The Marlin was a concept car by Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign, shown alongside the Maya and Together as one of three concepts the company presented at the 60th Turin motor show, an event that year moved to autumn and staged for the first time at the former Fiat plant at Lingotto. It took the form of a notchback saloon with four doors and seating for four or five, featuring a fully glazed canopy in which the window glass extended over the roof rails. The smooth-surfaced body, with a rounded nose, minimal air intakes and a form-fitted lower edge, achieved a drag coefficient of 0.21.
Italdesign presented the Marlin as a further step along a line begun with the Medusa in 1980 and the Orca in 1982, sharing the Orca's underpinnings, including a switchable four-wheel-drive system built to an Italdesign patent. Its wheelbase was stretched to give a particularly generous cabin, with 203 cm of "comfort" space measured between the pedals and the rear seat backrest, while overall length reached 460 cm, matching the Lancia Thema and Saab 9000, also styled by Giugiaro. The transparent roof gave the cabin an unusually bright interior, doors were cut into the roofline to ease entry and exit, and both front and rear seats offered adjustment, including individually reclining rear backrests. Controls were grouped at the steering wheel hub on a fixed, non-rotating panel, paired with combined analog and digital instruments.
Dimensions included a wheelbase of 266.5 cm, track widths of 146/145 cm, and overall length/width/height of 460/174/137 cm. The drivetrain came from the Lancia Delta HF: a turbocharged 1585 cc four-cylinder DOHC engine producing 130 hp at 5600 rpm and 191 Nm at 3700 rpm, driving all four wheels.
