(first posted 4/10/2018) Two years after it was first introduced, the Oldsmobile Toronado remained a paradox. Was it an advanced front-wheel-drive flagship illuminating a new direction for high-end cars? Or was it nothing more than an upper-echelon Personal Luxury car replete with all the style, comfort, gizmos and trick features needed for success in the style-conscious segment? Could it be both? Or neither? Car and Driver took a test drive to find out in April 1968.
Car and Driver’s perspective at the end of the test was that the Toronado didn’t gain any meaningful advantages from front-wheel-drive. Not that the car was flawed (other than the brakes), but it was not clearly superior to rear-wheel-drive Personal Luxury rivals. And since Oldsmobile did not even promote the Toronado as being uniquely different and better than conventionally engineered competitors, front-wheel drive gave no added bragging rights.
So the Toronado was left to rely on nothing more than its looks and luxury trappings to succeed, and it wasn’t a superstar in that regard. At $7,023 ($51,280 adjusted) as tested, this particular Toronado veered into Cadillac Eldorado pricing territory, but without the added cachet of the Wreath and Crest.
And when it came to sales, the 1968 Toronado was no standout either:
| Ford Thunderbird | 64,931 |
| Buick Riviera | 49,284 |
| Pontiac Grand Prix | 31,711 |
| Oldsmobile Toronado | 26,454 |
| Cadillac Eldorado | 24,528 |
Yes, the Olds beat the Cadillac by 1,926 units, but otherwise trailed all other segment players, including the faltering Pontiac Grand Prix. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the extra effort required to deliver a front-wheel-drive flagship, and vindication of Car and Driver’s assessment.
(At the risk of sounding like a broken record….)
This “Car & Driver” road test is another reason why C&D was the “go to” car magazine in first my Father’s house and later my house for over 40 years.
Dad subscribed to many car mags; but C&D was read first every month and relied on the most.
Can you imagine “Motor Trend” publishing such a brutally honest report on any car during this time period?
I can’t imagine “Car & Driver” publishing such a brutally honest report today.
I used to love reading C/D back in the 80s and early 90s for the fun and the weirdness – road trips to Baja California and top speed tests on police cars, for example – and their literary style. Not now. Their political stance, abandonment of any weirdness/fun and their obvious fawning of whomever bought the most ad space that month has made me a non-reader
Yup! One of the reasons I have ended my over 40 year subscription to this once-great car magazine.
Read the magazine’s recent write-up of its long-term test of a Nissan Titan pickup. It was quite harsh.
Having driven a new Titan I can certainly understand the harshness.
(But alert readers here prolly have noted my opinion of full sized pick up trucks and the SUV derivatives……)
It’s not so much how it drove, but all of the failures. It reads like a long-term test back in the 70s or 80s. Remarkable. Well, sad, actually.
It was about how it drove, along with the frequent times it was laid up for repairs. The entire gist of the LT report was that the Titan offered plenty of opportunities to disappoint on a good day when nothing mechanical was going wrong. They went so far as to say the best part of the entire truck was the two front seats.
Glad my first year (2004) first gen Titan wasn’t the nightmare this first year second gen C/D got stuck with. Really no way to sugar coat their experience with all these major failures.
A far cry from the long term tester experience C/D had with their 2004 Titan.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2004-nissan-titan-se-crew-cab-4×4-long-term-road-test
Nissan really screwed the pooch on the Titan this time. Mine has been reliable, only repair was a warranty radio/cd player replacement and several recalls.
In a typical CC fashion, today I got a call from the dealership I bought it from 14 years ago asking if I was interested in “trading up”. Pass.
While in this time period i agree with you in regards to car and driver and this article was to the point and honest, i have to say that after the 70’s car and driver and motor trend became basically spokespersons for imported cars and to them not any domestic vehicle was worth thire time. it got to a place where i basically just bought it for the pictures. reading these mags i knew when a domestic vehicle was in a comparison with imports………..it would always and i mean always lose. that said i have a special place for the toro as my mom had one and i loved the flat floor,the rolling speedometer it was a car that stood apart from all others. great car!!!
eddie: I always consider “Car & Driver” a fine balance between the pro-European mindset of “Road & Track” and the “All American” view point of “Motor Trend”.
C&D was justifiably (again, #IMO) harsh on cars with inadequate brakes or extremely sloppy suspensions. As was I.
In the era that the toro was………..most cars were large and long, we were raised to learn to handle these big machines. they were adequate for the times and drivers were used to “sloppy suspensions ans so so brakes. we adjusted our driving habits to the vehicles we drove(not a talent too many people have nowadays) i did’nt mind the honesty(i welcomed it) what i minded was that in the era’s i spoke of i felt it unfair to read a magazine that slammed a vehicle for not handling (or braking) like a 3 series. a big caddy was not meant for or built for lap times at nuburgring and should not be slammed because it’s not. my point is that i felt they were biased towards cars made for the driving enthusiast as opposed to just a driver. not everyone wants to take a 25 mile an hour curve at 75.(i do btw).
Eddie, your comment about these cars not measuring up to a sports car when flogged in these type of tests reminds me of this editor’s opinion of “road tests” from the 74 Consumer Guide New Car issue.
I remember C&D continually introducing new American cars and waving the flag. “This time will be different!”
History says those 70s German and Japanese cars actually were better than their domestic competitors. Truth can hurt.
I heard of reports stating that MT was sponsored by GM bak in those days?.
I’m curious about the ad for the Indian Scout motorcycle. Which of the many Indian revivals was this, and which established manufacturer’s parts were used to build this particular bike?
This was by Floyd Clymer himself. He was the importer for the Munch, and he decided that an alternate version using the venerable Indian 45 inch engine might be a good idea. It’s a Munch motorcycle with that engine installed, built in Germany. Very expensive. I wonder how many were actually ever made. They must be incredibly rare now.
I wonder what the net HP rating would be for the “400 gross hp” engine.
Some casual car fans assume all cars “lost hundreds of HP” in 1972 when SAE switched to more realistic net ratings, aka “as installed’.
1972 cars did lose some power as compression rations were lowered that year.
This topic was covered here at Curbside Classic: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/engines/how-many-real-horsepower-did-the-1971-426-hemi-really-make-a-look-at-the-gross-vs-net-hp-games/
In 1971 the most powerful Olds 455 was rated 350hp gross and 275hp net. The non high performance 455 was rated 320hp gross and 225hp net. I would estimate the 455 in the 68 Toronado would be around 300hp to 320hp net.
250hp maybe?
What an ugly beak!
That 1968-69 front ruined the car for me.
Agreed. I think I get what the designers were going for, but it came off half-baked.
What an ugly overwrought car, period!
did you see the 1968 GP? the 1969 could not come too soon.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cohort-outtake-1968-pontiac-grand-prix-big-but-not-quite-so-grand-anymore/
C&D surprised to find no instruments but a speedo and a gas gauge? In a GM car in the 60s? Imagine the surprise.
Was the Toronado GM’s final deep bow for technical innovation? Well there was the Vega, so let’s go with successful technical innovation. Like the Y body cars of the early 60s it seems that the goal was do build it and get it into showrooms, at which point everyone moved on. This car and the Eldorado were FWD cars through the 70s only because the engineering had been done. Except for the brakes, apparently.
I don’t mean to denigrate the job Oldsmobile did in designing this FWD setup – it may be the most durable we have yet seen. But – – – why?
#IIRC the first Toronado had needles and number gauges on it’s dashboard?
This might be what C&D was making reference to.
The brakes on the early Toronados really were scary; almost as fade prone as a car from the 1940’s.
I was the “caretaker” of a first year Toronado for about 6 months; the car’s brakes developed noticeable fade during intense stop and go, 5 pm rush hour traffic on Interstate 10. I can only imagine what it would had been like in hills or mountain driving.
But —why? Because they could is my guess. With the Cord of the 30’s clearly on the minds of the stylists, and the Cord being front wheel drive, I think that there was supposed to be an audience of techno geeks who were just amazed and had to have one. It didn’t work out so well. I think that they were aiming for a Saab crowd of the 1970’s and 80’s, but they execution of the car and the decade that they built it in were both off the mark.
^This. Seems like Oldsmobile wanted to establish themselves as the engineering and innovation division and decided to go with a niche car reminiscent of an updated Cord 812 to prove it. It was a valiant effort but sure wasn’t going anywhere other than a pricey specialty car since GM keeps costs down by sharing platforms, and using FWD for anything other than halo vehicles like the Toronado and Eldorado (and eventually Riviera) simply wouldn’t have worked (unless all five divisions were FWD, which eventually occurred but decades later). The problem was, at the time, there was just no real advantage to FWD (aside from a flat passenger floor) on the barges which were Oldsmobile’s entire line-up back in the sixties.
Not to mention the ineffective braking issue. That’s really scary and I wonder how many early Toronados were involved in brake-related accidents that didn’t get much press because the cars were so large, fatalities and serious injury were generally avoided.
So, it ended up just being a marketing ploy which I can’t imagine recovered a lot of the R&D cost involved in creating the Unified Power Package (UPP), which is what the Toronado’s engine/transmission assembly was known as.
I doubt that many Toronados were involved in braking-related accidents given who bought them. The Toronado was a fairly expensive car for that time, and Oldsmobile itself had a conservative image.
I seriously doubt that many males under the age of 25 bought a brand-new Toronado. If they were at the Oldsmobile dealer, they were looking at a 442.
Olds WAS the innovation division for GM.
http://www.joesherlock.com/nwsltr19.html
Oldsmobile used to be GM’s innovation brand: in the 1920s, Oldsmobile was the first car to use chrome-plated trim instead of nickel. In 1938, the first fully automatic transmission was introduced on an Olds. The first high compression overhead valve V-8 was to be found in a 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88, available in all models, including Oldsmobile’s new pillarless hardtop coupe. In 1966, Olds introduced the radical, front-wheel-drive Toronado. In 1974, Oldsmobile was the first U.S. manufacturer to offer air bags as an option.
So having tested the market thoroughly, GM determined there wasn’t that big of a market for a two-and-a-half-ton Saab? Gotcha.
Why?
So they could build those cool RVs in the ’70s. 😉
I assume that actually, GM saw that other companies were having success with FWD cars and simply had to have one too, whether or not it made any sense.
Ate up with Motor has a good piece that indirectly addresses this question to some extent. My guess is GM fiddled with the UPP concept in the ’50s thinking in terms of perhaps leading the standard car market with something novel, and when longer, lower, wider came along, the UPP had the potential to help with interior room when Hudson’s “Step Down” suddenly became de rigueur in de troit.
Oldsmobile seriously considered the UPP for the generally novel GM Y bodies, related to the alphabetically close and novel Z body Corvair.
(I didn’t realize until now that GM started their serious move into smaller cars at the back of the alphabet, while the big cars had the front. The conventional X body came next in ’62).
A FWD F-85 would have played to both the novelty of the Y bodies, and have played to the strengths of space saving in a small car. The potential price point of such a compact seemed to scare Oldsmobile, and the UPP ended up in in high margin and halo type vehicle where the money would either be great, or invested in halo marketing dollars where profit was secondary.
Considering the later popularity of the F-85 Cutlass, it was probably fortunate it went with conventional engineering. The Toro, whatever it’s weaknesses, did seem to wake up the rather staid Oldsmobile of the early ’60s, and the halo effect may have been a part of the foundation of the popularity of the Cutlass, the definition of serendipity, perhaps.
A good read and a kinder touch on the Toronado…..
https://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/oldsmobile-toronado-1966-1970/
The Toronado did seem to re-energize Oldsmobile and help the division regain its focus. The division had been adrift in the early 1960s.
Is it just me, or does that full-frontal shot of the ’66 Toronado look like it could have been the inspiration for the 1969 and later fuselage Imperial?
I owned a ’69. Bought it in ’75 cheap (gas crunch destroyed the value of these cars). Called it “snowplow,” since it was used as the ski bus. Slap snow tires on this car, and it was unstoppable. Drove nicely (in a straight line), got horrible fuel mileage, comfy, but not terribly roomy considering it’s exterior dimensions.
re: sales. Not on that chart was the 7700 sales of the ’68 Lincoln Mark III in their shortened ’68 production year (April-August of ’68). Come ’69, the Grand Prix and the Mark III would re-arrange the personal luxury car market, if only briefly. Interesting that, through all the changes, the T-Bird was still the car to beat.
I wonder why the road test didn’t emphasize the bad weather capabilities of the car. Except for the brakes, it really would have been a great mountain car. In limousine form for ski resorts:
I was quietly enjoying the road test until the final page, when I got completely sidetracked by the Floyd Clymer ad.
For those who don’t know about this guy, he was essentially the Malcom Bricklin of the motorcycle world in the 1950’s and 60’s. First off, he spent years trying to resurrect Indian after they died in 1953, and the importer quit shipping over rebadged Royal Enfields between 1954 and 1960. All he really succeeded in doing to make a mess of who owned the rights to the Indian name, a mess that didn’t get cleared up until 1996, which lead to the Gilroy-built Indians of 1997-2004. Not shown in the ad was his attempt at the Indian 500, which was nothing more than a rebadged Velocette, another British marque that was in its last gasps. That was probably about six months after this article reached the newsstand.
Of the bikes shown, you probably know of the bottom one: The Munch Mammoth, built by Friedl Munch in Switzerland and powered by the NSU 1200 car engine. The bike came out about a year before Honda introduced the CB750K0. $4000.00 for a motorcycle in 1967/68, and that crazy looking back wheel is because a standard spoke wheel folded up under acceleration.
The top bike is Clymer’s last try to build a “real” (V-twin) Indian. Basically, he stuffed a 1948 Indian Scout flathead engines in a Munch frame, added electric start, and conveniently ignored the fact that he actually didn’t have the legal rights to the Indian name. They’re rare. Very rare. I’ve yet to see one in the metal, and this is the first time I’ve seen a picture of one in about twenty years.
Clymer died in January 1970. He’s a legend in American motorcycling, having been around since post-WWI. He was also a person with whom you really didn’t want to invest money. Oh yeah, almost forgot, Clymer repair manuals? Same guy.
I remember his name from a couple of books he wrote in the 60s on antique cars. I think I still have them.
He was an extremely energetic automotive publications entrepreneur, dominating the field especially on automotive history. “These Wonderful of Automobiles” and “Treasury of Early American Automobiles” were standards, and his “Historical Motor Scrapbooks” were a bit like CC back in the day. Old ads and articles with his commentary. I used to get utterly lost in them at the library when I hooked school. A whole day could go by with a stack of those.
He started out as a motorcycle racer in the early days, and got involved with all sorts of things. He published the Indy 500 annual yearbook for some 20 years. He was a motorcycle distributor and dealer, and tried to be a motorcycle manufacturer with his involvement in Munch. But he died before that even really got going.
If Floyd had a real weakness, it was his determination to become a real motorcycle manufacturer while doing it on a “two men in a shed” budget. How he thought he was going to make it in the 1968 motorcycle market using a twenty year old engine that wasn’t that much different from Indian’s forty year old engine (replacing the total loss oiling system with recirculating in 1934 was the major change) is beyond me. Then again, he was in his mid seventies by then, and was definitely looking at the good old days thru rose colored glasses.
His publishing empire was of the same “two men in a shed” variety. Most (if not all) of his books were essentially scrap books republished. He wrote very little original prose, just cutting and pasting from old catalogs. Granted, he got their first and his publications bordered on invaluable at the time, because there wasn’t much else available. And credits for saving all those old catalogs.
Syke, here’s something that I read recently in the Hemmings blog:
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/03/29/a-german-superbike-with-american-ties-the-clymer-muench-mammoth/
I find it interesting that according to the February 1969 article of Motor Trend the 0-60mph and 1/4 times for the 1969 Oldsmobile Toronado with the same engine and gear ratios took 9.5 seconds and 16.8 seconds at 84mph respectively which was significantly slower than this car and it was the slowest of the personal luxury cars they’ve tested in that magazine.
The Riv was best handling car of this E body bunch,especially the GS. Eldo and Toro were both FWD in their first generation. I think that the Toro was built just to help spread out development costs for the drivetrain. Oldsmobile division was the division given the task of designing the FWD set up, that’s why they were the only ones to get it in 1966, Cadillac got it in 1967. After 1979 all three went FWD, but in the Audi style, the engine was mounted longitudinally, straight front to back. The next round of downsizing saw the switch to transverse mounted engine. I had a ’94 Seville STS, my buddy had an Eldo ETC. Both were fast as hell and could be hustled down a curvy road pretty well. The brakes on Fifties and Sixties American cars can be quite scary in Today’s traffic and of course new cars really do stop on a dime, with a nickel change.
One thing that always burned me about Car and Driver is that they lambasted Detroit for sticking to RWD, then when they changed everything over to FWD they criticized them for their pedestrian econo box drive train lay outs.
I really started reading late 70’s early 80’s and they had a thing for BMW drivers that drove around with the fog lights on.
I love the full pout of the ’68 (and ’69) Toronados. My issue with the ’68 restyle is that the front and rear styling no longer “rhymed”, as on the ’66 and ’67s. In profile, it doesn’t even look like the front and rear bumpers line up. The front and rear styling could be from two completely different cars. While I love the front of the ’68, those tiny taillamps and unsculptured rear panel look retrograde.
On the first two model years, the pop-up headlights did not look organic – sat way too far up. I always wondered why GM didn’t engineer revolving headlamp pods like on the Corvette Sting Ray.
GN, great and insightful things you add to these awesome, throwback articles!
I also prefer the look of the ‘66-‘67 Toronado much more than the 1968.
My first car – a 1968 Toronado, which like the C&D test car had the rare W-34 dual exhaust option (only around 120 sold), bucket seats and console. I bought the car after turning 17 in the fall of 1979. It was probably the dumbest car a teenager in 1979 could own, as the price of gasoline had nearly doubled in a year and this car was a total gas hog.
While cruising around in the Toronado with my best friend I would often use 1950’s Madison Avenue expressions like “road hugging weight” and “roadability” to describe the driving experience. I did like the novelty of FWD – like doing dounts in the snow in reverse and on occasion seeing the front tires smoke in acceleration. I don’t recall having problems with the brakes, although my car was in an accident which might of been avoided and I got rear ended once by a 1973 Toronado on the highway.
Oldsmobile was known as the experimental / innovation division of GM. The Toronado’s FWD was over-engineered to the point of being nearly flawless, it too bad that it wasn’t used on a family car or station wagon instead of a resurrected Cord.
”Toronado’s FWD was over-engineered to the point of being nearly flawless” : but it seems that for the rear they lacked resources: rigid axles, leaf spring and chassis that does not even reach the rear shackles.
“Yes, the Olds beat the Cadillac by 1,926 units, but otherwise trailed all other segment players, including the faltering Pontiac Grand Prix. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the extra effort required to deliver a front-wheel-drive flagship, and vindication of Car and Driver’s assessment.”
GM’s solution to the Toronado’s failure to offer more to the consumer was to turn the Eldorado and eventually the Riviera into Toronado clones. That’s some very modern thinking from ’70s GM.
The ’68 and earlier GP wasn’t really a personal luxury coupe, just a trim level on the full-size Pontiac.
Well they gave it a workout, did it never occur to anyone that youd stop faster with wheel traction, anyway FWD has progressed from then and understeer is a long gone thing on the good versions, it was loaded with kit whats amusing is what it hasnt got compared with my regular trim level car, but a Toronado was quite a car in its day them they started restyling it and it all went wrong.
What surprises me is the number of expensive sheet metal changes in ’68 through ’70 for such a low volume model. Blunted front (’68), mini-fins and roof break–for nicer vinyl roofs (’69), and
a single year new front and all four wheel bulges (’70). So different from today.
Nice to see Floyd -Clymer motorcycle adds . Never think that the incredible Munch Mammoth ( NSU car engine , 996cc inline four into not so resistant motorcycle hardware of the era) and an Indian cafe-racer?! was produced . It should be mentioned that Floyd Clymer was the American publisher and ‘Cycle’ magazine founder . Full story of the beast Munch here : https://www.motorcycleclassics.com/classic-german-motorcycles/clymer-munch-mammoth-zm0z14mazbea/
”Not clearly superior to rear-wheel-drive Personal Luxury rivals” because its weight obliterated any subtlety of front-wheel drive; The beast’s only advantage was having traction in the snow and that obviously wasn’t noticed by the testers down south.