Chrysler's 1987-1995 LeBaron struck a chord with "Boomers", I can use that term, you young whipper-snappers millennials can't, and the pretty good, fairly attractive little four-passenger cars were seemingly everywhere back then. That they were relatively inexpensive and were literally the only mass-market convertible available at the time also helped to drive their popularity too. This car, however, is not a LeBaron of that vintage although you'd get a hall pass if you thought it was. It's a Chrysler TC by Maserati and was without question one of the oddest automobiles to come out of the "Me First" decade.
In a then contemporary sense, it's not that these were bad cars, per se, it's just based on what they portended to be, like putting a Rolls Royce grill on an AMC Pacer, they were absurd. Borne of a relationship that Lee Iaccoca had with Alejandro DeTomaso, an Argentian race car driver who, with the help of the Italian government, bought Maserati out of bankruptcy in 1975, someone at Chrysler had the bright idea to partner with Maserati to build a luxury, two-passenger grand tourer ala GM's Cadillac Allante. Maybe it was Iaccoca himself who thought this up; who knows. There was nothing wrong with the idea or notion although it all went down hill from there.
Alejandro DeTomaso's name might be familiar to you if you know of the DeTomaso Pantera, a rear-engine-ed, exotic sports car that started off powered by Ford engines and were sold in Lincoln-Mercury dealerships in the early to mid-1970's.
On paper, Cadillac's Allante and the TC, TC denoted "turbo convertible", had much in common; American engineering with Italian design and a wonky, and expensive cross-Atlantic assembly process. However, whereas the Allante's Cadillac Eldorado bones were very well hidden under it's Pininfarina designed body and interior, something clearly got lost in translation with the TC because, sorry, pisan, this thing is all LeBaron.
Except for the interior - that's all Maserati and it's the best part of the car. The rest of it, despite everything actually being unique to the TC, looks just like a LeBaron. The chassis was a shortened K-car frame they called the "Q-body" and the body panel stampings were unique although, again, you'd never know it since the car overall looked so much like a LeBaron.
For the record, Chrysler used what they called the "J-body" on the LeBaron but that was a modified K-car chassis. Therefore, the thinking goes, like most Chrysler products of the day, this is a "K-car".
It's engine was sort-of unique too since this version of Chrysler's venerable 2.2 liter turbo wasn't available on the LeBaron but rather the Dodge Daytona. What's more, allegedly Coswoth tuned the cylinder head and assembled the whole thing with Chrysler boasting a net horsepower output of one-hundred and sixty. Impressive in it's day; trust this "Boomer" on that one.
Chrysler and Maserati built the TC from 1989 through 1991 and sold just over seven-thousand of them. Part of the problem, no doubt, was that Chrysler charged a good third more for a TC compared to a LeBaron and even at more than $37,000 each, due to exorbitant costs, Chrysler lost some $80,000 on each one sold. I know, how was that possible? That kind of adroit failure makes you wonder who in their right mind thought these would be a success in the first place. Same could be said for whomever green-lighted the Cadillac Allante but the Allante, on some weird, 1980's level, actually worked. These things? Not so much.
Case in point about the weird-ass, '80's, who'd have thunk back then that you'd still be hearing The Human League's "Don't You Want Me, Baby" on supermarket overheads forty years later?
Let's hypothesize how these cars came to be. Flush with cash from the success of the K-car and seething with jealousy over Cadillac's Allante, some executive wonk at Chrysler brought the idea of doing something similar to Iaccoca and he rubber-stamped it with a wink of his eye, a nod and a "I know a guy who can build these things". The logistics and design were rushed together and Maserati used an existing Chrysler design as more than a reference point; it was all but a template. I mean, how else to explain that of all design possibilities, Maserati designers came up with something that was for all intents and purposes the same design Chrysler was already using?
Voila. The Chrysler TC by Maserati. In vacuum maybe these things work but as it was, fuhgeddaboutit.
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