A Little Spaghetti Car-bonara?

At Chef Franco, the chicken parmigiana is $7.95, fully loaded. There is no low, low financing. No salesman will use your first name half a dozen times every 90 seconds to say things like, “Steve, we’re gonna put you in a brand-new chicken parmigiana . . . today!” or “Steve, when it comes to your family and chicken parmigiana, what kind of price can you put on safety?”

But even without the standard sales lines, Chef Franco offers the ultimate in the Italo-automotive dining experience. The restaurant is on the showroom floor at William L. Morris Chevrolet in Fillmore. It is the only Italian dinner house on an auto showroom floor anywhere in California, and, almost certainly, the U.S.

Even as salesmen cross the Ts on their final deals of the day, the lights are turned down, a cocktail-piano tape is turned up, and Chef Franco himself ushers guests to tables covered with red-checkered cloths. The light of a dozen candles gleams off the bumpers of a huge, midnight-blue, four-door, four-speed-automatic Silverado LS 1500, priced to sell at $31,503.

While Chef Franco’s liquor license application goes through the hoops, you can bring your own wine. But because of arcane state regulations, parties with wine must sit at tables deemed to be in the dealership rather than in the restaurant. Only a taped strip on the floor separates the area where imbibers can sip their Chianti while peering under the open hood of a sparkling white Camaro Z28.

Table-hopping, Franco Onorato--a.k.a. Chef Franco--talks nonstop. He lauds Gallo’s chardonnay, cites Lee Iacocca’s philosophy of quality (he’s all for it) and lashes out at cooks who insist on boiling the tomato sauce.

“There’s no need,” he says. “You boil the sauce four, five, six hours--it gets dark, it gets sour. You might as well dump it out!”

Can a serious chef find happiness serving spaghetti all’ olio in a place where most of the oil is 30-weight?

“In Southern California, it’s a natural,” Onorato says, his voice ringing with the accent of his native Italy. “People here love their cars, so where would it be more correct to eat around cars? I’d feel strange if we were in New York, but here--with the space, the openness--there are no limits. The sky’s the limit!”

When Santa Paula’s Glen Tavern Inn closed not long ago, Onorato was left jobless. But nearby Fillmore had a shortage of decent restaurants and Mr. Goodlunch--a snack bar at the Chevy dealership--was unused in the afternoons and evenings.

Onorato showed up at the dealership unannounced and unaware that its owner, Chappy Morris Sr. harbored a vague dream of opening a restaurant someday.

“Chappy saw the possibilities immediately,” Onorato says. “He’s like a padrone of the arts, and I am the artist.”

Since it opened two months ago, Chef Franco has done a brisk business. On weekend nights, as many as 100 diners jam the showroom. Some check out the new models between courses. A few come for the linguine but leave with a Monte Carlo.

“At first, I was apologizing for the ambience,” Morris said, “but customers were telling me how much they liked it. I figure maybe I’m missing the boat if I don’t put some tables over by the grease rack.”

For Onorato, 43, Chef Franco is another stop on a long, garlic-lined road.

As a 20-year-old sous-chef on the Italian Riviera, he fell in love with an American girl whose family ran a big restaurant chain in the United States. Come work for us, they urged.

He wound up churning out BLTs and cheeseburgers at a Sambo’s in Santa Paula.

After a month he left, seeking cuisine more haute.

That was two decades and many restaurants ago. Since then, Onorato has ranged from San Francisco to Santa Monica. He also owned a place--Nick’s and Franco’s--in Port Hueneme and developed a local following.

The years have refined his tastes. Now he prefers the mild sauces of his native Lucania, a mountainous region in southern Italy.

“I fear oregano!” he proclaims. “I hide the salt!”

At Chef Franco, he cooks the way he talks--always in motion, whipping dishes out of the oven, dumping slightly undercooked pasta in hot olive oil for a quick sizzle before the sauce soaks in. He uses fresh garlic and lots of basil and makes a delicious sherbet out of oranges he picks up at a local ranch.

“Above all, the flavor must be upheld,” he says. “We’re talking about food here.”

Chef Franco is open from 5 to 9 every night but Sunday.

Prepare to leave a bit better upholstered.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.