The question posted under the title is of course easy to answer: Yes. The question remains though: Why did Oldsmobile chose a gigantic personal luxury coupe to re-introduce FWD for American cars? Most of the inherent advantages of FWD, such as better space utilization, were utterly wasted here. Yes, there’s no central tunnel, but who cares in a personal luxury coupe that typically had four bucket seats and a big console?
Meanwhile, Oldsmobile, GM “advanced technology division”, used utterly obsolete and downright dangerous drum brakes on the Toronado. FWD, with its inherent front weight bias, utterly overpowered drum brakes already very marginal on American RWD cars. That alone was a Deadly Sin, although I think the whole exercise was, except perhaps for the Toro’s flamboyant if impractical styling. But its body could just as easily have sat on the Riviera’s RWD chassis. If Oldsmobile had wanted to be truly advanced, they would have used the new FWD Unitary Power Package (“UPP”) in an equally advanced body concept, like a mini van or such.
Let’s not forget that the Toronado was a pretty significant sales dud, under-performing its projections. It wasn’t until GM’s X-cars in 1980 that a truly relevant GM FWD package was created.
There’s the key words: “To those who hoped that the Toronado would be a departure in American car design, the car must be a disappointment.” True that. Flat floors in an expensive luxury coupe; what a great benefit. And the longest production post-war hood up that time, most of it wasted space. Must have been a fun car to park, especially with the terrible rear visibility. Ah, but it looks so awesome!
The brakes were thoroughly and rightfully panned. Feeble de-acceleration, poor control, rapid fade. An unmitigated flaw. And it’s not like disc brakes hadn’t been invented yet.
Yes, it worked well enough, for what it was, and had some inherent FWD advantages. But for the application, those really didn’t amount to much. The real advantages of FWD were largely wasted on the Toronado.
Related reading:
CC 1966 Olds Toronado: Let’s Try A Different Position – GM’s DS #16 PN
CC 1966 Olds Toronado: Personal Luxury, Oldsmobile Style JPCavanaugh
Vintage Road Test Review of the 1966 Toronado GN
Vintage Car and Driver Review of the 1966 Toronado GN
The Great 28, Car #4: 1966 Toronado Aaron65
Most of what I could say about the Toronado has been said before (and very well here).
One new thing I noticed is the steering wheel design. It sure looks like the designer was trying to evoke an airplane control yoke!
Or a drag racing “butterfly” steering…control. Yet it’s a real, usable-on-the-road, full circle steering wheel. I’d say Tesla’s design team should take notes if I wasn’t 100% sure the idea to put an actual yoke on a road car came down from Elon himself on a whim of iron.
I always thought the “built-in” rubber driver floor mat was odd. IIRC it had chrome trim all the way around it (you can see it in the lead photo). Maybe it was a panel that came out to access something mechanical? Maybe someone here will know. If it was just cosmetic it seems like an odd choice, unless they intended it to contribute to the “cockpit” feeling for the driver.
No access. I’ve seen the bare steel floor panels.
Like Paul said there was no access panel. It looks like the reproduction carpets for Toronados just have a small sized heal pad like most other cars. Ford did something somewhat similar to with some of it’s sporty cars. Here is a 1971 Mustang carpet with the built in large inserts:
I’m thinking the special driver’s floor was to perhaps give the car’s interior a European feel. most of the European cars of the time, had rubber floor mats in the flat areas, and carpeting over the hump.
I own a 1962 Tatra T2-603. It has flat floors. The carpets are a special ribbed fabric flooring, except the entire driver’s area is a matching rubber panel. I had a 1956 Chrysler Imperial sedan that was assembled by Facel Metallon of Paris, it had sewn rubber inserts for all 4 flat areas, and actual mouton sheepskin carpets on the trans hump and drive shaft hump.
That was out of the Eldorado playbook.
“Full size luxury”
1966 Oldsmobile Toronado: Base MSRP $4,812, inflation adjusted: $40,735
Wheelbase 119.0″ Track 63.5″ F, 63.0″ R, Overall Length: 211.0″
“Compact truck”
2022 Ford Maverick XL FWD: Base MSRP $21,490
Wheelbase 121.1″ Track 63.4″ F, 62.8″ R, Overall Length: 199.7″
I’m not a Ford fanboi by any means, but the new Maverick is a much more useable package than the ’66 Toronado, at about half the price (adjusted) and still shorter in overall length by about a foot. In 1966, cars less than 200 inches in overall length were generally not considered full-size, but rather compact or midsize at most.
Maverick gets 4x the city MPG, and is faster 0-60mph.
The axle-to-axle footprint is remarkably similar.
As a middle schooler at the time, I was wowed by the Toronado and highly influenced by the breathless press it generated. (I hadn’t yet discovered Road & Track, only Motor Trend among the buff books.) It’s still a styling sensation in my opinion.
But you are quite right Paul about the car’s deadly sin status, particularly in regard to the drum brakes on all 4 wheels (and disks weren’t even optional). Agreed that using fwd on a huge personal luxury car was a wasted opportunity. Of course at that time, GM had the bucks to spend extravagantly.
Here’s a ’66 I caught a few years back at the independent repair shop I patronize near my home.
I am glad that my 1966 Ambassador convertible had front disk brakes and dual brake master cylinders.
I believe front disc brakes were optional, but I don’t think it was an accident that the magazines tested models with drum brakes. It was the road map for Apple marketing: leave a crucial feature out of the launch editions, so the early adopters will have to buy two.
Front discs were not offered as an option until the 1967 model year. Oldsmobile made front discs standard on the Toronado for the 1970 model year.
The success of the Thunderbird, which was a FORD, and not a Lincoln, bothered the egos at the top of the bureaucracy at GM – it seems. The very idea that Ford could build a popular car that showed up at exclusive country club parking lots right next to the finest luxury cars, was a revelation.
Something had to be done, and no costs were spared. GM was royalty and their fiefdom was under threat by Dearborn. The Toronado is their answer to the Thunderbird. The market GM was shooting for was the Thunderbird market.
It failed because of the Mustang.
While GM planned their FWD luxury cars, the market shifted away from personal luxury cars to personal small sporty cars. Within a year, not only was GM filling dealer lots with unsold personal luxury cars, so was Ford. Thunderbird sales dropped because of Mustang as well. A new generation of driving excitement replaced luxury with sports. The target market for the personal luxury car shifted towards muscle cars. Until 1974, what mattered wasn’t fine luxury, but engine size.
After 1974, the muscle era died and personal luxury cars boomed once again.
These may have been goofy, but UPP was great for a certain motorhome.
I was thinking the same thing when I read “if Oldsmobile had wanted to be truly advanced, they would have used the new FWD UPP in an equally advanced body concept, like a mini van or such.” Well it wasn’t mini, but it was advanced and took full advantage of the low, flat floor that FWD allows. It also wasn’t an Oldsmobile, but it had the same Olds engine as the Toro. I’m even more intrigued by the little-remembered GMC Transmode, the usually windowless cargo or conversion version of the Motorhome. The FWD low floor would be helpful for commercial use too (as with the Ram Promaster and such), and it would also be fun to customize it for recreational use.
Years ago, I corresponded with Carl Thelin, a former General Motors engineer who went on to become an expert witness at court trials involving automotive safety.
In 1955, Carl began his career with the Structure and Suspension (S&S chassis design) section of the engineering staff at the GM Tech Center in Warren Michigan. He was promoted and eventually led a staff of 30 designers who were deeply involved in engineering theXP-784 project, which eventually be-came the Oldsmobile Toronado.
Carl wrote, “The Tornado was the last of the really gutsy moves by GM. I was outraged by being asked to design that thing. Just before that, we (The Engineering Staff) had completed two nicer front drive concepts. One had a 1.5 liter four cylinder mounted crosswise. The other used the Oldsmobile aluminum V8, mounted crosswise in a body almost the exact size of the 1980 Chevy Citation. We did this in 1960! If GM had approved that car then, they would lead the world today. tsk tsk.”
I recall reading in a publication(I have long forgotten the name) that Old’s Chief engineer John Betz really wanted the Toronado to be a smaller sportier car, but the GM management insisted on a larger vehicle. Betz reportedly called the Toro the equivalent of a 500 lb. parakeet or something to that effect.
Supposedly GM design chief Bill Mitchell also wanted a smaller Toronado (one based on the A-body). But Mitchell and Beltz were overruled by GM’s top management. They demanded that the car share a body with the Buick Riviera and upcoming Cadillac Eldorado.
I know these are ridiculous cars, and the drum brakes are terrible, but i adore the styling of these. Every angle, plus the drum speedometer just exist because they can. I want a 66 and fit it with disc brakes. Just need room to park the thing!
I’ve driven cars with NO brakes that didn’t look anything like as marvellous !
I have trouble understanding how this could get such awful fuel mileage before emissions? I would have figured 14 to 16 mpg. The only vehicles I have owned that were in that range were a ’79 Wagoneer with a 360, which averaged 10 to 11, and a ’75 IH 1 ton 4×4 dually that got 8 to 9. Just seems odd to me.
I would imagine that the testers drove this car hard. While on the highway, for example, the testers most likely drove at speeds well over 55-60 mph.
Nothing terribly odd: it was a very heavy car with a very big engine, using technology (carburetor and breaker points) that began deteriorating the instant the ignition switch was touched, and with many adjustables (timing, carburetion) that usually weren’t carefully set exactly where they were supposed to be. It was run on dirty fuel and driven by leadfooted drivers.
jon, owners responding to the PM survey (see below) did a little bit better; 11.3 City, 14.6 highway, 13.0 overall–which is about what I remember my mother’s 429 Thunderbird (1969) getting pre-smog…
Just to add my 2 cents, and very much in agreement with everyone else’s responses, the Toronado was high-powered and heavy. It was not designed for good fuel economy, and buyers of this class of car placed little, if any, importance on gas mileage.
It was the oil shock of 1973 that suddenly made everyone aware of fuel economy, not just people who bought small, lightweight cars.
Argument could be made that cars like the Toronado and Eldorado gave premium connotations to the FWD layout a more practically packaged vehicle wouldn’t have. The Toro may not have lit up the sales charts but there’s a difference between a car that flops because its terrible and a car that flops because it’s too expensive or impractical for average consumers. To those consumers the early Toro was always a cool car noteworthy for its FWD, it may not have sold and its brakes may have sucked but it never accrued a bad reputation. It got the word out that FWD = high engineering and as a marketing exercise the model kind of worked out as a loss leader, GM certainly pitched FWD as that when they transitioned most of their cars to it in the 80s, but those obviously blew the notion with their poor engineering and lookalike sheer look styling.
Tesla’s first mode was a premium 2 seater sports car, followed by a premium full size sedan. Those did the true heavy lifting for the EV concept’s acceptance in the same way the Eldo and Toro did for FWD.
It wasn’t just GM’s ’80s front-drivers that hurt FWD’s rep. In the ’70s, FWD was associated with the Toro, Eldo, Citroen DS/SM/CX, Audi, and Saab. Also some less expensive cars like the Honda Accord and VW Rabbit, but those were regarded as having superior space efficiency and winter traction due to FWD. But by 1985, FWD made people think of Citations, Escorts, Omnis, Horizons, and other cheapo cars, many of questionable quality. By the mid-90s there was a serious backlash to FWD forming amongst buyers, with some brands (including Cadillac) reverting to RWD for most of their lineup.
I agree. Ultimately because of how long it took for FWD to make its way from large personal luxury coupes to the mainstream lines (14-20 years!) the novelty of it even being in those cars probably was done – did people buy a 79 Riviera specifically because it moved to FWD? I kinda doubt it – GM being GM certainly believed their engineering heritage in the Toronado sold the X bodies and other transverse front drivers to follow, but it was most likely the Rabbit and Accord that actual buyers of Citations and Cieras thought of, and with the premium cars moving heavy towards performance dynamics in the European sense a Toronado, or Eldorado, or Seville for that matter didn’t really fit the class. GM I believe wanted FWD’s acceptance to trickle down from the luxury coupes but in reality it was forced to trickle up, and didn’t work do well with discerning premium buyers, especially when the E bodies downsized and moved from the UPP to the transverse layout.
I still remember how distinctive these were at the time–wow!
Here’s first-year Popular Mechanics owners’ report, FWIW:
Thank you for posting this!
It is amusing how people like to repeat the magazine complaints of “poor brakes”. Which under maximum conditions was probably true.
But not one owner, the people that actually bought and drove the cars every day,
mentions the brakes are below average or problematic in the survey.
Yes, I owned a ’67 for about 10 years. From ’77-’87.
Sorry folks, It wasn’t that different from my disc braked ’73 Lemans or my ’77 Ford F-100, but I also wasn’t driving down Pikes Peak.
Brakes, schmakes.
You will look so COOL as you brake-fade into that tree/pole/school bus.
Oldsmobile belatedly added the vented front disc brakes for the 1967 model year and on as optional extra cost feature.
Oldsmobile also added a pressure-limiting brake proportioning valve as standard equipment to the 1967 models.
..and they also initially left them off the x-cars in 1979 or thereabouts, with even worse results. You’d think they would have learned. . .
Who’d think they’d’ve learnt? We’re talking about General Motors here, aren’t we?
Still funny!
I’m surprised that the car is noted as handling so well. (“This is among the best handling big cars we’ve ever driven.”). That is a real accomplishment. And I love the dash. But it really needs a split bench seat at a minimum, in addition to better brakes.
It occurred to me that not that long in the past in 1966 – about 18 years prior – most RWD American cars had flat floors too. Then rooflines started plunging, and floors were lowered to compensate thus forcing the driveshaft tunnel to intrude. Was there any backlash to the loss of a flat floor in the 1950s? I know the new low-profile rooflines were criticized for difficult entry and not leaving room to wear a hat (back when hats were much more commonly worn than they are now), but not specifically for making the center passenger(s) straddle a driveline with their legs.
The transmission still intruded in the front footwell. In the early-mid 30’s, floors were flat, but the gear shift was still on the floor, and the bodies weren’t wide enough for 3 in front anyway.
The transmission still intruded in the front footwell. In the early-mid 30’s, floors were flat, but the gear shift was still on the floor, and the bodies weren’t wide enough for 3 in front anyway.
Last week, I inquired about a maroon ’66 on Facebook Marketplace outside of Chicago…too late. It was already sold. 🙁
Regardless of their faults, I love these things. My criteria for wanting to buy an old car, however, are few: 1. Does it look cool (or quirky)? 2. Can it keep up with traffic? 3. Can I afford it? Repeat…
Regardless of their faults, I love these things.
That sums up my thoughts. I don’t love old cars for their practicality, their efficiency or their logic. They are imperfect in so many ways, but also so appealing in ways modern cars can never be.
There was a maroon ’66 Toronado at an Apartment building by the corner store where I bought candy as a kid. That car left an impression on me. It was and is one of the coolest looking cars of it’s time and I’d gladly own one. That said, a disc brake upgrade would be first on the agenda!
I suspect they believed a family sedan buyer would be too conservative to try FWD–or wouldn’t pay extra for it, and they couldn’t recoup their investment on a smaller coupe, which people would expect to be lower priced.
From the drawing, it doesn’t look like longitudinal FWD improves fore-and-aft room that much, but they could have made a large sedan with true 3 abreast seating. Our ’68 Electra had an enormous, flat bench seat, but the springs in the middle were still compromised by the tunnel, as was the foot space. Buyers who seated 5-6 often could just get a 3 row wagon.
The answer would have been a Toronado wagon. Didn’t one get mocked up from a ’66 Safari or Bonneville?
If GM brass was bothered by the T-Bird’s success and the Toronado was their response, why didn’t they consider T-Bird brakes?
Front disc brakes were standard on the prior year 1965 Thunderbird (though not so on the ’64). I guess the ’66 T-Bird could stop; if that mattered to a potential buyer the Ford store could’ve alleviated the potential Olds customer’s concern.
And yet every long time Toronado owner I’ve ever talked to loves them. Absolutely loves them.
It is quite true that FWD in a package like the Toronado seems silly in hindsight, but I think those at the time can be forgiven for seeing it as a good idea.
The FWD package (in the US at least) had last been seen in the Cord, an expensive and highly influential car. I can understand the view that a new FWD package was an important innovation and such an innovation belongs at the high end of the market rather than at the low end.
The European experience was something altogether different at that time – efficiency and fuel mileage were prized there because buyers were less affluent and were in environments that taxed fuel and/or power, not to mention the higher density living in metropolitan areas where the affluent lived. GM invested a ton of engineering $ into the compact Corvair, that got trounced in sales by the plug-ordinary Falcon (which was surely way more profitable). Small = cheap ruled the US market in the early 60s. The world (and the US market) would be very different in another decade, but I don’t think I can fault the decision makers at GM for making the decision they did on this car at the time those decisions were made.
You are the first person to mention Cord. I remember when these came out, all the conversation was about how it was a modern day Cord. I read that Bill Mitchell wanted the front grille to be Cord like. This car was a style leader and the side crease that bulges up over the wheels is still used today. It was a monument to GM’s technical ability as well. I just picked up a box of Hot Rod magazines from the sixties, and the issue where they test this thing is pretty glowing. And they mention the Cord
Although there were no doubt better function configurations for the FWD packaged-power unit, the mid-’60’s market didn’t seem primed to accept such in significant numbers. The focus was on personal luxury coupes and pony cars. Station wagons were still the acceptable norm for family utility. When the overall size of vehicles was reduced in the 1980’s, the minivan made much more sense and held far more appeal. Everything in its time.
The ’67 Toronado I had drove very well and the brakes were very affective. Possibly disk brakes would have been an improvement but for normal driving well-adjusted drums did just fine. The striking design is what sold these Toronado and when they watered it down, it just became another Oldsmobile.
European and domestic markets were very different in cost and outlook then.
My dad and his two brothers bought what were probably 3 of the very first Toronados in the Toledo area. I got a model in the same color as our car was, an awful, IMHO, “Champagne Mist Poly”. I liked the paint on the model better than on the real car. Both my uncles had theirs in “Trumpet Gold Poly” and surprisingly, I actually liked it. Only time I ever liked gold on a car. The brakes were my dad’s main complaint about it, my uncle had a very heavy foot and he almost went into a pond in Indiana someplace when he was out in the sticks flying down a road that dead ended into another one. He slid through the intersection and his front wheels ended up about 2 feet from the water. He was able to get backed up and onto the road again without help. My aunt wanted to get rid of the car ASAP after that scare, but they all kept them until 1968 or 69. My dad replaced the Toro with a ’68 Imperial, which stopped a lot better and even with a cam in the 440, got better mileage than the Toro did. The Toro looked good though. My one uncle replaced the Toro with a ’69 Olds 98 in gold, and my other uncle ended up with his last car, a 1970 Sedan De Ville in a preview to the future boring ass grey.
great story. You’re being too hard on that color, my dad had a ’68 Pontiac pretty much the same. What I find interesting is Olds had 2 other very similar colors that year in beige and almond. Overall a very nice pallet was available.
Looking over the technical specs, what’s surprising is how slow the Toronado was, even for a big heavy car. 10 sec to 60? A 1/4 mile in 17.8 at 83mph? According to a couple of online calculators, those 1/4 mile figures indicate that the Toronado was making somewhere between 175 and 225hp, despite the 385hp rating, which we all know was the marketing department’s spin on a gross hp number.
But damn if you didn’t look good driving the thing!
I wouldn’t necessarily say the engine is overrated(beyond the old gross rating system), 60s era bias ply tires driven by the front wheels in a heavy softly sprung car isn’t a great recipe for traction from a dig, and I imagine the UPP probably accounts for some extra driveline losses over a conventional layout as well.
385hp was probably optimistic, even for a gross rating, but 225hp net sounds about right for the trap speed. The less than optimal traction should mostly affect the ET.
For comparison, based on my half-assed internet research, it looks like the 94-6 Cadillac Fleetwoods (rated at 260hp net and having a curb weight of a couple hundred pounds less) had 1/4 mile times in the 16s with trap speeds of 85-90.
I only owned one Toronado, it was a 1968 [or possibly a 1969, I can’t be sure of my memory.]
But what a Toronado it was! A very big — wait — big isn’t the right word to describe this vehicle, it was HUGE! Officially it was called the Toronado Jetway 707 limousine, an 8 door, raised roof, triple axle, station wagon, built by American Quality Coach, a company founded by the 2 men who were the namesakes of the Cotner-Bevington coachbuilding Co.
When these vehicles were new, a limo company in northern Virginia bought 6 to 8 of these big limousines, after landing a big exclusive contract with Dulles International Airport in Virginia, for airport limo service.
As a serious collector of older limousines of all types, I knew the president of Executive Limousine in northern Virginia. About 1975 he was severely injured in a motorcycle accident, and would never drive a car again. A few years later, having closed the company because his Dulles contract was not renewed, he decided to sell off a few limousines he owned. I bought 2 cars from him; a 1955 Chrysler Imperial C-70 limousine, an ex White House limo, and the Toronado Jetway 707. I paid $100 for the Imperial, and $300 for the Toronado.
The former owner [I can’t remember his name] told me the Toronado 707 he sold me had been used in the movie “All the president’s men”. That makes sense, as the limo was running and licensed, and in the Washington DC area. But I have no proof of the movie role.
My huge Toronado was something like 29 feet long, and that was one of the reasons I sold it. Another reason I sold it was that it had well over 300,000 miles and needed another set of front axles, a very costly repair. The air suspension for the dual rear axles had been replaced with leaf springs, the conversion having not been done well. It bounced over even the smallest road issues, and driving it for an hour left me tired.
The former owner said he sued AQC over the mechanical problems all his Toronado limos had, claiming it was his suit that would put them into bankruptcy. He said they would overheat no matter what they tried, especially if the A/C units [4] were in use when the outside air was in the 90s. The front axle constant velocity joints [sealed units, not rebuildable by repair shops] tended to last not more than 50,000 miles. Transmissions never seemed to make it to 100,000 miles. Not a good thing if you are running an airport limo service involving 100 mile round trips [DC to Dulles], 16 hours a day.
He offered me several additional non-running Jetway 707 Toronados as part of the deal, but I had no place to store them. As it was, my parents were not happy with the 2 new additions to my collection, and eventually I had to find another storage place. Later on after I sold my Jetway 707, the guy who bought it went to Virginia looking for the other examples, but he said the storage lot was now filled with construction equipment, and he was told the old airport limos had been sent to Alexandria Scrap.