Let’s Attempt To Create A New Maserati TC Out Of Chrysler’s Last Remaining Vehicle: A Minivan

It’s widely known that making a silk purse out of sow’s ear would be an impossible task. Not having that pig’s appendage to even start with would make the job even more insurmountable.

I’ve found myself in such a situation, and naturally Jason Torchinsky is the reason behind this predicament. Our dear leader asked me to revive a failed Italian-American touring coupe to be built by one of the brands originally responsible. However, that particular brand- Chrysler- only makes one vehicle now, and it isn’t even a car.

See what I mean about impossible?

You Already Know It Doesn’t Stand For “Terrific Coupe”

Here’s the DM that I received on our Autopian Slack last week with his request:

Quite a lot to unpack there, and I’d rather leave it in the box if I’m being honest. [Editor’s Note: In my excited haste, I meant “one lone Chrysler.” – JT]

First of all, the Chrysler TC by Maserati might not be something you remember fondly. Honestly, Chrysler themselves likely would hope that you don’t recall, and if not for tremendous pressure from Lee Iacocca himself his money-losing boondoggle never would have existed at all (just ask Bob Lutz). I did just write about this ill-fated “halo” car recently:

If there’s one K variant that most consider to be a failure, it’s the Maserati TC. The intent was certainly noble enough; Lee Iacocca’s long-time friend Alejandro DeTomaso controlled the storied trident brand at the time, and a collaboration logically could have brought some chutzpah to the one Big Three corporation that didn’t have a respected Lincoln or Cadillac flagship.

Lee had brought DeTomaso’s Pantera into Lincoln-Mercury dealerships back at his time with Ford. It was a fearsome machine that blew the Corvette into the weeds when it worked, which it never did. Iacocca seemed to have forgotten about all of the Pantera’s quality and production issues twenty years later, and Alejandro let him down again on this new project. The development delays of the Italian-built car caused the TC to be released after the new-for-1987 Lebaron Coupe it shared a resemblance with.

Instead of timing the TC’s release so LeBaron customers could say, “Hey, my new $15,000 Chrysler looks like that fancy $35,000 Maserati TC that was introduced two years ago,” Chrysler left potential TC customers to muse that the new “Maserati” looks like the Lebaron that’s already been on sale for a while and costs twenty grand less. Indeed, twenty grand less, and with very, very similar mechanical components, including a Dodge Daytona-sourced Turbo II four or a Mitsubishi V6 (with the exception of the 500 TCs equipped with a Maserati-built 16-valve motor and Gertrag 5 speed).

The TC’s biggest problem was all the wannabe-Mercedes-SL two-seat touring cars from the Buick Reatta convertible to the Cadillac Allante all the way up the 2000s T-Bird revival turned out to be sales duds. Despite plans for 5000 to 10,000 units a year, Chrysler only managed to move 7,300 TCs over three years. Honestly, you have to wonder if the Chrysler-Maserati mashup would have found more acceptance if it were something other than a coupe with a funky porthole window in the removable hardtop.

That doesn’t sound like something that’s worth bringing back to life based on a current Chrysler, but Jason’s gonna Jason. right? What would make this job even worse is that Chrysler’s current lineup, well, isn’t really a lineup at all. How things have changed.

Chrysler As Big As A Whale Has Set Sail

From their 1925 beginning, Chrysler was a maker of semi-aspirational large cars the rivaled but never really seriously challenged the likes of Cadillac and Lincoln. After Iacocca’s takeover in the very late seventies, Chrysler as a nameplate quickly grew to an expansive “neo luxury” brand for the revived Big Three automaker. Iacocca turned it into a gold mine in the same way he’d transformed a lowly Falcon into a Mustang and a boring Maverick sedan into a cheesy-but-strong-selling fake Mercedes called the Granada.

Let’s take the 1983 model range: there was a Chrysler for almost anyone and everyone. The “entry level” was the gussied-up K-Car Lebaron available in coupe, sedan, wagon and convertible flavors:

Need a bigger Mopar? You could get the Euro style stretched-K “E Class” sedan, where “Euro” meant color-keyed fake Mercedes wheel covers and no vinyl roof. More hedonistic or well-heeled buyers might pop for the fancier New Yorker or even a super-long-wheelbase seven passenger (but still four cylinder) limo:

Fans of traditional rear drive “full sized” rides could choose from cars based on the previous Volare-chassis Lebaron like the Cordoba coupe and Fifth Avenue sedan (which really was just the old 1978-81 Lebaron with a fiberglass roof cap literally glued on the back):

In ’83 even the ill-fated range-topping crown jewel Imperial was available, complete with bustle-back and carburetor to replace the original fuel injection system that didn’t work:

Charitably you could say that they shared a brand identity but truthfully all of the cars pretty much looked the same. But boy, you have to admit that it’s a lineup with a lot of cars.

Chrysler kept an extensive lineup going well into the 2000s, but over the last decade car after car has been unceremoniously discontinued without being given any form of replacement. With the once-celebrated 300 sedan meeting its demise recently, the website for the brand now celebrating its 100^th year shows only one vehicle: a minivan.

Oh, sure, they say it’s really three separate things, but powertrain and trim differences don’t count in my book: that’s ONE product. Forty years ago the Lebaron alone offered more variations than this with one model line. Not that the somewhat long-in-the-tooth Pacifica/Voyager is a bad product; it’s just sad to see what’s happened to a once-thriving American nameplate.

What’s worse than that is how the hell I’m supposed to fulfill Jason’s wish to get a touring car out of that? Has anyone ever made a sort-of-open-topped sports coupe out of a minivan? As it turns out, yes, they have.

It Was Never, Ever Avantime

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to hear that the company who dared to green-light turning a seven-passenger people carried into a four-seat two-door was French. What might shock you is that strange as strange as the idea sounds, the end result was even more bizarre than you could have imagined. Released for 2003 by Renault, it was called the Avantime.

Renault affiliate Matra had created the three-across-seating Bagheera and the Rancho soft-roader in the seventies, but it was their work on the pioneering 1984 Espace minivan that proved to be a highly successful and profitable creation.

By the end of the nineties, the Espace was in its third generation with many happy owners. The head of Matra at the time “believed that the children of Espace owners remained loyal to the car even after they had grown up and left home. As a result, the renowned estate was gaining a generation of new drivers.”

He seemed to be saying that kids growing up in vans would immediately want to buy one themselves. Or, that empty nester parents really didn’t want to forsake the shape of their tall box to get a flashier, sportier or more luxurious car. He also implied that these parents wanted to do space travel for about two months a year. Actually, he didn’t imply that last part at all, but I’d believe that before I thought anyone other than beleaguered parents wanted a minivan unless they absolutely needed it, or that any kids wanted a car just like their parents had.

As our own Torch once said:

It’d be like if Chrysler decided that all those Town & Country kids from the ’80s and ’90s would grow up to want Town & Country minivan-based Challengers and Chargers.

[Editor’s Note: I got to drive one, once! – JT]

With such a flawed concept, the Avantime (meaning “ahead of time”) was doomed from the start. A minivan-based pillarless four-seater “coupe” with two doors so big they needed articulating hinges was going to result in a strange looking machine regardless of what you did; Matra made no attempt to make it seem “normal”. With a giant sliding glass roof, bare aluminum reverse-raked “targa” bar at the back and a rounded abbreviated “trunk lid” the Avantime defied any kind of conventional description.

Honestly, the fact that they were able to sell 8,300 of them over the three years it was built is a small miracle. It’s hopelessly bizarre and pointless; so much so that most of us Autopians are counting the days until the first ones are twenty-five years old and we can legally import one of these magnificent masterpieces. I know that I am.

Could we really remake this formula as something better per Jason’s request? Maybe not, but we could take a page from how fellow French car builder Citroen made their coolest and most glamorous car of all time: add Maserati power.

Coupe De Vann

Years after its introduction, I do have to say that the Pacifica remains a very nicely designed people-mover. While some Japanese and Korean minivans seem a bit too try-hard in the styling department with funky detailing or mock-SUV posing, the Chrysler remains an unapologetically clean, sleek and functional form. I’ll try to keep much of that essence as I turn it into a four-seater Chrysler TC by Maserati coupe. I can’t believe that I just typed those words.

Realistically, though, if the Avantime proved that making a “touring coupe” out of a minivan is a fool’s errand then making a Maserati two-door from Chrysler’s only vehicle–which happens to also be a minivan–is a fool running blindly off of a cliff. That’s about par for the course with my Jason-requested tasks.

At least I’ll reduce the height and wheelbase and length by a few inches on the Pacifica (as the Avantime did) to help give us a chance of making this mess work even though essentially every panel except for the windshield would be different from the Pacifica and need to be handcrafted in Italy. That’s no different from the original TC that shared no body parts with other Chrysler cars, yet owners of TCs today need to put THIS IS NOT A LEBARON signs up when they display their rides at car shows.

You’ll note that the porthole window on the “C” pillar was a non-negotiable from Mr. Torchinsky. That porthole is essential to capture the imaginations of Chrysler TC by Maserati lovers everywhere- both of them (well, maybe there are three out there).

Here’s an animation of the original Pacifica and the TC:

Two longer doors with frameless glass will work with the lack of “B” pillar to create an open-air “hardtop” experience with all four windows down.

Once more, the animation of the two:

A giant sliding glass roof is similar to the Avantime, but you’ll notice that the rear backlight appears to be gone as well. That’s because, unlike the Avantime, the hatchback of the Pacifica has been replaced by a tailgate that folds down once you retract the power backlight into it. In addition, you can roll that glass down to have a wide-open cabin with just the cant rails and rear “targa” bar remaining at the touch of a few buttons (or with one button labelled “open air” on the driver’s armrest).

Oh, here’s a full image of the rear view. You can see a pocket on top of the tailgate where the rear wiper can park off of the glass so that the window can raise and lower.

One last time, we’ll see the animation to show the changes:

I did try to sketch up something with more of an angled rear roof or even sectioning the body a bit more but then it “wouldn’t be stupid enough looking” according to the deranged person I work for. Look, it’s a job, right?

It Even Has The Big Gold Maserati Biturbo Clock

With a slightly lower roofline, the seats will get pushed closer to the floor and demand more room for legs but regardless this former Pacifica will have acres of room for the rear passengers, and even a fair amount of cargo space behind the back seat. Trying to find budget for a new dashboard seems absurd for a little project like this but I’ll show it anyway.

Like the Avantime, the new TC instrument panel will be a wide, clean sweep, in this case with a thin band of screen just below the windshield and then a larger area of screen dead center. There’s no need to allow for a walk-through area between the front seats as on the Pacifica so that space will be filled with a big ironing-board-looking thing featuring an armrest covering a closed storage space or refrigerator and controls mounted on the leading edge. There’s also an open-sided “purse nook” with a surrounding ledge below like that my wife really liked on the RX300 we had. Naturally, we’ll cover all surfaces in padded leather in a textured “ruched” pattern similar to that used on the TC or eighties Maseratis like the Quattroporte III and Biturbos.

If we’re trying to copy the original Chrysler TC by Maserati; our Pacifica “coupe” needs to offer a two powertrain options: a slightly heated-up standard drivetrain and one that Maserati themselves have actually laid their hands on. Standard fare would be a gasoline-electric hybrid system with the Pacifica 3.6 liter V6, though this system could be a power boost to a combined 320 horsepower. The optional motor? Netturo V6, just like in the MC20, baby! We might detune it bit to just under 500 horsepower but still enough to make this the fastest van-based coupe ever made until someone builds a twin-engined Avantime. Make no mistake: the Maserati engined edition would be stupid, but also stupid fast.

Maybe It Could Go 185

As odd as the concept of the TC concept was nearly forty years ago, the realities of today are far stranger. Never in a million years did I think that Chrysler and storied Italian brands would be under the same umbrella. Also, back then I never could have imagined the revived-and-thriving Chrysler becoming a nearly extinct brand. Sadly, here we are, and those Stellantis Italian brands are struggling as well.

Maybe it’s too late to save Chrysler. Still, if we could use their one remaining vehicle and the exotic resources now available to Mopar overseas and make one last hurrah, it’s got to be worth a try. It’s possible that Jason’s idea for this stupid van-coupe Hail Mary attempt at reviving a century-old American institution somehow makes sense.

Just don’t tell him that I said that.