Heroes on wheels: Chrysler TC and Maserati – CLASSIC

The end of the last century was a time of big movers and shakers in the automotive industry. One of them was the son of Italian immigrants who made a big impact in the American industry. However, when it came to luxury and performance, things were usually not the same. His name: Lee Iacocca. Even at Ford, he managed to turn things around and get back on the road to success, although his big dream of a super sports car failed miserably. So the Italian-American somehow became interested in a gentleman named DeTomaso. The idea to equip his Pantera model with a Ford V8 and sell it through Ford’s nationwide network of dealers didn’t work out at all, but they still kept in touch randomly – you never know.

Years later, Iacocca was in the executive chair at the ailing automaker Chrysler. The seventies were full of losses and people were on the verge of destruction. Lee’s plan to use a common chassis for all model series came at the right time. Iacocca is also credited with starting the Voyager, and customers forgave the fact that all new cars had only four cylinders and front-wheel drive because they were cheap and fuel-efficient. And on the other hand, the owners, because there was a good profit. But that was not enough for Iacocca: he would like to give Chrysler a better image, and after all, where is style and luxury more at home than in Italy?

So Lee picked up the phone, called his old friend DeTomaso and told him about his plans: take the shortened chassis of the Daytona coupe and give it a more or less new livery in Italy. Of course, you also get the best leather for the interior, a removable hardtop and an emergency power line. When everything is ready, you fly the cars across the pond to the new world and sell them to the rich and famous. Sounds crazy? It was clear that DeTomaso had no worries. Things were not going well for his company after he took over Maserati and the competition was killing his products in spades. Such a major order from the United States came at the right time.

In 1985 they finally got a job and Iacocca was full of praise for his new son. This is the best thing that has come to America since her mother immigrated from Italy. Behind the scenes, however, things have been simmering since the beginning. Many disagreements between Chrysler and Maserati engineers led to endless delays, followed by haphazard management that lost the focus of this international project. And then there was the pressure of time: Since the resemblance to the upcoming Chrysler LeBaron was almost uncanny (but also quite logical, because the technology is the same, and therefore also the negative numbers), the TC – which simply stands for Turbo Coupé – had definitely come to market before. However, early on, management expressed great concern that with the LeBaron the customer would be getting exactly the same car, at a better price. And besides, GM was just planning a coup so that the Cadillac Allante would be made in Italy, so that Iacocca would also lose his insults about the beautiful Italian woman.

As a representative of the many problems with this project, we should mention the above example, in which an attempt was made to improve many things, but this made everything worse. Since the look was almost like that of the cheaper LeBaron, they wanted to at least go one step further in terms of technology and have the four cylinder extensively reworked. The cylinder head came from Cosworth in England, the turbocharger from IHI from Japan, the chassis from Fichtel&Sachs from Germany, the camshafts from Crane Cams from Florida, the pistons also from Germany from Mahle and the rest of the engine base from Detroit. An admirable effort with the result that the customer still got only four cylinders, while eight of them were available elsewhere for the same money.

It didn’t help that the Mitsubishi V6 was quickly replaced, because when the time came in 1990 and the outdated TC entered the world, those who had the money preferred to go for Cadillacs or European coupes. And those who didn’t already have one were LeBaron. In two years of production, 7,500 units were not far from the 10,000 units originally planned. This large amount only came about because this was the minimum guaranteed contractual number of cars that Alejandro DeTomaso had acquired.

And as true disasters tend to do, they didn’t stop causing trouble until they were at the dealers. Because of all things, one important design element, the holes in the sides of the hardtop, was behind the googly eyes. For a hotter look, they were not flat glasses, but rather inserted into a convex shape, in the middle of which the Maserati trident was found in the Chrysler Pentagon. Nice detail, but with the unpleasant brightness of this semi-circular disc it acted like a magnifying glass and focused the sun’s rays so that the carpet behind the front seats literally burned. Stupid, because the gas tank was under it. The fact that no burnt TC was reported at least speaks to the quality of the carpets chosen.

All in all, it was just a bad chance, Iacocco said in retrospect about one of the biggest fiascos of his career. His contemporaries, on the other hand, took a more brutal approach and described this combination of American and Italian car construction as a combination of the worst of the two worlds. A member of the Crysler board took a more aggressive approach in court with TC. Bob Lutz said the failure has cost Chrysler nearly $600 million, making each car about $80,000. Or in today’s terms: a staggering 180,000.