(first posted 11/22/2011) The question of when exactly GM first started committing its many Deadly Sins is subject to debate, although I did make a stab at it once. It mostly all boils down to hubris, the arrogance and over-confidence that so commonly afflicts those at the top. And was GM ever on top. In 1962, about the time the program leading to the Toronado was approved, GM’s US market share was 52%. The divisions all had their own engineering departments, with plenty of money to burn on all sorts of sexy fun projects that might have gotten their start over the water cooler:
Hey! How about we build a gigantic seven-liter high-performance personal luxury coupe with… front wheel drive!
Wow! Yes! That’s brilliant!
It’s just what the world was waiting for. Not.
Now GM’s Best and Brightest had been mentally playing around with the idea of fwd for quite a while. It was kind of like kinky sex; highly attractive to think about, especially compared to engineering another plain vanilla sedan with a frame and a conventional drive train like all the others in the past fifty years.
Who can blame them? Coming out of WW2, GM was boldly going to redefine modern motoring, and fwd seemed like it just ought to be part of it. Actually doing it, and for the right reasons, was another story. Like this 1955 Buick La Salle II roadster; it “had” fwd, but it just wasn’t functional. Hey, just a minor detail. It’s a “pusher” show car; you don’t get to actually drive them anymore than you get to be intimate with show car girls. GM’s fwd mental masturbation was in overdrive, and on a roadster no less, although just how sexy the LaSalle really was is as questionable as its pretend fwd.
1955 was also the year Citroen’s fwd DS arrived. Compare the DS with the Le Salle above it. Which was the more forward-looking car? Oops, wrong subject; we were talking about sex. Oops again. Maybe it was something about the American idea of sex in the 1950s?
OK; let’s give them a break. The Big Three’s Engineering and Design mavens deserved to let their inhibitions run loose a bit during this period. During the fifties and sixties, they were on top of the world. All too soon, they would be busy scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make engines run cleaner and more efficiently while still running at all, barely. The engineering challenges of the seventies and early eighties were like the AIDS epidemic, and soon enough even plain-vanilla engineering sex went the way of safe sex. But in those last years before the EPA and CAFE-branded condoms were handed out, The GM Engineers went on an orgy.
Every permutation of engine and transmission positions were tried out: rear-engine Corvair, rear-transaxle “rope-drive”Tempest, mid-engine Corvair and Corvette prototypes, rotary-engine Corvettes, electric Corvairs, and a very kinky fwd van concept, the L’Universelle (above), with a roof intake for the mid-mounted radiator. Yeah; that’ll work well, especially in the winter. And that’s just that’s the short list. Actually, like the LaSalle, it couldn’t move under its own power; GM couldn’t even build a prototype front transaxle so they cobbled up a crude V-drive affair which actually never worked; this was strictly a “roller” that could not move under its own power.
Ironically, the one thing that wasn’t on the list, even the long one, was a fwd small car. As in, where fwd would actually have made the greatest difference in terms of space utilization, weight savings, and other benefits.
Admittedly, Olds did have a fwd program for the 1961 F-85. With a 112″ wheelbase, the F-85 was already closer to a mid-size car than compact, let alone a true small car. And the program got a late start, and didn’t get all that far. Probably a good thing, as there were enough issues with the Buick/Olds’ aluminum V8 that resulted in it being ditched after three years. One less future Deadly Sin.
GM wasn’t playing the fwd game alone. Ford too was also indulging fwd fantasies, one of which was along the lines of the Toronado, turning the ’61 T-Bird into a front-driver. But Ford also put their forward-thrust energies into something eminently more suitable: the Ford Cardinal small car. Designed in the late fifties as a true VW competitor, it had perhaps the most compact engine ever built, a 60 degree V4,with a balance shaft to minimize vibrations, sitting just ahead of the front transaxle. This very forward-thinking approach might have been expected out of Lancia, or? But it was conceived and developed in Dearborn, and came within a cat’s whisker of being built.
When it became obvious that the highly vanilla 1960 Falcon could be built as cheaply as the Cardinal, Ford pulled out at the last minute, crated it up, and sent it to Germany, where it appeared in 1962 as the Ford Taunus 12M (above). Thanks to the space-saving advantages of fwd, the 12M was shockingly roomy for its class at the time, and was a much more substantial and better riding car than the tinny, bouncy and narrow RWD Opel Kadett A. The Cologne V4 was eventually adopted by Saab, and spawned two more cylinders to become the basis for the engine that powered millions of Explorers, in its triumphant return to America. In an SUV. Who could have foreseen that?
Let’s forget about what could have been (a fwd Pinto with a very roomy body?) and get back to Dr. Feelgood Oldsmobile. Having lost the competition that led to the 1963 Riviera, Olds was given the green light to join the party for the second generation of the E-Body for 1966. Designer Dave North’s rendering for a smaller specialty car, the “Flame Red Car” was chosen, a RWD mid-sized sporty coupe concept designed to compete against cars like Pontiac’s GTO. So it had to be scaled up to the E-Body size, as a larger volume was desired for that body.
There’s no question it was a dramatic and bold statement, and a rather groundbreaking one, especially in the continuity of the rear quarter into the sweeping C-pillar and roof. I was very impressed at the time; this really hadn’t been done before: a gigantic seven-liter high-performance personal luxury coupe with… front wheel drive? But then I was thirteen at the time, and…easily impressed.
Americans never took a shine to the Toronado, and sales were disappointing. And Olds soon dumbed down the design progressively, until in 1971 it just looked like a cut-rate Eldorado.
The blade front fenders weren’t exactly original, owing a debt to the 1961 Continental. And the horizontal bars in the front grille undoubtedly were meant to invoke that last great attempt at an American car fwd, the Cord 810. It’s easy to see that the Toronado was essentially a modern take on the Cord, right down to the forward thrusting fenders, hidden headlights and even the shape of wheel’s brake-cooling cutouts. So let’s stick to the harder stuff.
Like the Toronado’s very long front hood. I don’t know the exact measurement in inches, but undoubtedly it was the biggest to date. A very manly car indeed! And it spawned a whole race for ever longer front ends. All thanks to the space-saving miracle of front wheel drive!
There’s no question that the Unitized Power Package (UPP) that the Olds engineers finally arrived at was successful in executing its intended mission. The brand new THM 400 three-speed transmission was split into two, and the “Hy-V0” chain transmitted power from the back of the torque converter to the rest of the now-dubbed THM 425 transmission. Final drive was via two equal-length half shafts, the right one passing under the engine’s oil pan.
This meant that the 385 (gross) hp 425 cubic inch (7 liter) Olds V8 had to sit unnaturally high in the engine bay, necessitating a very low intake manifold and drop-down air cleaner, as the valve covers were only inches below that massive hood. This undoubtedly didn’t help the center of gravity. Never mind that the Toronado carried over 60% of its weight on the front wheels. Welcome to the future! At least the UPP turned out to be a reliable unit. And found its true calling in a motor home, where it really did make sense.
So let’s focus on the Toronado’s presumed advantages. Yes, traction in snow was improved. And Olds managed to make the handling of the Toronado decent enough, but given the standards of 1966, that wasn’t exactly rocket science. Anyway, a comparable rwd Riviera GS was the better handling of the two. Turns out there is a reason why high-buck high-performance cars, especially sporty coupes are almost exclusively rear wheel drive.
But! Here’s the most important Toronado advantage of all: a flat front floor! Yes, that was the critical advantage in a high-buck personal luxury coupe, because we all know that the drivers of these cars inevitably had two additional passengers in the front seat to share it with. That’s why they’re called “personal luxury coupes”. And why bucket seats and consoles were practically invented for them.
For what it’s worth, the Toronado was the best car ever to take to the drive-in, if you could get your hands on Dad’s. Which wasn’t too likely.
Sadly, benefits often come with a price to pay. And the Toronado extracted its. It weighed some two hundred pounds more than the otherwise similar but RWD Riviera. Oops. The bias-ply front rubber wore out quickly from all the combined forces placed on them. Never mind that Citroen fwd cars had been riding on steel-belted Michelin radials since 1948.
But the biggest flaw was the Toronado’s braking ability, or the lack thereof. The fact that Olds sent the Toronado out in the world with drum brakes is almost mind-boggling. Given that it weighed almost two and a half tons, and with its intrinsic front-weight bias, the front drums were quickly overwhelmed, fins and all. But that’s only half the story; the rear drums locked up all-too easy, as GM made the same blunder it repeated with the fwd X cars: no height-sensitive brake proportioning valve to reduce rear brake pressure when the rear end started rising during braking.
Optional (!) front discs arrived in 1967. But there is simply no reason as to why the Toronado didn’t come standard with discs and a height-sensing rear axle proportioning valve in 1966. That alone qualifies the 1966 Toronado as a Deadly Sin. By this time four wheel discs were becoming common in Europe. The lowly Fiat 124 sedan and Renault 10 both had standard four wheel discs.
OK, it’s easy to criticize. What should Olds have done instead? How about the goal of perfect weight distribution and better ride and handling (other than freeways)? Take up what John DeLorean started with the 1961 Tempest, but use the THM 400 in a rear transaxle, and a proper independent rear suspension. Now that would have been forward looking, and still allow an essentially flat floor for those three-way front-seat hookups. And better traction to boot!
By the way, the Toronado used a solid beam axle and leaf springs back there. Sexy!
Let’s kick it up a notch. In 1967, the tiny firm of Jensen introduced the Interceptor FF, with the world’s first full-time all-wheel drive system AND anti-block braking (with four wheel discs). Hello GM! It’s not 1955 anymore. Front wheel drive wasn’t exactly the latest and hottest thing, except for where it belonged, on small cars.
If an AWD, ABS-disc-brake Toronado had beat the Jensen FF by one year, this could have been a GM Greatest Hit. Instead, the Toronado’s fwd as well as its sexy styling quickly became passe, and within a few years, its owners probably didn’t even know which wheels to put the snow chains on. But fear not; all that effort wasn’t wasted, as the hundreds of million spent on the Toronado’s fwd technology was soon put to good use in that highly space-efficient and practical import killer, the fwd Vega. In our un-sexy dreams.
(author’s note: GM’s Deadly Sins are numbered by when they were written, not in order of their heinousness or when they were committed. Also, in case it isn’t clear, a Deadly Sins label doesn’t mean the resulting cars were necessarily bad per se. It may be as much or more a reflection of the decision making process that resulted in them being built. Yes, the ’66 Toronado is a sexy beast, but neither relevant nor properly developed)
Related:
1967 Cadillac Eldorado vs. Renault R10 – An Unfair Comparison Thanks To A GM Deadly Sin
CC 1966 Toronado by JPCavanaugh
1966 Toronado by Aaron65
And to address Paul’s comment about GM using a smaller car for the new FWD platform, I couldn’t agree more. I’m guessing it was executive decision to make a sporty/luxurious FWD coupe with a platform they already had. Americans were into excess back then so small and economical probably wasn’t on their minds or the executive’s minds either – which it probably should have been!
The triad of E-bodies is interesting. I don’t think GM needed three Buick Riviera’s, even with three distinct body styles. Making the Toronado FWD made it into a different type of car. Sales for the Toronado were quite good at more than 40,000 the first year. Riviera’s sales had improved steadily from 1963 and were more than the Toronado’s. The RWD Eldorado sales were about 10% of the convertible sales, amounting to about 2000 or so. What I find quite interesting is that the FWD Eldorado sales jump almost by an order of magnitude to nearly 18,000 for 1967. Toronado sales drop almost in half. Riviera sales are off a bit too.
As time goes on, Toronado and Eldorado sales are nearly the same, while the Riviera sells better until we get to the boat tail Riviera. One can say that there seemed to be a market for the FWD cars. Why buyers were buying is not at all clear. The Eldorado sales are most curious. The 67 Eldorado is not much smaller than the 66 based on the DeVille body. A coupe DeVille is nearly the same size. So was it FWD? or perhaps the style? Who knows.
The Eldorado sold because it was Cadillac’s style leader, in the mode of the prewar Sixty Special. Comparing the sales of the Eldorado and Toronado is a little deceptive because the Eldorado was a substantially more expensive car than either the Toronado or Eldorado. A loaded Toronado might have run to around $7,000 plus local taxes, whereas the Eldorado was closer to $10,000 — a big jump in those days. So, even though the sales numbers were similar, Cadillac did very well on the Eldorado while Oldsmobile lost money on the Toronado.
The Toronado came in a base and deluxe models, which were more than the Riviera. The Eldorado was about $1000 more, probably $8000 with options. By 1971 nicely equipped Eldorado’s were $10,000.
I am sure Oldsmobile expected to sell about as many Toronado’s as Buick could sell Riviera’s. While this was so for the 1966 model year, the following years were not so good for Toronado. Since all three E-bodies are based on the same body, I am not sure how costs are distributed or profits are calculated. The FWD design was an Oldsmobile and Cadillac project, and the Riviera was required to become part of the E-body platform to reduce overall costs.
You’re right about the Eldorado — I looked it up and starting price in 1967 was $6,277, with a fully loaded example (as most likely were, or close to it) topping $8,000. A Toronado started in the $4,700 to $4,900 realm and with every available option might hit about $6,000. So, a spread of about $2,000, which was still a bundle of money at the time.
In those days, each division was responsible for its own P&L. From that, I assume that the development costs for shared components were allocated and any pieces the division didn’t actually make itself had to be purchased, even if the component was made by another GM division (e.g., the UPP planetary differential, which was made by Buick). That said, I wouldn’t assume a FWD Eldorado cost substantially more to build per unit than did a Toronado. The Eldorado did have somewhat more standard content than did the Toronado, but that was likely a small chunk of the $1,400-ish difference in MSRP between the Eldorado and Toronado Deluxe, so the profit margins were undoubtedly fatter.
I’ve always looked at the E-bodies as cars for those who wanted something a bit different and a little more youthful than the standard full-sized offerings. I remember when Mom’s ’72 Toro was about six years old my folks started looking at some different models to replace it with. The 98 Regency Coupe was high on the list because you could order it in brown with tan leather and Mom wanted leather. They were also very interested in a new ’78 Coupe deVille and because of a very pushy salesperson they came close to ordering one. I know my Mom liked it but still wasn’t convinced it was the car for her. My brother-in-law was working at a Buick dealer so they wanted to see if there was anything he had that would interest them. He showed them a new blue Park Avenue coupe in the showroom but Mom didn’t like the blue velour seats and wanted leather which I believe wasn’t yet an option on the Park Avenue. He then told my parents of the new ’79 Riviera that was coming out later that year. He told them it was FWD which was a huge selling point for Mom after having the Toro for almost seven years; then when my folks saw one they were sold.
You raise some good points in the article. The Toronado definetely had its flaws. However, without trying some of these ideas–even if they’re flawed–paints automakers into a corner as being staid and uninventive. For every idea that strikes out, there’s ones that thrive, and at that, some of the ideas that struck out did so because they were way ahead of their time, and needed some additional time to catch on. I’m not a FWD guy, but the criticism of the Toronado for being FWD……most cars nowadays are FWD. If the automakers didn’t perceive them as having value, they wouldn’t be making them that way. Olds/ GM learned the hard way about the wear and tear on steering the front tires with a heavy engine on top of it.
As far as the drum brakes, that no doubt was a cost cutting measure on a car that was already a bit of a risk.
The lack of disc brakes is unbelieveable really at a time when nearly every car out of the UK even underpowered 4 cylinder cars came with disc brakes as standard equipment, that cars that were this powerfull and heavy were so underbraked.
The argument that the 1966 Toronado was a turning point in General Motors’ mindset is a good one worthy of debate. The only real benefit to the FWD layout in this particular application (a full-size, personal luxury coupe) is that flat floor. But, man, it was ungodly expensive to get it, and only a car company the size of GM would have the wherewithal to do it with little regard to how it might impact the bottom line. Yeah, in 1962, they had over 50% of the domestic auto market, but that statistic always needs the asterisk of the 1962 Chrysler downsizing debacle. As Chrysler began recovering in subsequent years, so, too, did GM’s 50% market share figure decrease until it really began to tumble in the seventies and eighties after the Japanese got their foothold in the US market.
IOW, the hubris attitude of “we’re going to do anything, just because we can, due to our size” does seem to have begun in earnest with the Toronado and, using that rationale, I can go along with the Toronado being a GM Deadly Sin, and very near the top of the list, too.
To be honest, I think the issue the Toronado reveals is the opposite of that kind of hubris. What the story reveals is a lot of bright, talented, ambitious designers and engineers within a corporate structure with a deep-seated resistance to anything that rocked the boat.
Oldsmobile didn’t set out to create an impressive but basically pointless FWD personal luxury car — what Andy Watt and crew originally had in mind was a Senior Compact-size FWD family sedan with a V-6 engine or the small V-8, something very similar in concept and general size to a modern Accord/Camry/Malibu/Fusion/Mondeo. When there was a backlash about the high costs of the Y-body cars, Olds decided to work on a FWD Eighty-Eight instead. In a big family car (or, as I’ve said before, a big wagon like the Vista Cruiser), the UPP concept and flat floor would have made some practical sense. Whether it would have sold or not is a different question and would probably have depended a lot on price, but it would have at least been useful.
However, the corporation was more concerned with keeping costs down and eeking a few more dollars out of the Riviera shell, so the Toronado ended up not being exactly what anyone involved wanted, ending up as another example of a unique GM trait: being simultaneously elaborate and over-engineered and yet weirdly ambivalent. So, it lost money and didn’t even really serve as a proof-of-concept, since by the time everything had shaken out, a lot of the people involved had been promoted or moved on.
Whatever Frederic Donner may have said about it, the ultimate message of cars like the Toronado was not “We can do anything because we’re huge and powerful,” but rather “We could do anything, but we don’t really want to because have you seen these numbers?” Which is still certainly a Deadly Sin of some kind, but I don’t know that hubris is the right word for it.
I largely agree with you, and I wrote this piece tongue in cheek, obviously. But nevertheless, the decision to greenlight the FWD program in the Toronado is…dubious, and smacks of the kind of thinking that got GM into trouble.
It made sense, in a way, but only by a very narrow and myopic logic — the logic of someone who buys the extra jumbo package of something they don’t really need because the jumbo version has the lowest cost per ounce.
It’s certainly indicative of a particular problem that often seems to occur in the very wealthy: a really skewed sense of value that leads you to lavishly overspend on certain things while begrudging every penny spent on others, often in ways that (to the eyes of a poor or merely middle-class person, anyway) seem completely nonsensical.
Going along with that, I suppose, was a willingness to casually throw away (or really under-utilize) things that other people would consider valuable. The UPP was a really clever idea, and I can’t help thinking that a company like AMC would have put a lot of energy into developing specific products around it. As close as GM came to that was the GMC Motorhome.
The Toronado was such a frustrating car for all the reasons noted here and many others. I coundn’t have had a better perspective of this as a kid because I was the youngest and smallest in our 5-person family, so guess who always got to sit in the middle of the back seat, legs straddling the driveshaft hump? But occasionally my dad would borrow his brother’s car – a Citroen DS wagon, and my legs could stretch out comfortably on that wonderful flat floor (when I wasn’t in the way-back center-facing rear seats which our usual big Dodge wagon didn’t have). I became a FWD fanboy at the age of 8. But the Citroen was too narrow and too funky to be a mainstream family car, and they’d just been forced out of the US market.
The Toro had such advanced, ahead-of-its-time engineering – by the mid-’70s the FWD and flat floor had been joined by dual air bags, anti-lock brakes, and high-mount brake lights. And all of these were largely wasted on a personal-luxury coupe whose buyers didn’t care much about any of those things. Why, why, why didn’t they use this platform for a four-door sedan and wagon where that flat floor and width would have made for an awesome family car with great 6-passenger seating, back when that mattered because minivans and 3-row crossover SUVs weren’t a thing yet? An 88 or 98 sedan, or especially a Vista Cruiser or Custom Cruiser with a wide, flat floor and great bad-weather traction would have been a huge leap over anything else available in the late ’60s and ’70s. Instead, the airbags and (rear wheel only) ABS options were soft-pedaled, and the huge width and flat floor front and back were wasted on a coupe that rarely carried no more than two people (though two imaginative people could put all those wide flat spaces to good use), and it didn’t have much rear-seat legroom for a car its size. The downsized ’79 started to make more sense, though it still was available only with two wide doors and the narrower body made the center seating positions less comfortable than before. The ’80 Seville finally put four doors on this platform – it would have been a great car if not for that ugly (and space-stealing) bustleback trunk (at least for its first two years when the big-block Caddy V8 was still available).
What you described about GM’s machinations reminds me of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
though perhaps not exactly this.
Ironic that around the same time frame, Fiat & Simca developed modern FWD subcompacts.
I had not realized that GM had Oldsmobile working on an experimental project which they turned into a FWD project for the compact cars. The project was to experiment with new ideas. This started about 1958 or 59. In the mean time, the styling department came up with what was to become the Buick Riviera. This was first offered to Cadillac, who did not want it then. Buick had some ideas about a new car, but the Riviera project was probably offered to all of GM’s divisions for proposals. Buick probably had the best developed plan as they were already thinking about it and got the project.
Oldsmobile wanted something similar, and proposed a FWD version. Cadillac joined this proposal. At this point the previous FWD experiment becomes a development project with a production car the end result. The earlier experimental costs should not be charged off to the Toronado. Obviously there is a group at Oldsmobile pushing for FWD.
The plans for a Toronado and Eldorado create the need for a body, designated the E-body, which the Riviera would have to also move to. So beginning with 1966 the Toronado and Riviera are E-bodies, along with the 67 Eldorado. This generation is in production until the 1971 redesign. Total production numbers are 90,000 Eldorado’s, 125,000 Toronado’s, and about 225,000 Riviera’s. About 450,000 E-bodies altogether (perhaps more). GM’s revenues are at least $3,000 to $4,000 each. Probably about 1.5 Billion total or more. Somehow I think that there must have been some profit in there. Otherwise would they have gone ahead with the 1971 redesign? Keeping the Riviera in the E-body line was probably seen as necessary to keep the overall costs in line.
I also think that most buyers of the Toronado and Eldorado were aware of the FWD, although that may not have been the primary reason to buy.
On the latter, Toronado buyers were generally aware and interested; Eldorado buyers didn’t know or particularly care.
On the revenues, what you’re describing is not how GM calculated profit and loss. With joint projects, development costs might be allocated, but each division had to calculate its own P&L based on its own costs and expenses (which included buying stuff built by other divisions, such as the UPP planetary differential). So, the first-generation Eldorado certainly made money, the first-generation Toronado likely did not. In any functional sense, the profits from one didn’t offset the losses from others. (In the overall corporate ledger, they sort of did, but not individually; the corporation tallied up the P&L from the various divisions to create the overall balance sheet.)
Oldsmobile’s early FWD experiments were done by the division’s own advanced engineering department, not by the Engineering Staff. The Engineering Staff also did FWD work, some of which involved Cadillacs as test mules, but Cadillac’s interest overall was fairly limited. The designers really liked the idea, a few of the engineers were interested, but the division management apparently was not.
In this era, Engineering Central Staff projects were separate and distinct from divisional R&D. Sometimes the Central Staff would come up with something cool that the divisions would either decide or be assigned to share, but the divisions also did a fair amount of their own internal R&D stuff. The early Olds FWD experiments fell into the latter category. Their head of advanced, Andrew Watt, was very interested in FWD for family cars.
I am going to assume that you have more information than I do about GM’s costs and how they charged them to various projects. Once the E-bodies were in production the cost of putting them into production is somewhat irrelevant. The real question is what to do about a second generation. If the FWD’s had not been profitable the 1971 redesign would not have taken place. The basic Toronado FWD was used until the 1986 transaxle design, so Oldsmobile did have 20 years to pay off the original cost.
Well, each division had a budget for advanced engineering and R&D, so Oldsmobile’s early experiments wouldn’t necessarily have been charged against the production Toronado in any case. And the development costs of the initial production model (and the Eldorado) were shared between Olds, Buick, and Cadillac — each was assigned certain development responsibilities, so no one had to eat the whole design cost. I don’t doubt that GM got its money’s worth overall on the actual UPP drivetrain, although how it actually looked on the balance sheet is another matter.
At the end of the year the whole company reports either a profit or a loss. Oldsmobile was terminated because they supposedly were not doing as well as top management wanted. Sales were about equal to Buick, but Buick was using a few platforms, while Oldsmobile had several.
“The basic Toronado FWD was used until the 1986 transaxle design”
No. The original FWD transaxle was a variation of the 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic 400 design. Many internal parts are interchangeable; some need to be “flipped backwards” but are then equivalent. The resulting transaxle was called the “425”.
The TH425 lasted through the ’78 model year. In ’79, an entirely-different transaxle (lighter-duty, smaller, more prone to failure) was used–the TH325. This was still a longitudinal-engine transaxle. The 3-speed 325 was later replaced with a 4-speed overdrive automatic, still supporting a longitudinal engine.
In the ’86 model year, the engine went transverse. So, yes, 20 years of longitudinal engines; but the hardware used was vastly different.
Many cars end up being a victim of timing, and what the public wants to buy and what the current market trends want. The first cars with seatbelts and other safety features, didn’t sell particularly well, for example. Styling and overall aura usually tend to sell cars much better than technical specifications can.
In terms of Deadly Sins, sometimes it’s pure hindsight that reveals them. The 1953 Corvette was an underpowered, underwhelming sports car when it came out, and it was throughly lambasted for the Blue Flame six and other GM parts bin scrounging, instead of having its own dedicated parts. To me, it easily could have been axed after 1953, if we’re looking at the sheer numbers (or lack thereof)…..especially considering that when the T-Bird came out in ’55, they had improved on the Corvette’s flaws and had well outsold the Corvette. But thankfully GM and Bill Mitchell and Harley Earl stuck with it and fought for what it represented, and what it could eventually be.
Ultimately, it’s the niche oriented cars that don’t sell well that usually are missing links of sorts that bridge the gap between the corporate bean counters, and the really innovative car guys that are within their ranks. Profitability usually tends to compromise the overall vision.
I met david north
I fixed up one just like this in my body shop – same color (harvest gold I think) and same rust situation. My estimator wrote the job and booked it unbeknownst to me, so you can imagine my surprise when it was dropped off on a December Friday just before a snowstorm. I should have refused the job but I was dumb. That thing took us until Memorial Day and I lost money on it. But driving it out of the shop, I wanted one.
Nobody mentions the stopping power of the disc brake 1970 toronado, I own one and it is incredibly impressive…and to make use of that extra floor space, owners could opt for no cost bucket seats, add $18 for the floor console it the interior befits a true performance car. Want performance? Spend another $53 for the W-34 option and enjoy 400 factory HP…now criticize?
I think I still have a scar where I cut myself on one of those knife-edge front fenders!
If “should the car have ever been built?” is the premise for the Deadly Sin, I can’t agree to DS status.
It seems commendable that GM was willing to experiment, and other than brakes, came up with a decently reliable and exotic American luxury car for the times – that was its mission, not space efficiency or economy.
It missed the mark from a marketing standpoint – Oldsmobile built nice cars for sensible people. Not preening luxury cars. But, GM had just the solution, and recycled this as the Cadillac Eldorado for ’67. The Eldo held its own in the premium luxury coupe wars in the ’70s, undoubtedly some buyers probably didn’t know it was FWD, but some undoubtedly wanted this “exotic” feature.
The side effect for some GM loyalists was that this began to make FWD seem normal, and like a luxury feature trickling down to more plebian offerings. And, it even became a practical feature in the downsized ’79 E- bodies where interior space was becoming an issue.
The real Sin where the wheels came off FWD at GM was its execution from 1980 and up – unreliable X cars, excessive downsizing, etc., etc. – you know, the stuff that GM botched through the ’80s.
The ’66 Toronado is one of my favorite cars, so I’m not about to label it as a Deadly Sin… but:
It’s interesting that in 1966-70, the RWD Riviera outsold the FWD Toronados and Eldorados combined. Even in 1966, when the Toronado achieved a healthy 41,000 sales due to its newness and novelty, the Riviera still beat it with 45,000 sales. I think GM learned from that experience that in the personal luxury market, design/style counted for more than technological innovation, and that FWD by itself wasn’t a selling point for big cars. Unfortunately, GM interpreted that as a reason to stop innovating.
Just spent a fair bit of time (slow day at work) reading all the preceding correspondence, and I’m left with the feeling that we’re missing one important thought in the development of the Toronado: The rationale. Yeah, it’s been discussed, usually to the negative (it should have been done on a small car, etc.), but that’s cheap and easy given all the five decades of hindsight.
Drop what we know now and go back fifty years. Or a bit more, let’s go back to the 1962-ish beginning of the idea.
At the time of the Toronado’s development, there had been exactly two post WWI automobile brands that had reached the market place with front wheel drive. The Cord (L29, 810, 812) and the Ruxton.
Both brands were expensive, flashy automobiles; marketed to well-off motorists who wanted to be seen driving something different. Fast forward thirty years and, in America, that’s still the impetus for front wheel drive. A different play toy for men of means.
Yeah, Europeans were messing with FWD in small cars. But the accepted standards for small cars were either front engine/rear wheel drive, or rear engine/rear wheel drive. The Mini had only been out three or four years, and I doubt if there were more than 100 of them in America at the time. 2CV’s were probably rarer, Ford Cardinal’s never came over here.
And the Cord almost made it. It was one of the last of the independents to die prior to WWII, despite being done on a shoestring and the cars were revered by collectors in the years just post WWII. I’ve had oldsters tell me flat out that the American antique car hobby was founded on the twin pillars of Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg and Ford Models T and A.
So it made a lot of sense for GM to follow the Cord marketing model when they were coming up with this new car. Just think, another Cord, but with enough funding behind it to not have to scrimp and save to develop the car, and enough resources to take care of any early teething problems (early Cord 810’s were notorious for overheating and the transmission popping out of gear).
The brakes? Yeah, not a good move. But a normal move for the time. Disc brakes were coming on, but it was still the 70’s before they became all-pervasive.
They’re a lot easier to understand if we can just shut down all that cheap hindsight.
Well said.
You make some very interesting points here. There is no question that many styling details of the 66 Toronado paid homage to the Cord, which gives some credence to the idea that the idea was to be an expensive modern take on that part of the market.
While most of the DS are clear-cut, there are a few that are not quite so definitive and worthy of some discourse. This is one of them. It should be noted that, while not a home run success, the Toronado sold well enough to keep it in production for a very long time and, eventually, the Riviera would join the Toro and Eldorado with the FWD platform, rather than the other way around.
It was a huge expenditure without much short-term profit, quite a rarity for GM. But in the long run, the Toronado really wasn’t all that bad. In the context of being a latter-day Cord, it even makes some sense.
One thing that’s always kind of baffled me was why GM never put a Toronado convertible into production. Imagine how cool a 1966 Toronado convertible would have been (or any sixties’ Riviera).
“the accepted standards for small cars were either front engine/rear wheel drive, or rear engine/rear wheel drive”
Er… no. By the early ’60s, Europe was making many FWD small cars: BMC, Citroen, Panhard, Renault, DKW, Lloyd, Wartburg, Saab and FSO to name the larger automakers. By the ’60s, very few new rear-engine designs appeared. Legacy designs (VW, Renault, NSU, Fiat) outnumbered the new ones (Skoda, Simca, Hillman) by a long shot. Same for FR layouts in that segment. FWD was clearly becoming the norm.
And FWD was not just limited to smaller cars (1200cc or less). from WW2 to 1965, Citroen, Jowett, Hotchkiss, BMC, Lancia, Autobianchi, Triumph and Renault (as well as Peugeot vans) made FWD cars in the middle-to-big car segments, in terms of European size.
So for GM to “follow Cord” did not make that much sense, really. There were literally millions of FWD cars of all sizes on the other side of the pond. GM could have done what Ford did and made a FWD Opel or Vauxhall, to try their hand at the new way of making small cars. Instead, they created the largest and heaviest FWD cars in history, which was an answer to a question nobody asked.
And when the time came to make a smaller FWD for the US market, they made the Citation! Chrysler, OTOH, got the Horizon out of its European mess. GM made pointless FWD cars, then made FWD lemons. Deadly Sin fully deserved.
I’d say he was referring to the accepted standard in the US.
And, the purpose of the car following Cord for inspiration was to create a luxury car with an engineering twist. There was no goal at the time to create a FWD Opel or Vauxhall.
I’d agree that GM probably should have set its sights on a popular price FWD car in 1970 instead of 1980, but if one is to criticize the FWD E-body for this failure, one may as well criticize GM’s Electro-Motive division for the same failure. The issues have nothing to do with each other.
How is the FWD Toronado anymore pointless than a convertible, a muscle car, or an oversize and overly complex luxury car? Or a luxury truck or SUV?
The Toronado was pointless because putting FWD in that type of car was a waste of engineering. Maybe, once a good FWD platform is produced, a personal luxury coupe can be derived from it (e.g. the Citroen SM). But to limit that technology to huge two-door cars for over a decade makes no sense. A flat floor is far more useful in a smaller family-oriented 4-door (e.g. Ford Taunus) than a personal luxury coupe.
Convertibles, muscle cars, SUVs and luxobarges are not pointless. People want them — which is not to say they need them, but there is a market for these cars. Who wanted the Toro because it was FWD? Folks who bought these in 1966 wanted a personal luxury coupe and thought the Toronado was a good-looking car, which it is. Who cares about an “engineering twist”? FWD in the Olds was demoted to a gadget, like cruise control or power seats.
AMC, Ford and Chrysler did personal luxury coupes as well in the ’60s and ’70s. Did they go FWD? No, because that would have been (say it with me) POINTLESS.
I want to emphasize that the complaints about the brakes were NOT hindsight. Many contemporary reviews, including ones that were otherwise very complimentary, complained about the brakes, including not only stopping distances and fade resistance, but also directional stability in a panic stop.
Also, the counterpoint to “everyone else’s brakes were just as bad” is the Thunderbird, which standardized front discs and a front-rear proportioning valve in 1965. The T-Bird was about as heavy as the Toronado, and the ’64 and earlier models with drums had dire stopping power. The ’65 had much, much better brakes, as standard equipment, and given that the Toronado was a direct competitor, that alone should have shamed Oldsmobile into following suit.
When discs did become optional on the Toronado, they were all of $78.99, so NOT including them as standard was the worst kind of penny-pinching
Taunus and Kadett A were not competitors at all. The Taunus was one step up, it competed with the Opel Record.
Right. I clearly remember the seventies, when both Opel and Ford were at their peak in Europe. They were direct competitors in almost all segments, in the seventies:
Opel Kadett – Ford Escort.
Opel Ascona – Ford Taunus.
Opel Manta – Ford Capri.
Opel Rekord – Ford Granada.
Opel Commodore (inline-6 engine) – Ford Granada V6.
Opel Admiral / Diplomat – no Ford model available.
Ford introduced the Fiesta in the seventies, Opel’s answer was the 1982 Corsa.
On a different use for that UPP. There was a story in one of those Peterson publishing company (Hot Rod mags parent company) Engine Swapping Specials, about a guy who transplanted it into a old 912 Porsche with a blown motor. The owner reported it was better in all aspects and even the fuel economy was pretty good. Probably not going to be done again, but as a mid-engined configuration probably not bad. I suppose that you could use the post ’79 V6 drivetrain in an old VW bug chassis and make a ridiculous car. Maybe a Corvair, old Mustang coupe, Falcon or what have you. Maybe not.
Oldsmobile did in fact experiment with FWD in the compact chassis for the early 1960’s Y-body senior compact. Apparently John Beltz, an engineer, had a fascination with FWD and with the help of colleagues was rallying to use it in a production car. Initially, there was serious consideration to making the Y-body Olds a FWD car. In fact the effort progressed to the point that a running prototype with a transverse aluminium V6 and a chain driven transmission was developed. Ultimately though the cost was too high for a low priced car, so Olds reverted to the conventional RWD drivetrain.
Beltz also pushed to make the XP-784 FWD, which was supposed to be Olds’ personal car. Apparently Olds was sold on the FWD as it was seen as innovative and they wanted to continue the tradition of being the innovative GM divisions. The belief was that the FWD would also offer superior roadholding, but they really had no other reasons for making the car FWD.
David North stated in an interview that his sketch for a possible GTO replacement is what actually landed him at Olds. He made a scale model of it with a 50″ body section of a B-body with curved glass. Irv Rybicki thought his design looked more like an Olds than a Pontiac so he was transferred to Oldsmobile. The red rendering was based on this original GTO sketch, where he stated he made a full-size variation of the design theme on black paper for a more dramatic effect. Interestingly, North states that although Bill Mitchell lobbied to have the car as an A-body, he states that “I had cheated it [the rendering] so much that there wasn’t much A-body in it!” Although Mitchell seemed to push the A-body concept, it seemed North wasn’t bothered by the fact the car was going to be using the E-body.
In regards to the handling, in a C/D tested they stated that “During standard, every day operation the Toronado inspires more driver confidence than any American luxury car we can remember.” But they go on to comment that if you are driving in a hurry in the corners you better know what you are doing. In this case they were referencing the FWD cars tendency to increase understeer with more throttle. They summarize to say “We think a giant 400-hp, two and a half ton Mini is a gas, but have some reservations recommending it to citizens with cardiac conditions.”
There is no question the Toronado were initially underbraked, but the disc braked Toronados were still very prone to fade as well. In a C/D test they had one initial good stop. The second stop faded while the third stop was even worse. C/D commented that the initial stop was good, but were concerned about the very bad brake fade and the lack of directional stability on anything after the first stop.
This is an interesting and less known use of the UPP. Hurst did a conversion installing the front frame and powertrain of a Toronado into a 1968 Cutlass. The car still survives and has been recently restored. Here is one article on it:
https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/11/17/driven-front-wheel-drive-1968-oldsmobile-a-body/
I think at the end of the day, the most mortal sin of the Toronado (beyond its brakes, although those take some getting past) was not that it was conceptually ridiculous, but that it was more or less a dead end. There’s nothing particularly wrong with offering new technology in a high-end personal luxury car as a proof of concept and to build acceptance. However, other than the GMC Motorhome, that was the end of it. There was no “trickle-down” and little technology transfer, even when GM did begin adopting FWD, and after the Toronado was launched, there didn’t seem to be any interest in adapting the UPP technology for products where its use case would have been stronger.
In this respect, it’s a lot like the GM EV1 electric car. That obnoxious documentary notwithstanding, the sin of the EV1 was not that it had limitations (it obviously did) or that GM killed it when the program was done (which there were various solid practical reasons for), but that it was ultimately just an exercise.
It’s doubly exasperating because the UPP approach actually worked. When the Toronado appeared, the conventional wisdom was that FWD was completely impractical with more than 200 hp, and even 20 years later, some powerful FWD coupes had so much torque steer that you could use the accelerator as a lane change device. The UPP was reliable, and while the Toronado and Eldorado understeered heavily, there was no torque steer even with quite massive torque output. That they could swap drive wheels on cars with V-8 engines of 7+ liters and produce something with painless, treachery-free real-world driving manners was pretty remarkable, and would have been compelling in something like, for instance, an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.
From half a world away, these were amazing. A friend had the Corgi one. An amazing looking toy. I was never allowed to ‘drive’ it.
A stunning car from GM’s peak styling period. Never mind the impracticality of the thing, we’re looking back; think of it as sort of a sixties equivalent of the classic French Grand Routiers of the thirties. They weren’t practical either, but they weren’t designed to be. Hold that thought; front wheel drive, vee-engine. Lancia. Technically GM built a Lancia. Equivalent. Sort of. As only GM could. Or would. And hamstrung it with Thirties brakes and tyres.
Given the culture of the times (postwar excitement, booming economy, sky’s-the-limit enthusiasm, etc, etc.) it seems almost logical for an American company to build something like this, if they could afford to. Then look for people to buy it.
I reckon a large part of GM’s problem was that they had the money to get away with all sorts of things; we saw a lot of that in the sixties. GM did things because they could; that was reason enough. Until that money guy moved into the Big Boss Man’s chair, and replaced all the Homo Fabricatus in management with H. Economicus. They went from one extreme to the other. You need balance. Tension, not dominance.
Oh, the car? Impractical by today’s standards, but it wasn’t built for today. A DS? I’ll defer to you Americans on this. But those brakes…..
The point on the flat floor and six-passenger arrangement being a bit out of place for a personal luxury car is generally true. That said, a friend’s mom had a ’67, and being one of five students ferried in a carpool on her Wednesdays was a lot nicer that way!
Re-reading all these comments has been interesting. If I can give the Toronado credit for me learning about floatplane tugs and the Abilene Paradox, I’d say the car was a success, even if it took 50+ years and was also a Deadly Sin.
Didn’t the Jensen have a leaf sprung rear axle as well?
And period Maseratis.
Man Niedermeyer, You sure have it out for GM.
Ford, Chrysler, Toyota – all of them have done things that at the time seemed innovative.
Good lord, give GM a break – or at least pick on all of them.
Ed was so proud of it, his baby-blue Toro. “It’s got front wheel drive and handles great in the rain. Want to go for a ride?” Being seventeen and stupid, I said “yes”. I got the middle seat, though, lack of seniority.
It was absolutely pouring when we got in and he headed for the Interstate. We were flying when he said “watch this” and headed for the off ramp. Bet your ass I watched. My life flash before my eyes.
There go the brakes, up on the water hydroplaning with no steering, just pushing. We’re going straight over the high side and into space. There goes the lane, there goes the shoulder, there goes the ditch, here comes the embankment.
When we stopped we were on our side in the ditch. The wipers were trying to clear the mud and turf off the windshield, Steve had ditch-water splashing in his window, and Ed’s window (the one we would soon climb out of) had raindrops the size of your thumb fighting to get in. What a mess.
Ed says “we’re stuck. Don’t worry, this car has front-wheel drive, I’ll just back out”. Right. Rock the car a little. A little more. Then the desperate floor-it-in-reverse trick. Nope. Time to call the hook.
Looking thru the fence at the impound lot (I guess the cops got there before the hook) we could see the right wheel was all the way in the back of the wheel-well. We thought there must have been some sub-frame that twisted, even flat out in reverse nothing sounded broken.
Anyway, I learned something about FWD cars that night: don’t get in them if the driver’s drunk!
Where did the extra weight come from? I’d think losing the drive shaft and the stronger rear suspension/structure that RWD needs would reduce weight.
The C pillar would look better if the trunk didn’t droop so low.
GM should be praised for “Daring to be Different” not vilified. It’s too easy to criticize decisions made in the past when we’re in the future.
I’ll add some bits of sympathy for the car:
I always thought the ’66 Toro was a stab at a really distinct Halo Car for Oldsmobile (despite sharing the platform). In light of geeber’s comment (way up there, early) observing the Division’s market improvement post-’66, maybe it can even be considered a success in those terms?
The Glorious Failures club isn’t all bad either – it’s not like the Cord 810 saved Auburn. The Toro’s sheer flanks remind me of what FoMoCo was trying to do with the Mark II, a masterpiece that merely killed the Continental Division. Avanti lived only after Studebaker died. Etc.
Feel better now, Toro?