1993 Cadillac Allante Reviews, Pricing & Specs

The spanking new 1993 Cadillac Allanté convertible I drove for a week was a test car for the automotive publication I worked for back then. Somehow, I had managed to sell the PR department of Germany's GM subsidiary on the idea that the Allanté was a perfect candidate for the "Classics of Tomorrow" feature that appeared each month in our classic car magazine. It was a rather cunning scheme to get brand new test cars out of the auto industry, which was a ludicrous proposition if one writes about old cars, of course, but the trick worked. Anyway, the jet-black Allanté was mine for a week (at a factory price of 120,000 deutschmarks, actually buying one was inconceivable, needless to say) and the weather gods made sure I got every last bit of fun out of that week as the sun shone brightly day after day in that memorable summer of '93. For my first outing, I borrowed a good friend's lovely Italian wife whose striking Mediterranean looks and presence in the passenger seat made the topless Cadillac really stand out among the myriad BMW's, Porsches, Audis and Mercedes driven by the jaded upper-crusters of Munich, Bavaria, where my magazine and I were based. As expected, the Cadillac was fully equipped with every gadget and gizmo in the book and then some. What really enthused me, however, was the outstanding Northstar V8 under the Allanté's hood. 295 net horsepower from 279 cubic inches (4.6 liters) was quite awesome 20 years ago, and those horses made the comparatively light convertible really get up and go. You just pushed the pedal to the metal and the Cad took off like an F-14 catapulted from the deck of an aircraft carrier. At least, that's how it felt. With its overhead camshafts, the V8 would rev willingly and without hesitation all the way up to its 6,000 rpm redline. On the autobahn, the Cad would touch 140 mph - with the top down - and 150 with the top up. 0-60 came in JUST a little more than 6 seconds, plenty fast in those days. Thanks to a heavy-duty cooling package that included auxiliary engine and transmission oil coolers and was standard equipment in all American GM models sold in Germany, the Caddy wouldn't overheat during extended high-speed autobahn runs. American engines without the that package usually end up blowing their cylinder head gaskets or worse on such occasions. Credit must also go to GM's excellent 4T80-E four-speed automatic transmission that unfailingly delivered all that power to the Caddy's front wheels. Yes, the Allanté had front-wheel drive, which made it a bit of a handful in tight curves due to the inevitable occurrence of torque steer. However, Cadillac never marketed the Allanté as a sports car, but as a luxury two-seat convertible, which is exactly what it was. Trunk space was minimal, of course, and there was obviously no rear seat, but plenty of comfort for front seat passengers, even tall guys like myself. No complaints. Any report on the Allanté would be incomplete, however, without mention of its one big drawback, the mechanism of the convertible top. Whoever designed this mechanism should have his or her head examined because it was needlessly complex and prone to failure. Lowering the top was easy: Just push a button and the top would quietly disappear in its slot behind the rear seats. Getting the top up again was something else altogether: Raise the top, engage the fasteners along the upper edge of the windshield, and then connect a small hook embedded in the stiffening grommet of the top underneath the plastic rear windshield to another hook that resides in a small receptacle just north of the trunk lid. This second hook rises from its receptacle when the top is raised and, once latched onto its equivalent, disappears in the receptacle again, stretching and fastening the rear end of the convertible top in the process. All of this takes place electrically - if the darn thing works, which, most of the time, it doesn't. Instead, the whole rear section of the top comes loose again and the process has to be repeated several times. At first I thought I was too dumb to handle the mechanism, but my colleagues were just as hopeless. Even the head of GM of Germany at the time who personally drove the test car back to Rüsselsheim from Munich was caught with his pants, er, top down. Leaving Munich in glaring sunlight and warm summer weather, he decided to drive topless, only to be caught in a big thunderstorm en route, necessitating a quick top up maneuver that failed miserably in the manner described. He called me the next day to tell me that it took him seven tries to get the top buttoned up properly - in the pouring rain. Boy, was that gentleman mad. Still, I enjoyed that all-too-short week with the Allantè in the summer of 1993. Whether or not the two-seat Cadillac will ever be a genuine collector's item I don't know, but it was a fine car for fun in the sun.May 08, 2014