.S. buyers to Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and other imported brands, Cadillac decided it needed a pinch of European flair. So the carmaker teamed up with the Italian design firm Pininfarina to create an entirely new model and help revitalize Cadillac's fallen prestige. Result: a nimble, sexy vehicle that Don Johnson of Miami Vice might be proud to drive.

GM is not the only U.S. automaker to find romance in Italy. That country has suddenly become Detroit's most abundant wellspring of style and mystique. Chrysler signed a deal in June to boost its stake in the Maserati sports-car company from 3.5% to 15.6%, and plans to bring out a jointly produced convertible priced in the $30,000 range by fall 1987. Ford, meanwhile, is negotiating to buy a majority share of sports-car maker Alfa Romeo.

Detroit's strategic alliances with foreign carmakers have multiplied during the past decade because of intensifying global competition. The major U.S. automakers have jointly produced autos with Japanese, British, French and German companies in order to share new technology and enter lucrative foreign markets. But until recently, notes Fiat Chairman Gianni Agnelli, "Italy is the only car-producing country in Europe where Detroit has seldom been."

Now the American automakers are enthusiastically turning to Italy, at least partly because the companies want to build vehicles that can fill special, small-volume niches in the marketplace. While typical U.S. auto plants are designed for assembling 220,000 cars annually, Italy still has the kind of shops where skilled workers lavish attention on just 5,000 or 10,000 cars a year. Detroit automakers particularly want to produce top-of-the-line vehicles that can compete with pricey imports. The domestic market for luxury cars, which are defined as those costing $15,000 or more, will make up an estimated 15% of total sales in the U.S. this year, or 1.6 million vehicles, up from 9% in 1975. Says Cadillac General Manager John Grettenberger: "The affluent segment of the population is exploding."

The Allante certainly comes dear. It is by far the most expensive production car that GM has ever made, surpassing the 1986 Seville ($27,600). Christened with a made-up Italianate name, the 1987 Allante got its start in 1982, when Cadillac engaged the venerated Pininfarina firm, best known for its Ferrari body styles, to design the car and build its outer shell. The car's planners searched all over the world for the components, settling on an electronics system from Japan and aluminum hood and deck lid from Switzerland, among other parts. Pininfarina assembles the bodies in a factory near Turin, not far from the Italian Alps, then ships them to Detroit aboard 747 jumbo-jet freighters for outfitting with a high-performance GM engine and transmission.

The Allante will not be available in dealerships until January, but car- buff magazines have already road-tested the vehicle and declared it a success. Raves Motor Trend in its September issue: "Allante handling characteristics are a quantum leap over every single Cadillac you've ever driven."

Chrysler is hot on GM's tail. Having made no luxury car since it dropped the Imperial in 1983, Chrysler plans to start delivering its Maserati two- seater sometime next spring. The car is partly a product of a longtime friendship between Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca and Maserati's managing director, Alessandro De Tomaso, who once designed a Ford roadster, a car called the Pantera, during the time Iacocca was Ford's president. Their latest brainchild, still code-named the Q Coupe, will be assembled in Modena, Italy, with about 50% U.S.-built Chrysler parts, including engine and transmission.

Iacocca is more than pleased with the car's sleek design. "She's a beauty, isn't she?" he declared last year. "This could well be the best- looking Italian to show up in this country since my mother came over." As a result, Chrysler intends to have an enduring partnership with Maserati. The U.S. automaker holds an option to acquire 51% of the Italian company by 1995.

Ford, meanwhile, has been talking with Alfa Romeo since May in a bid to acquire the troubled state-owned automaker, which lost more than $200 million last year. Ford is reportedly willing to invest $2.3 billion in Alfa over the next ten years to get the company rolling again. The deal could enable Ford to use some of Alfa's 200,000-vehicle-a-year excess carmaking capacity to turn out autos for the European market. Ford may also want to give its U.S. dealers the opportunity to supplement their lineup with some of Alfa's sporty models, like the Milano sedan ($12,850).

Most of all, the Italian connections could help Detroit automakers relearn a crucial element of car salesmanship: sexiness. In the past, that meant horsepower and lots of sheet metal. But in today's Eurostyled market, the hottest cars are low-slung and high-priced.

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/Rome and William J. Mitchell/Detroit