Javillac
Collaborations between two car brands to jointly launch a model do not usually go well, although there are exceptions. In today's list we look back to remember those cars that were the result of the efforts of two manufacturers.
ALFA ROMEO ARNA 
The Arna was the fruit of the collaboration between the Italians of Alfa Romeo and the Japanese of Nissan, in order to create a compact three- and five-door car, bodies that were enormously popular in the XNUMXs. For this project Alfa Romeo built a new factory in southern Italy.
The concept sounds great in theory, Japanese technology with an attractive and modern body with Italian character and personality, but unfortunately it was the other way around.
The problem comes when the car was the product of the union of the worst characteristics of both worlds, a frankly boring body, which was little more than a Nissan Pulsar or Cherry with another grille, and the mechanics inherited from the controversial alfasud. The result was a car that did not captivate the public and that was an insult to the most alfistas.
LAUNCH THEMA 8.32 
We went from a collaboration between Italians and Japanese to a purely Italian creation. At first glance, the Lancia Thema 8.32 can be easily confused with other sportier finishes of the model, although a clue is its retractable spoiler, the first car to incorporate this technology.
The real surprise is under the hood, as the car had the V8 engine used in the Ferrari 308, although the mechanics were seriously modified to be able to be housed in the motorcycle compartment of a sedan.
They were not manufactured 4.000 units of the Lancia Thema 8.32 by Ferrari, but it has become one of the most sought-after and sought-after sedans by collectors in recent years, as expected, and in Spain it entered the collective imagination for being the car in which Fernando Martín lost his life.
PORSCHE 914/6 
This attempt to make a more affordable sports car was a job carried out jointly between Volkswagen and Porsche, brands belonging to the same group, but that rarely collaborated with each other, despite having common origins.
The car was planned as a substitute for the Porsche 912 and Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. The car was sold in Europe as Volkswagen-Porsche, but for fear of losing customers in the United States in North America it was marketed as Porsche.
This two-seater targa roof It was offered with two engines, a 1-liter boxer-type four-cylinder of Volkswagen origin in the 914, and a 2-liter six-cylinder boxer from the Porsche 911 T for the 914/6.
CITROËN SM 
The work of the magnificent designer Robert Opron, this modern coupé presented in the early seventies was a collaboration between Citroën and Maserati, the latter providing the avant-garde SM with a mechanic.
Initially, the agreement established between both manufacturers stipulated that the future model was going to have a V8, but finally a V6 was chosen.
The commercial life of this beautiful automobile coincided with the beginning of the oil crisis in 1973, something he did seriously affected his popularity, turning SM into one of the great cars that failed at a commercial level.
DODGE OMNI 024 DE TOMASO
Unlike the rest of the cars presented on this list, this version of the Dodge coupe based on the Talbot Horizon, It has De Tomaso only in the name.
The car was little more than an aesthetic package to which the name of the Italian manufacturer was added in order to give it an exotic touch that the model never had.
It should be remembered the good relationship between Alejandro De Tomaso and Lee Iacocca, businessmen who met during the development of the De Tomaso Pantera and who continued to collaborate once Iacocca left Ford and joined the Chrysler board.
CHRYSLER TC BY MASERATI 
The fact that lee iacocca, father of the Ford Mustang, was able to revive Chrysler with the Voyager and LeBaron after the company had declared bankruptcy is quite an achievement. It was much less successful the collaboration between Chrysler and Maserati to sell a LeBaron at an exorbitant price.
With Alejandro De Tomaso now also the owner of Maserati, a new joint project with Iacocca was more than foreseeable. The Chrysler TC by Maserati was a LeBaron made in Italy and little else. Although it was the only variant of the car available with a hardtop.
In fact, some of the mechanics were available in the Chrysler catalog, some of these being of Mitsubishi origin. The result was a well-deserved commercial failure for a car of which only 7.300 units were sold in three years.
KIA ELAN 
The Korean brand, although it has known how to offer good products, has never been the most prestigious in the world and by the nineties it was beginning to be aware that had to do something to offer a car that was more than a tool to get from point A to point B.
Kia was looking for a convertible, but the development of a car of this type was extremely expensive, so they decided to look at a product that was already on the market.
That is how Kia began manufacturing the Lotus Elan in 1995., immediately after the cessation of production of the English model. Unlike the original model, the Kia Elan increased its clearance from the ground and had a 1,8-liter four-cylinder engine with 149 HP.
FORD PROBE 
The period between the late eighties and the late nineties was a golden era for sports cars with retractable headlights that were affordable for almost all budgets.
It is at this time Ford collaborated with Mazda to develop a new coupe with an eye on the 90s. The result was the Probe, sharing many mechanical and aesthetic components with other sports cars from the Japanese brand.
SEAT IBIZA 
Normally collaborations between cars have not worked at all well or were outright failures. But we end the list with the only Spanish car mentioned and also the most successful, the Seat Ibiza.
The Ibiza was presented in 1984, when the company operated independently after the end of the commercial agreement with Fiat. In the development of this compact participated Italdesign with Giugiaro at the helm, Karmann and Porsche, the latter in charge of designing the 1,2 and 1,5 liter engines named System Porsche.
This factor of being able to have the Porsche name on a utility vehicle together with the mechanical robustness of its engines turned the first generation Ibiza into an international best-seller of which more than 1,3 million units.
