2010 RINGS IN A NEW YEAR AND A NEW DECADE that for many of us will undoubtedly hold some new rules under a new economy. That’s not to say that everything must come to a screeching halt until the dust settles. On the contrary. The savvy buyer will view this as an opportunity to take advantage of a soft market, regardless of the pricepoints they typically play in. It becomes a question of whether the seller chooses to let go or hold on until conditions improve and the speculation of how soon that might happen. One way to mitigate that sort of speculation is to make a safer investment by limiting the initial cash outlay. What we’ve attempted to do here is to present 10 cars that have a foreseeable appreciation and either are currently available or will bottom out at under $10,000 in the year 2010. With that, we continue our 10 for ’10 for under $10K:

1993 Cadillac Allanté
Typical asking prices*: $7,000-$9,995
Collector status: Buy and hold

In that yuppified, greed-is-good decade that was the ’80s, Cadillac found itself becoming insignificant in the luxury segment, at least with buyers that mattered. The brand was more closely identified with mobsters and octogenarians than upwardly mobile brokers that flocked to dealers to buy European marques. Specifically, Cadillac didn’t have a model to compete with the very popular and hot-selling Mercedes SL roadster, nor the less popular, but more targeted Jaguar XJS. It drew on its long-standing relationship with Italian design house Pininfarina to develop a car that would be a worthy competitor to the Europeans. Early models were panned by the automotive press for being underpowered, understeered, and above all, overpriced (the bodies were built at Pininfarina as well and flown to Michigan for assembly, 50 at a time). During its run from 1987-1993, there were improvements made and in 1993, the Allanté was equipped with a 295-bhp Northstar V8 that at least quieted the criticism of being underpowered. It could literally smoke its European competition with 0-60 times of just over six seconds, but it still suffered from front-wheel-drive handling characteristics and a price tag that could easily reach $70,000 including options, taxes, etc. (that’s about $105K in today’s dollars). Sales, therefore, were poor—about 50% of projections—and the Allanté met its demise. In total, about 20,000 units were produced. That’s nothing to write home about in terms of rarity, but it does allow for the possibility of going days or weeks without seeing another one on the road. Add to that respectable straight-line performance as well as Pininfarina provenance (dated as the styling may be), and a well-equipped, well-preserved 1993 Cadillac Allanté is a keeper.