When I saw this 1972 Toronado posted at the CC Cohort, I got rather excited: this is a car I haven’t yet found, although I have spotted a rare XSR sitting forlorn near a house out in the country. But then I realized that the Cohort poster, mistergreen, didn’t include a proper set of shots of this car, just the front end and one of the vinyl roof. Sigh.
Well, this might be a good time to encourage the Cohort to get at least three basic shots, if at all possible: front ¾ view, rear ¾ view, and a full side view. And then add what else catches your interest, like the deeply sculptured front end of this Toro. In the meantime, we’ll just have to use our imaginations for the rest of it.
Odd. Not surprisingly, I love these cars. The headlight doors & fender tips bear a strong resemblance to the ’71 full-sized Pontiac. I’ve only seen a handful of these on the road in my lifetime. The few I saw when I was a kid were pretty beat up — this was in the late 70s.
I’m not counting the ’73 -’78 models which I find much less appealing (even the XSR). I hope to see more of this one.
I really like these Toronados. They are my favorite of the Toronado/Riviera/Eldorado trio. I used to see a really nice powder blue ’77 or ’78 Toro (with navy interior and landau top) around town, but it’s been a few years since the last sighting.
The ’71-’72 models are especially scarce. They are the cleanest – and bear a striking resemblance to the ’67-’70 Eldorado.
My uncle had one of these of this generation. It was a barge. As a child, I was astounded at how long and heavy the doors were.
These full-sized FWD GM cars were pretty common demo derby rigs out here in the PNW, and I can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen one on the road.
I loved the looks of the original Toronado but couldn’t understand where Olds was going with these land yahats of the ’70’s. Looks too much like too many other cars, partly what killed off Olds.
I can’t think of too many other cars that have a giant blunt nose with air intakes in either side of the bumper! I’m not entirely surprised by this either…
Seriously, this is one of the most radical designs ever to come out of Detroit. Did it have two radiators?
Nope, just two grille openings.
Hmm, perhaps it inspired Porsche when they went to water cooling? They have two radiators at the front corners of the car…
Who needs grille openings when there were a foot of space between the engine and the front of the car! 😉 Plenty of openings on the bottom of the engine bay.
Well, 1971 was quite a long time before 2004, when Olds folded. In fact, the early 70’s saw Olds rise to #3 in sales.
So can’t really blame this ’72 Toro for Oldsmobile getting dropped. To me and others, it looks unique enough. The much later 1986-90’s blandmobiles, including the last Toro, did that.
I agree, Chicagoland. That ’72 Toronado has a pretty distinctive face, even if it is similar to (and a bit of a hand-me-down from) the ’67-’70 Eldorado. I think Olds offered a lot to customers back then, and they kept coming back for more. Olds sold over 1,000,000 cars in 1977! The downfall came much later. So don’t blame poor ’72 Toro.
The more conventional looking they got, the better they sold. As avant-gard as the original was, it never met it’s sales targets until it donned a more conservative suit.
My Mom had a 1972 Olds Toronado, gold with a tan top and tan vinyl interior. My folks went into the Oldsmobile dealership to buy a Cutlass; the gold Toronado was on the showroom floor and my Dad fell in love with it. We had that car until 1979 when she got a new ’79 Riviera (That’s another story) But the Toronado was a really cool car. It had the high mounted brake lights that were its trademark. Mom would brag about the floor being flat due to the front wheel drive. I remember that my Dad would always say it was a fast car. It had the huge 455 V-8 and with front wheel drive we never got stuck in the winter with that car. Back in the 70’s there were hardly any front wheel drive cars at all so it really stood out in the crowd! In 1976, the tall ships came to Newport, RI and we were on our way to see them in the Toro. Well, we never made it there – on the top of the Jamestown Bridge (which was imploded several years ago – cool video on YouTube) the paved road turned into a metal grate for flexibility . As soon as we hit the metal grate, the Toro started shaking violently – so bad that I thought we would go right over the side of the bridge! We made it over, and the Toro ended up going to the Olds/Cadillac dealer in Newport to be fixed. Come to find out it had a defect in the front wheel drive and cost nearly a thousand dollars to fix. In 1976 that was a lot of money! Dad looked at a Cadillac in the showroom there thinking he might replace the Toro but Mom wouldn’t hear of it – she loved that car and it only had about 25,000 miles on it when this happened.
The Toro was loaded, too – It had all the luxury options you can think of. I always thought it was cool because back then you didn’t see many of them. There was an old man that had the twin to our car, and every once in a while you’d see him driving around our town. But other than that it was a rarity to see a Toro like ours. It ended up going to my brother who drove it for a few more years and sold it to a friend of his that eventually trashed it. Sad – I wish I had that car today!
Great story, Tom! I love how your mom moved on to the 1979 Riviera (in its first year as a front-wheel-drive car) after the big Toronado. I would love to hear more about that. Maybe we’ll have a CC about the downsized Toro/Riv/Eldo (or have we already?) Were people aware that the ’72 Toronado was front wheel drive (you mention it stood out in the crowd). I recently had to get a smog check for my ’79 Toronado, and the guy pulled the car in the wrong way (the driving wheel has to be on the top of the spinning dynamometer). He just assumed that big old American car = RWD. He was surprised when he hit the accelerator. Guess he didn’t notice the totally flat floor inside!
My Dad Would Have been driving me around to get BRochures when we saw the Toronado… HE was an ” A to B Transport” kind of guy, but HE Loved THIS 71-72 Look.
I wish I could Have got him out of that Ambassador he drove, Company car though. A/c included, hed say …it was OK because it was Standard at The sprice of the other 3 w.o/…
My 89 Trofeo I Long for to this day. It was an elegant Masculine car . i never see them.
We satisfied my Olds longing with a Loaded 1999 Silouette. – we adopted, or were gifted our first minivan , an its an Olds, I Do love That part, Im gonna Quietly take off The Olds Logo before someone else does. GM Should Bring Them Back if They ever prosper enough to, once again.
When pigs fly right?
I worked with a woman who had an freind with a claped out Tornado Trofeo. The velour interior had worn extremly well but, I think that, if it were leather, it would have been treated better. This person was very impecunious and did absoluly no maintainance on this car and thus, It probably just became part of a new dishwasher.
This was one of the other cars I first could identify at night, because it was the only car with those high mounted brake lights on each side(until the Riviera got them in 74) from what I recall they were brake and turn signal lights too.
Carmine, when this car came out, I recall the magazines pointing out the high mounted rear lights as a safety feature. But I also seem to recall this car was available too with an airbag. Am I correct in this?
Yes, it was, from 1974 to 1976. In fact, the system (called the Air Cushion Restraint package) included both driver and passenger airbags. The ACR package was offered on the Toronado and full-size Oldsmobiles, the Riviera and Electra 225, and most, if not all Cadillacs. It was not commonly ordered — the figures I’ve seen say it went into 10,000 Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac models (collectively), plus 1,000 ’73 Impalas for the fleet market.
if memory serves, when congress was debating the airbag requirement the success of the acr system was one of the selling points. apparently, there were some people who bought these cars second hand and were saved by the acr system that they didn’t even know was installed in their vehicles.
Yep, there was an driver and passenger airbag, I’ve only seen one car ever in person with it, a 74-76 Riviera, a long time ago in a parking lot, I walked past it and did a double take because I couldn’t believe I was seeing one in person.
I think through ’76 you could also still get ABS: the True-Track rear anti-lock system also offered on the Eldorado. That system wasn’t available on the Riv, as far as I know.
Thanks guys! So in a way, this car was a forerunner for what was to come.
technologically, yes. stylistically, sadly, no.
Not in 76, the Eldorado went to 4 wheel disc brakes in 76 and hte Track-Master was dropped, though it was still available on all regular Cadillacs, except the Seville and Limousine/Comm Chassis.
Buick didn’t offer Track-Master, it was Cadillac only, though Buick did off Max-Trac through 1974, it was an early form of traction control. I was only available on full size Buicks.
When my mother was shopping for her 72 Cutlass, I became intimately acquainted with each and every 72 Olds model on the showroom floor. Collins Oldsmobile in Fort Wayne, Indiana was a large Olds dealer with several cars in the showroom. I spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth between the gold Ninety Eight sedan and the light green Toro. I still remember the pull-out door handles that were unique to the Toro.
I had forgotten how bold the front end was on these. I rode in one of these. It was a red one with white top and interior that belonged to the grandfather of one of my friends. I still remember the wide, flat floor and how strange the gas pedal looked sitting all by itself in the middle of the floor with no transmission hump to nestle up against.
I have not seen one of these in I can’t say how long. Great find.
The California plate is very likely the original one from when the car was new. The early yellow on blue plates didn’t hold up nearly as well as the yellow on black predecessors. I suspect that this is because they planned to switch to aluminum when they made the color change, but still had a lot of rolls of sheet steel on hand, and the blue paint had been formulated for aluminum, not steel. Just a theory…the later aluminum blue plates held up a lot better.
Yes, the letter combination (letters beginning with “E”) would be from the year of manufacture or shortly after, so this car has definitely worn these plates its whole life. The blue/yellow plates began in late ’69, and lasted until late ’79 with the 6-character format. Starting around the beginning of ’80, they were still blue/yellow but went to 7 characters, beginning with a “1”. Now the plates are white, but the same sequencing is still in use, except we’re up to “6”!
Its face reminds me of the white mask you see nutters wear in the movies so they do not bite people. Silence of the Lambs comes to mind.
Does this front remind anyone else of the Studebaker Avanti?
Sorry about the lack of good shots. I actually took the pics of the Toronado a few years ago, before Curbside Classic existed, and recently found them when going through my hard drive. It was parked where I found it for quite a while back then, so It might be still be where I saw it. When I get a chance I’ll check for it again.
Eldorado, Toronado, Cordoba, Monte Carlo… holy grails of desire in my childhood mind. Luxury from the 70s that was still firing my mind in the mid 80s when I truly discovered them.
Oh and i just remember an old friend of mine who was a 20 something young man in the 70s once talked about a day on I-40 when he witnessed a Toronado towing a trailer. The thing was the driver had welded the trailer solid to the back bumper and the rear tires of the Toronado had been REMOVED! Apparently the driver thought he would save wear and tear on the rears for the duration of the trip.
Somewhere in the annals of CC there’s a discussion of how Toronados were converted to tow vehicles for small airplanes at civil-aviation airports by chopping off the rear, leaving the front end with its power and steering components intact, and grafting on a rear end suited for the purpose. Maybe that’s what you saw? Same concept, anyway.
OK, I know I’m not making that up. This is not a Toronado but the idea was something like this (no rear, front end modified):
http://www.airliners.net/photo/1063079/M/
In the comments to the ’66 Toro CC:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1966-oldsmobile-toronado-gms-deadly-sin-16-lets-try-a-different-position/
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-qYUdf6DzrK0/T33FnbFSqJI/AAAAAAAACE0/IuK-Act51sA/s576/72oldstoro.jpg?gl=US
I owned this 1972 Toronado for many years but finally sold it. I still have a 1966 Toronado. The 1972 was an excellent car with excellent power, decent economy (16 mpg) and amazingly comfortable front seats!
One additional note, the 1971-72 Toronado models look a lot like then1967-68 Cadillac Eldorado models because they were both designed by Stan Parker, one of GM’s best designers of that era.
I am now rebuilding a72 toronado frame off rotisory cant spell that is going to be the most awesome car on the planet