Oldsmobile Toronado

The Toronado was GM's first vehicle to use a subframe, which cradled the Toronado’s powertrain and torsion-bar front suspension. This provided more isolation from road and engine harshness. Oldsmobile designed the Toronado to compete in the personal luxury car market, which had been dominated by the Ford Thunderbird since 1958.

Front Wheel Drive in the 1960s

Ford had originally slated front drive for its 1961 Thunderbird, but was dropped due to cost and a lack of time to fully develop. Toronado's FWD was a radical engineering change that kept the 'crown' with GM’s (Oldsmobile) division. A month later, Motor Trend named the big front-drive personal luxury coupe its 1966 Car of the Year.

Oldsmobile began working on a front wheel drive platform around 1958, which was about the same time that Cadillac was working on one. By 1959 Cadillac had a running chassis built, but the concept was never a priority, as front wheel drive was viewed as too expensive and non-conventional for production at the time. Development costs were high, but interest in front drive remained. By mid year 1963 Cadillac and Oldsmobile had combined their efforts with a project coded XP-784.

Deciding on a name - Toronado

The Toronado name itself, was first used on a 1963 Chevrolet show car, and doesn't really have any meaning- though, if you take the word "tornado" and add an extra "o" to it, you have Toronado, so it's reasonable to think this was its origin. Other names that were said to have been tested for the car included: Magnum, Raven, Sidewinder, and Starfire. Urban legend tells the story of designers who noticed a cleaning lady with a Tornado floor waxer. The name couldn't be secured by Olds because of its use on jet fighters, so GM turned to a similar name- Toronado- for which it had the rights.

Toronado Styling

Toronado's original styling was inspired by a drawing titled "Flame Red Car" which was done in 1962 by David North, an Oldsmobile stylist at the time. North didn't create it with any particular project in mind, but when Olds executives started looking in earnest for design ideas, this one apparently caught someone's attention. “That car was about the size of a Camaro,” North says of his Red Flame. But by 1962, Buick’s Riviera personal luxury car neared completion. Cadillac rejected the Riviera when its designer, Bill Mitchell, pitched it as a new LaSalle model. “Oldsmobile went to the corporation and said, ‘Look, we don’t have anything like that,'” North says.

Olds’s Starfire, a B-body with sporty trim, like Pontiac’s Grand Prix, helped Olds get the green light to chase the developing personal luxury market. Adds North, “John Beltz, Olds chief engineer and soon general manager, said if you can’t do a car that’s close to a Cadillac or Lincoln, don’t do it.”

"Meat Cleaver" front fenders

The dominant theme was a long front with an uncommon amount of overhang and thrusting fenderlines (sometimes referenced to as "meat-cleaver" front fenders), suggestive of front-wheel drive. Designers initially favored a sloped tail end, but moved to a cropped Kamm-style that emphasized the front end. Hidden headlamps were coming into style, and there was no question the new Olds would have them.

In order to keep costs down, the new car would share a body with the Riviera and a new Cadillac that was also planned for introduction at about the same time. Bill Mitchell, General Motors' styling chief at the time, wanted to put the new Olds on a smaller chassis, but that idea never gained traction due to the extra costs involved.

Bodies from Fisher

Oldsmobile lacked sufficient body assembly space at its home plant in Lansing, Michigan, where the new car would be built, so it decided to truck in bodies from the Fisher plant in Cleveland, hundreds of miles away. Meanwhile, production engineers began laying out a special single-model assembly line within the vast Lansing complex, intended to move at a slower-than-usual rate. This plus a veteran work force assured exemplary workmanship from the start. By early 1965, some 38 pilot cars had been built and were ready for final shakedown.

Under-Cover Reliability Testing and Tire Redesign

Of utmost concern to GM was the reliability of this design, and great steps were taken to ensure it would be dependable and virtually maintenance free. Prior to the first car being sold, Oldsmobile tested their new design under real conditions as well as under conditions a normal car would never be subjected to in its lifetime. Over 1.5 million miles were racked up during this process, which took 7 years to complete. GM modified a Buick Riviera body to hide the fact that there was something new under the sheet metal.

Milford, Michigan and Arizona proving grounds were pressed into round-the-clock service, cobbled-up prototypes disguised as Ninety-Eights were evaluated on public roads, and no less a "test driver" than Bobby Unser took a pre-production aluminum-body car up Pike's Peak, just for good measure.

The result was a strong and reliable design that has now been proven by many owners over many millions of miles driven. The design was a good one, and it made a huge impact on the automotive world that is still being felt even today.

Firestone 'TFD' Tires

Because of the unusual characteristics of front wheel drive, Oldsmobile engineers worked with Firestone to design a new tire specifically for the car. The result was the Toronado Front Drive tire, or "TFD" tire, which by design had a stiffer sidewall than other tires of the day. A very thin whitewall stripe was also characteristic of the tire, and was much narrower than most other whitewalls on the market at the time. With a size of 8.85" x 15", the tires were said to have lasted much longer than a standard tire would under the same conditions.

Toronado Engine & Performance

The 1966 Toronado utilized Oldsmobile's 425 cubic inch Super Rocket V8 engine, rated at 385HP (10 more horses than the same engine installed in Starfire, and 20 more than the Ninety Eight.) The intake manifold on engines made for Toronado installation differed from the standard variety in that the intake manifold was flattened somewhat to allow the air cleaner to sit closer to the engine, which provided necessary hood clearance.

Though it weighed in at nearly 5,000 pounds upon its debut, the Toronado’s performance proved admirable, hitting 60 mph from a standstill in 7.5 seconds on its way to a 16.4-second quarter mile time.

Hy-Vo Chain Drive

GM's heavy duty Turbo Hydra-Matic 3-speed automatic transmission (known as TH425 when modified for front wheel drive) was the only transmission available, since few buying a car of this nature would be interested in shifting gears themselves. The torque converter on this transmission drove the separate gearset with a 2" wide silent chain drive called Hy-Vo, which rode on two 12" sprockets. The Hy-Vo chain was developed through a coordinated effort between GM's Hydra-Matic Division and Borg-Warner's Morse Chain Division. Notably, the chains were "pre-stretched" which meant they didn't require an idler to keep them properly adjusted.

Unitized Power Package

The engine and transmission design were named the Unitized Power Package (UPP) by Oldsmobile in recognition of the fact that it was designed to fit into the same size engine bay as would be provided on a car with traditional rear wheel drive. The 1966 Toronado used a partially unitized subframe, with the subframe ending just in front of the rear suspension, and served as a mounting point for the leaf springs. The subframe carried the engine/transmission, the front suspension, and the floorpan, which allowed these items to be isolated from the body itself thus preventing vibration, noise transference, and harshness. Cadillac would also use this same basic UPP design for its 1967 Fleetwood Eldorado, although it was modified by Cadillac somewhat.

Olds -> Cadillac -> Buick

When the Toronado was introduced, it shared its body shell with the all-new 1966 Riviera. Buick declined the chance to switch to FWD, and the Riviera didn’t go to front drive until 1979. Cadillac recieved the same platform and chose front drive for its more formal-looking 1967 Eldorado.

Base & Deluxe

Olds initially split the Toronado into two trim levels, base and Deluxe. The latter had a fancier “Strato Seat” with front center armrest and a nicer interior overall, including two door-latch handles per door, one on each end of the armrest so that the rear passengers could use them.

Strato buckets up front were optional at no cost on the Deluxe, with a reclining passenger bucket an extra-cost item. Toro number one’s interior is plain, once you get past the flat floors, the dash, space-age vents, and the rolling-barrel speedo. It has no power windows or locks, common features even then on luxury cars. But- it did have a power front seat, climate-control air con, cruise control, tilt wheel, AM radio with a rear speaker, and a power antenna. With those options, the Base Toro’s sticker would’ve been less than $5600. A typically equipped Toronado Deluxe, by far the more popular version, easily topped $6000.

Toronado Gallery

  • 1966 Toronado Ad
  • 1966 Toronado axle testing
  • 1967 Toronado
  • 1968 Toronado Limo
  • 1969 Toronado dash
  • 1974 Toronado Brougham
  • 1985 Toronado
  • 1986 Toronado 20th Anniversary




Production
: 1966-1992
Generations: 4

Platform: E-body
Related Cars: Buick Riviera, GMC Motorhome, Buick Reatta, Cadillac Eldorado, Jetway 707 Limo, Barris Custom Toronado 67X

Predecessor: None
Successor: Oldsmobile Aurora

 

Toronado Yearbook

1966

1966

1966

1966

1967

1968

1968

1969

1969

1970 Toronado GT (W-34)

1970 Toronado GT (W-34)

1970 Toronado GT (W-34)

1971

1971 Toronado Upper brake lights

1972

1972

1973

1973

1974

1974

1975

1975

1975

1976

1976

1977

1977

1977 Toronado XS

1977 Toronado XS-R

1978

1978 Toronado XS Interior

1978

1979

1979

1980

1980

1981

1981

1982

1982

1983

1983 Interior

1984

1984 Toronado Caliente

1984 Toronado Caliente

1985 Toronado Caliente

1985 Toronado Caliente

1985 Toronado Caliente Interior

1986

1986

1987

1987

1987 Toronado Trofeo

1987 Toronado Trofeo

1988

1988 Toronado Trofeo

1989

1989 Toronado Trofeo

1990 Toronado Trofeo

1991 Toronado Trofeo

1991 Toronado Trofeo

1992

1992 Toronado Trofeo

1992 Toronado with optional wire wheels

1992 Toronado with optional wire wheels

1992 Toronado with optional wire wheels