1987 Cadillac Allante - Old Trappings of the Wealthy

The old trappings of the wealthy are fascinating to me since it nearly always appears what rich people spent their money on years ago doesn't look like that much of a big deal today. Case in point, Cadillac's infamous Allante which stickered for nearly $60,000 in 1987. Adjusted for inflation that's more than $135,000 today. For that kind of money, for what is ostensibly nothing more than a stubby, two passenger, mid-'80's, GM E body, one would hope to find gold bars inside the door panels. Our subject is from the first year Cadillac sold these things back in 1987. 

It's sobering to realize that "yesterday" was more than thirty years ago now. Critics eviscerated these cars for a number of things but first and foremost because GM charged so much for them. Something being expensive not necessarily bad but when you take into consideration what you got, more importantly, what you didn't get for your money with the Allante, it was no Mercedes or Jaguar, the value proposition simply wasn't there. This isn't a bad looking car, mind you, but priced twice the price of an Eldorado with half the seats? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how and why these things tanked.

A big reason why these cars were so expensive was because Cadillac commissioned the famed Italian coach builder Pinninfarina of Turin, Italy to design and build Allante's handsome body. Ok, fine  - but Cadillac shipped the chassis over there for them to bolt the body onto; then it got shipped back here for Cadillac to install the engine. The hell, right? That engine, at first, was a warmed over HT4100 that had a tad more horsepower and torque than the head gasket eating original mill but it wasn't enough to make a difference in the performance of the 3,700 pound roadster. Contemporary road tests of a 1987 Allante had it scooting from 0-60 in 9.3 seconds which was  on the "fast" side of things for its day but it was about two seconds slower to 60 than the benchmark it was targeted at, the Mercedes Benz 560SL.

Cadillac dropped the first generation Northstar V-8 into the Allante just as they pushed the whole project off a cliff. That big engine solving only one of the Allante's myriad problems; the biggest problem was that GM never figured out how to make the Allante appeal to the buyers they targeted it at originally. In many ways Cadillac still has the same problem today - if a buyer has the means to purchase a very expensive car, why would they buy a Cadillac? Doesn't really matter anyway since in thirty years whatever rich people spend their money on today won't be that impressive. And people wonder why I drive a 24 year old Chevrolet Camaro as a daily driver.