Did you ever have a friend tell you that they just bought a major appliance, maybe a new refrigerator, and they say “It’s the Cadillac of refrigerators?” To that friend, this means there isn’t a better refrigerator on the market and they wanted to let you know they spent a lot of money for it.
That reference didn’t happen by accident. Cadillac has been around a long time, going back to 1902 when Henry Ford and his investors had a disagreement with Ford actually leaving the Henry Ford Co. but leaving the company’s name unchanged. The surviving investors hired Henry Leland, an automotive engineer, and started a new company called the Cadillac Automobile Co., named for French explorer Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, who founded Detroit in 1701.
Cadillac cars earned a reputation for quality from the beginning. In 1908, the brand was awarded the very prestigious Dewar Trophy for the most important advancement of the year in the automobile industry as a result their ability to mass-produce well engineered parts that were interchangeable.
In 1909 Cadillac became part of General Motors. Good years followed, and though the Great Depression later was tough, Cadillac kept building well engineered and innovative cars up to and after World War II. In 1950, Cadillac finally outsold Packard for the first time and never looked back.
Eventually, though, imports became a factor increasing the number of rivals breathing down Cadillac’s neck. In the 1980s, Cadillac’s general manager, Bob Burger, was searching for a new model that would separate the brand further from its competition.
Burger wanted an aspirational model and thought perhaps using a prestigious European designer and coach builder could be the answer. He wanted a two-seat roadster, which Cadillac hadn’t produced since the 1930s. So Burger sent some engineers to Italy to search for a design firm, and for the task they selected Pininfarina, the world famous car designer and coach builder.
This choice didn’t set well with Cadillac’s 3,000 in-house designers, but Burger explained that the company “was looking for a car with a designer name to it. It’s like Levi’s; it’s that tag on the back of the jeans.”
The car was to compete with the Mercedes-Benz SL and the Jaguar XJS. The Allanté, as it was eventually named and sold starting in 1986 for the 1987 model year, had great features, like a fully electronic dashboard that angled toward the driver without any knobs or manual controls. This car was going to be “the Cadillac of Cadillacs.”
The Allanté is a front-wheel drive-car with a 250-cubic-inch, 172-horsepower V8 engine mounted transversely. The only option that first year was a cellular telephone installed in a lockable center console. The base price was $54,700 or about $153,614 in 2023 dollars.
The Allanté’s production had to have been a nightmare. The bodies were designed and built in Italy by Pininfarina and then shipped to America on specially equipped Boeing 747 airplanes, 56 at a time, for final assembly at Cadillac’s Hamtramck assembly plant near Detroit. It was referred to as “the world’s longest assembly line.” This model was produced until July 1993 for a total of 21,430 units over its six-year run.
Oakland resident Calvin Black has owned this issue’s 1992 Cadillac Allanté for about three years. Black’s mother-in-law bought the car new from Stead Cadillac in Walnut Creek. He doesn’t know what she paid for the car, but by the time the 1992 models came out, the base price had increased to $57,170.
“But after a while, she couldn’t drive,” Black said. “So it sat in the garage for about 16 to 18 years.”
The car was started from time to time, and routine maintenance like oil changes and other work was done but the car saw very little street time. When Black acquired the Allanté, it had 60,000 miles on it, and today it has about 73,000 miles. The car has Vogue tires, the famous luxury brand tires commonly sold by Cadillac dealers. Vogue Tyre and Rubber Co. was founded in Chicago and invented the whitewall and patented the unique gold strip that states that “Vogue is the Cadillac of tires.”
Black doesn’t consider himself mechanically inclined, but I do. He modestly stated that “I’ve done some upgrades myself, including the dash and seats” and added, “I’ve only had cars I wanted, and then I wanted them to look and be the best.”
It hard to know the value of this classic Allanté. Today, many Cadillac dealers don’t even want to work on the model. When the car was created, I think there were just too many cooks in the kitchen, making it a difficult car to work on.
The unusual thing about this particular car is that it’s actually a one-owner (family) car that’s completely original, and a car is only original once. While the owner loves his car and has no plans to sell, Black did see an Allanté exactly like the one he owns go through the Barrett-Jackson Auction recently for $69,000.
Before the auction he felt his car was probably worth $25,000 to $30,000. Now, though, who knows?
Have an interesting vehicle? Email Dave at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To read more of his columns or see more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.
