ALLANTE’ & ELDORADO: WHEN GM WENT ITALIAN

USA TODAY: Detroit, November, 6 1991- Interview to MARIO VERNACCHIA about Cadillac Allantè. “... Chuck Jordan - GM Cadillac - and Sergio Pininfarina were very open with me: "Mario, please let the design of Allantè be unconditionally Italian! No any influences and contaminations have to be taken into account from the current GM automotive Style!” In fact the ‘GM Style’ was oriented to very ‘boxy’ shapes with sharp edges (see the pictures below: Cadillac Fleetwood MY 1987 and Cadillac Eldorado MY 1987). Instead, the Allantè style was based on a softer and more rounded bodywork with streamlined feature lines. “Chuck: the Allantè will be ‘The New Spirit of Cadillac,’ an ultraluxury roadster unlike any that came before it!” In my mind the goal was to conceive an attractive and durable design, not affected by time; in other words, my real strong ambition was to create a ‘timeless design’ like in the best Italian design tradition. It is important to say that I had joined Pininfarina just a year before the launch of the project, and the Allantè was for me ‘My First Car Design Experience’ (even since many years before, I applied in automotive design as self-taught). The Allantè influenced the GM style for the following new models as the Eldorado MY ‘90. The car shows an evident family feeling with Allantè, even if the project input by GM was to design the new Eldorado using an ’American Pencil ‘.