This car being from 1980 is wild. I could buy 1988, it looks very 1988, but if it debuted in 1980 that means there’s a very good chance it was technically designed in the ‘70s, and pretty much every aspect of the design philosophy would have been a decade ahead of its time.

And I know that part of that is that I’m American. Composite headlights didn’t become a thing here until the mid ‘80s and didn’t become universal until the ‘90s. And boy were the American car industry’s first attempts at those ugly and awkward-looking. And of course aerodynamics started to become a consideration in a lot of European design in the ‘70s while America didn’t really start experimenting with that until the ‘80s, and again it didn’t become the norm until the ‘90s. But even compared to European cars from 1980 that already had composite headlights and smooth aerodynamic touches this car looks wildly ahead of its time.

Personally I don’t really like it. I mean obviously it’s better than any designs from the 2020s, but when discussing what looks “good” it’s best to just ignore the 21st century altogether, otherwise it throws off the curve and compared to anything made in the past 30 years an Edsel is beautiful and elegant. Compared to cars from the 1970s and 1980s it just doesn’t do it for me, the front end is impressively ahead of its time but really ugly and the overall proportions aren’t quite right. I mean they’re not far off from the proportions of the 400, but that’s a grand tourer, not a sedan. In my mind I think I’m comparing it to either a luxury car like a Mercedes S-Class or a sleek and futuristic sport sedan like the Lagonda, whereas the overall shape of this car gives off early ‘90s midsize commuter sedan vibes.

But the interesting part is why I don’t like: because it’s so generic and bland. But again, the impressive part of this car is that it’s from 1980. It wouldn’t have been generic or bland when designed, it would have been the only thing ever dreamed up that looked anything remotely like it. That’s kind of crazy to think about. It looks like a lazy and unimaginative copy of cars that came ten years later. The front end looks like a copy of the later Cadillac Cimmaron and the overall shape reminds me of the ‘90s Seville (or countless other ‘90s sedans). The tail lights scream Cadillac Allante, which makes sense because that car was also designed by Pininfarina and the thing about Italian design houses is that they don’t design you a Ferrari or a Cadillac, they design you a Pininfarina or an Italdesign or a Bertone, so their designs for different brands often end up looking similar to their current house style. But we keep coming back to the 1980 thing, this design predates the Allante by almost a decade so it was a very early attempt at that translucent tail light treatment that was so trendy in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. And the “concept car” roofline with those flush side windows that can’t roll down and glass-covered pillars was super trendy in the late ‘80s well into the 2000s (you still occasionally see concept cars like that nowadays) but this has to be the earliest example I’ve ever seen.

It makes me wonder just how well known and influential this car was. I know I’ve seen it before, although I never knew the year was so early, but was this a super popular and well known car in the early ‘80s? Did it heavily influence all those later cars that it looks like a bland knockoff of? Or was it just ahead of its time, a minor blip on car enthusiasts radar that didn’t influence much but foresaw so many future design trends? I guess regardless of whether this particular car was influential Pininfarina definitely was, and like I said they did like to reuse a lot of design themes so even if this was one of the earliest examples of all those design cues Pininfarina probably kept reusing many of them throughout the ‘80s on other designs.