These Are Some Of The Most Complex Cars Ever Made

Image: Cadillac

The Allanté only gets an honorable mention here because of how wild its production process was. In late 1985, GM signed a $100-million air cargo deal with Alitalia and Lufthansa Airlines. The reason? So the company could embark on one of the most complex and inefficient assembly processes ever imagined. The whole process was referred to as the “Allanté Airbridge,” and was hailed as the longest production line in the world.

The Allanté was designed and made in Turin, Italy by Pininfarina, who entered into a half-billion-dollar contract with Cadillac to build the convertibles. The bodies were then shipped to Turin’s airport, and from there, specially outfitted 747s carried the unfinished Allantès from Turin to Detroit’s Coleman A. Young International Airport. Once there, trucks would offload and take the Allanté bodies three miles north to GM’s Hamtrack assembly plant, where production was finished. The 747s would depart the airport to go back to Turin, carrying things like steering and climate control systems for use on Allantés that were being built back in Italy.