(first posted 5/2/2015)
The transition years, 1969-1974
It’s time for the first front-wheel-drive entrant in this Muscle Cars to Malaise Era series. As you can probably guess, we won’t be talking about Toyotas.
1968-1970 Oldsmobile Toronado
The first generation 1966 Toronado was a breakthrough design back when GM was fearless and had plenty of resources to get radical.
While I fawned over the original Riviera, it was mechanically conventional beneath that pretty skin. The Toronado was born with front wheel drive because Oldsmobile needed a personal luxury car to compete with the Thunderbird, and there were some key proponents of FWD propulsion in the Rocket Division. Engineering Chief Andrew Watt had been experimenting with front drive since 1957. He passed his drive for front driven wheels on to John Beltz, then assistant chief engineer, who was promoted to Olds General Manager by 1969. Beltz was a big champion of the Toronado, even though it failed to achieve commercial success until much later in life. Sadly, Beltz died far too young at age 46 from cancer in May 1972. But his Toronado lived on for many more years. So why all this talk about the driven wheels, when we are supposed to be talking tumblehome and fixating on fastbacks? Because for all the effort that went into making the Toronado front wheel drive, it didn’t have the proportions we expect today in a modern transverse engined 4-cylinder Corolla. Instead, a 425-cubic inch V8 torque monster coupled with a Turbo-Hydramatic 425 (basically a TH400) to form the so-called Unitized Power Package. This required a sporting dash-to-axle ratio and the designers stuck on plenty of thrusting front overhang for good measure. There are many excellent technical treatises out there about this innovative powertrain, I won’t go into the details here.
However, in a 1970 Motor Trend interview, Beltz pointed out that the driven wheels were not emphasized in Oldsmobile marketing. According to Car And Driver, even the owners manual never mentioned which end of the car provided propulsion. Other than better wet weather traction, the similar Buick Riviera outperformed the Toronado in handling and braking. The Buick was lighter and less expensive to boot. To standardize the designs and drive down unit costs, both cars shared the windshield, A-pillar, door side glass, roof panel and backlight. When introduced in 1967, the mechanically similar but more expensive Eldorado, (by some $2000), outsold the Toronado. And since the Toronado did not look related to the rest of the Olds lineup, the halo effect was dubious. They could have learned a lesson from Ford, who drew obvious connections between the T-Bird and its more pedestrian siblings. Not the most subtle marketing strategy, but it was effective.
Ok, but what about the design already? The origins of the Toronado’s shape came from a design painting by stylist David North, known as the “Flame Red Car”. Is it a coincidence that some early marketing collateral (see above) featured a red Toronado with a similar red background?
If you want to learn the obscure yet important details about a particular car design, Google is your friend. Check out this behind the scenes story by Dick Ruzzin, who was a Jr. Creative Designer at Olds. According to Mr. Ruzzin, one Don Logerquist deserves the greatest design credit. He originated the theme that led to the red rendering and ultimately the actual car. You had the slatted grill up front, paying homage to the last American FWD car, the Cord 810. (Talk about an extravagant dash-to-axle ratio, but that’s for another discussion.) The popup headlights lent an aerodynamic tilt to the nose, similar to the Corvette.
The strongly flared wheel arches served two purposes – to emphasize the powerful V8 within and to visually relieve the tall front fender line, which was necessitated by that Unitized Power Package. The tops of those tall front fenders dropped down to form a jutting undercut that blended right into the front bumper and framed up the grill. On the side, your eye was drawn to the dramatic bodyside sculpting which seemed to encircle the lower quarter of the car, humping up over the giant, radiused wheel wells which were connected by a very strong character line that didn’t quit until it joined the neatly integrated rear bumper. The effect is at once powerful, clean, and exciting.
No discussion of Toronado design would be complete without mentioning the extreme tumblehome of the greenhouse and c-pillar that blended the roof into the trunk in a nearly unbroken line. This styling treatment really gave the big coupe a distinctive shape that I can’t recall seeing before or since. However, the personal luxury market was all agog for formal, vinyl encrusted rooflines, landau bars, and sequential turn signals. (Yes, we’re looking at you, Thunderbird.)
Sadly, you could sum up the original Toronado as an excellent answer to the question nobody had asked. It was a car guy’s car, a darling of the automotive press, and it though it gathered a lot of public attention, when it came time to crack out the checkbook, prospective customers couldn’t pull the trigger. Olds product planners were already retooling for the transition years.
Toronados were similar through 1970, and they don’t really split into different generations as I have delineated them here. But I feel like they changed enough for ’68, in response to the sales drubbing they were getting from the Thunderbird.
So clearly the answer was give the public what they wanted. Vinyl roofs made an appearance in ’69, like your Uncle Louie’s bad hairpiece. Also, more formal rear fender contours were grafted on to make the Toronado look like, well, a Delta 88 from the rear. Chief Stylist Stan Wilen was instructed to make future iterations look more like the rest of the Olds line. And presumably the Thunderbird, Eldorado, and Riviera.
This doesn’t explain the front end, which could never be mistaken for a Ninety-Eight or Delmont. The hidden headlights now sulked behind a massive, split nose, honeycomb grill, flanked by two big wraparound parking lamps/turn signals. I think the new nose was very discordant with the rest of the car. The original face was so cool. Aggressive yet not loud, and absolutely unique. The new one looked like it was giving up, and letting the Riviera take the design lead.
The most frustrating thing about the Toronado, is the less attractive and distinctive it became, the better it sold.
I know what some of you are thinking, “you said the ’71-’73 Riviera was a transition mobile, and here you are laying the malaise label on its cousin, the ’71 Toronado!” Let me explain myself. My concept of peak – transition – malaise must be considered within the context of the individual car. In the Riviera’s case, it just broke out that way, and remember they radically restyled the Riv for ’74. The Toronado’s body shell lasted for eight years, in full-figured E-body form. The watchword for the design team may have been, “since we never got around to making it look much like an Oldsmobile, just make it look like the Eldorado.” I think the front end of the ’71 looks like one of those safety study test mule cars that they would ram into concrete barriers at 50 mph to see if the dummies died.
Hardtop styling, such as it was with the formal roof and tiny rear windows, gave way to opera windows by ’75. The kindest thing you can say about the ’78 XS pictured here is at least it didn’t have opera windows. The body got fussier over the years, with character lines running to no place in particular, just sort of wandering around that giant body looking for a place to die. Each year both front and rear got busier and busier, until by ’78 it had achieved full-on pimp status. I will conceed that riding in the back of an XS must have been at least interesting, with the bent-wire glass ultra-wraparound backlight letting you experience life as a goldfish.
It’s ironic, because the execs rejected front-wheel-drive for use in a smaller, compact car back in the early 60s. Seeing the utterly conventional Falcon just take the Corvair out behind the woodshed and lay a sales spankin’ on it year after year made them realize that the economy car buyer was nervous about newfangled technology. So they reasoned that the wealthier customer in the market for a personal luxury car would be a more willing early adopter of unconventional advanced engineering. Never mind that the mechanically conventional T-Bird sold like hotcakes all through the 60s, unless Ford made it look tasteful and clean by accident like the ’61-’63 Bullet Birds. So what did Olds do? They built a radically engineered, radically yet tastefully designed personal luxury car. And everyone nodded, agreed it was amazing, and wrote checks for everything else.
There was a psychological factor with the 1960s personal luxury car buyer that Oldsmobile didn’t understand. Suburban driveway envy. Something about the Eldorado, Thunderbird, Mark III, Grand Prix and Riviera, cultivated that little green monster in everyone else not ensconced in their naugahyde and vinyl seats, cruising to the Bamboo Lounge for mai tais and dinner. And that’s exactly what the buyer was looking for. He didn’t care that the Toro (or Eldo for that matter) could climb Pike’s Peak in a blinding snowstorm. Nice, but so what? Mr. Suburbia just wanted to roll his 4000 lbs of long hood, short deck glitzmobile past his pesky neighbor who thought he was the big man for getting a new John Deer riding mower. In the end, the original Toronado was a sales failure because it failed to pander to people’s worst instincts. It also may have marked a transition of another kind. GM’s transition from a leading, risk-taking company interested in testing new engineering solutions to a cynical sales obsessed organism with an eye only for the bottom line.
The final entry in this Muscle Cars To Malaise Era series will be an examination of the Ford Galaxie / LTD. Look for it in a few days, I need to recover after the Toronado trials.
See all my other posts at my blog, Wired On Cars. It’s about car culture; the focus is on car shows, car museums and car design. But all things automotive are fair game.
Great article and pick for the series. I still admire the styling of the ’66 intro Toro. Despite any shortcomings, it just downright has one of the sleekest and eye-catching designs GM ever produced..just sayin’.
I have a special place in my heart for the ’71-’72 Toro as my Mom had a gold ’72 they bought right off the showroom floor. They went in for a Cutlass Supreme and left with the Toronado. It was a beautiful car, and at the time I’m not sure they were thinking it was so radically different than the original ’66, but rather it was a beautiful car that they wanted to own so they did. Perhaps for the times and for conservative tastes the original design was too radical.
A buddy of mine had the ’72, and he chauffeured my wife and I around on our wedding day in 1973 in grand style. The car made a very sharp appearance, needless to say with its sparkling white exterior/red interior. Always thought the rear deck design was dynamic.
Yeah, I think Oldsmobile let the engineers and the designers “have their head” for once and kept the marketing guys far away from the project. Sadly, the marketing guys were probably right when it came to the personal luxury car buyer. The original Toronado just never found a niche. Far too huge to be a muscle car, and radically (and tastefully) styled to appeal to the prospective Thunderbird/Eldorado buyer.
But at least that makes it rare today, and makes me all that more appreciative when I see one.
Customers that were looking for a generic car (and who would not have cared about which wheels were driven) would not have been looking for wild styling. The Toronado got a fair amount of press and I am sure that the Oldsmobile sales people knew it was FWD, so most people interested in the Toronado certainly knew what they were looking at.
The Eldorado’s sales as a FWD is amazing when you consider the sales for the RWD convertible/coupe versions. But this shows that what people take a fancy to is just very much unpredictable. I don’t understand the VW Beetle at all.
The Cadillac FWD Eldorado sold because it was the most expensive (or damned close, anyhow) of all the Cadillacs. The fanciest, the different one, the Cadillac that was obviously above all the other Cadillacs.
The Toronado was different. It wasn’t marketed as being greater than the Ninety-Eight.
The Fleetwood 60 Special/Brougham was also expensive and its sales do not change much. But the Eldorado was classed as a series 62 in the 50’s, which I think may have been a mistake. The Eldorado Brougham sedan was a series 70. The FWD Eldorado’s sales are surprising good in my opinion. I think that the explanation is more about “personal coupes” like the Pontiac Grand Prix, becoming the style.
Very interesting article – I love reading the history behind models like this, and your take on the failed marketing strategy sheds light on a topic that most car books gloss over with rose tinted glasses. The front end of the original 1966 Toro was IMO very attractive- subtle, classy, yet still aggressive. It always reminded me of a shark. Something about the hidden headlights looking like stalking eyes, the license surround giving the impression of integrated bumper guards, which in turn give the impression of fangs, and the side marker lamps in the lower front quarters, divided into thirds with stainless brightwork that give the impression of gills. The simplicity and flow of the whole facial design leaves the classic shark-nosed Graham looking, dare I say, more like a sperm whale. (For those of you who take offense to that, the Graham is a far out design, nonetheless. . .)
I fully agree that the ’66 Toronado is a masterpiece as far as styling. But, high points like this are always a hard act to follow. If one of the fine traits of the ’66 front end is its simplicity, its hard to make the design even simpler – it becomes too simple. In a market that demanded new looks on a rapidly recurring basis, the ’66s best features were destined to disappear as quickly as they came.
There’s no doubt about that, annual styling changes did exhibit downsides occasionally. In the case of the Toronado though it was a very radical departure, very quickly and not well integrated. I think there was an expetation of different back then but not completely different. The 63 Riviera for example managed to keep it’s pretty face all the way through it’s original body, to some it actually improved with the clamshell hidden headlights in 65, and even the 66-67 wasn’t that radically different from the look the original design established, it was just sleeker. The Toronado on the other hand got an entirely different front end design affixed to the exact same body within 3 years, a very Riviera like one at that. With GM at the time normally a big facelift to this extent comes with new exterior sheetmetal to go with it , as the 69-70 A bodies did through their update and the final for this bodyshell 70 Toronado finally did for some reason. There seemed to be more to it than the styling department struggling with how to update what’s there.
Seem the opera windows for the Toronado had beginned earlier in 1974 as an option.
I forgot to post a picture then I found somewhere in the www, here it is.
Although the first generation Toronado (IMHO) is ugly, I also found the Toronado throughout the 1970s to be even uglier.
The first generation was interesting for the first two years, then got progressively “meh!”. Unfortunately “meh” was what sold, so the second gen got even more so.
I especially enjoyed the last paragraph of your polemic. I think you have hit on the ultimate truth about “whatever happened to GM?” The engineers had their shot, and the public didn’t buy. And every time GM took a car and dumbed it down (Corvair to Chevy II, Tempest to LeMans/GTO, etc.). the mechanical simpleton/styling faker sold better than its predecessor.
And after a couple of examples of that, of course the crowd on the 14th floor could happily say “to hell with expensive engineering, just make them cheap and flashy”. And keep in raking the money. Let those who appreciated advanced engineering and cars with a difference buy those stupid little ‘furrin’ cars. There aren’t enough of them to be profitable, anyway.
Which means, a good portion of the General Motors future we so love to disparage is not necessarily the fault of the suits without a creative bone in their bodies, who only understood ledgers, not engineering. And it wasn’t the fault of the stupid, overpaid, UAW members coming to work hung over, and not giving a damn about what went off the line, as long as Friday’s paycheck cashed.
No it was the fault of . . . . . . . . . the American car buyer! The brougham loving, fake wire wheel covered, New Orleans bordelloed polyester slack-wearing fools who only cared about how well the car showed off in their driveways. And, of course, if they were only willing to spend their monies on vinyl roofed oxcarts with gas-hogging V-8’s, why should management spend any more money trying to offer something more advanced.
And they sold. For years. Until they didn’t sell anymore. At which point, the company was long beyond the point where they could quickly readjust and make the different kinds of cars that those ‘furrin’ folks were shipping over here.
Detroit offered us advanced engineering. And we bought broughams.
Maybe the buying public would have been more receptive to “new tech” had GM not bungled nearly every rollout of models incorporating such. Inevitably, a concerted effort to improve them would follow later, but the damage to the product’s rep being permanent. I won’t go into details here, since it spans a good 20 year period. The people on here are well familiar with the usual suspects.
Then dropping it just as it’s perfected, ala Fiero, for example.
Ironically, the Toronado and the UPP was one the few innovations they didn’t blow.
They worked flawlessly and reliably from the start.
“Detroit offered us advanced engineering. And we bought broughams.”
Syke, you just summed up every single feeling I formed about cars, and Chevy in particular when the mid-sized pillarless hardtops died with the 1973 models. That, and the death of the sporty interiors that died with them. It was all velour and faux-luxury after that and I ran away as fast as possible.
Kinda funny, but my 2012 Impala LTZ is more similar to the sporty interiors of old than I’d care to admit – not real flashy, but very functional.
” And every time GM took a car and dumbed it down (Corvair to Chevy II, Tempest to LeMans/GTO, etc.). the mechanical simpleton/styling faker sold better than its predecessor….No it was the fault of . . . . . . . . . the American car buyer! ”
This is the story not only of GM/Ford/Chrsyler, but of Harley-Davidson for much of it’s history. Take a look at the Sportster, for one example. Every time they would introduce a version with passable rear suspension, larger-volume performance exhaust, brakes that worked, etc., it would languish in the showrooms, and the more sylish, slammed to the ground version with shorty duals sitting next to it would outsell it 10:1. Same thing with just about everything else they have tried to sell, the more functional models sold worse, the ones where performance and/or comfort was sacrificed for style sold best – the more what they were trying to sell departed from the public’s perception of “what a Harley-Davidson should look like”, the worse it would sell (don’t even talk about liquid-cooling). They are trying one more time right now with a liquid cooled adventure bike, the Pan America. We shall see…
This is timely. Look I what I just found the other day.
http://oldcarbrochures.org/New-Brochures—April/1966-GM-Engineering-Journal
You’d better have a couple of hours free if you want to read it all.
Also, I mildly disagree about there being no halo effect from this car. Starting in ’67, they were at least trying, promoting the “Excitement, Toronado Style” tagline. And the B-Bodies did have the prominent wheel well flares, as a matter of fact. I would concur that they gave up soon after this. Absolutely stunning machines, although a front disc brake conversion is a must. A quick check of my brochures showed discs were an option starting in ’67, but not standard until ’70. At that price point, for shame!
The 68 nose was all sorts of weird, GM styling was still cranking out excellent designs for 1968 models and in my opinion still was firing on all cylinders in that department up until the 73&74 bumper mandates took effect, so why the 68 E-bodies got such a poor styling treatment is very confounding to me, the bad GM designs in this period at worst looked plain, but these really broke the trend. I’d expect this kind of horrible nose treatment from Ford but for GM styling, who occasionally could hang with the best Italian design studios had to offer, it seemed bizaar, kind of like the Bunkie beak Tbirds, which come to think of it may have a connection…
Not to continue ranting on it but I think it would be an unwinnable debate as to which nosejob looked worse that year, the Toronado or Riviera. Both were remarkably similar in design with the narrow split grille with hidden headlights, but on one hand I find the Riv the worst of the two executions, but on the other I think the Toronado’s rhinoplasty managed to make the whole car lose it’s identity. The Riviera still looks like a Riviera but with a black eye(or whole face in this case).
The 71 and up are just blah. I honestly don’t find them ugly, not for the time anyway, they’re just soulless. They’re the equivalent of the Hyundai Genies today looking like a non copywrited medium between a BMW and Mercedes only much cheaper. The Toronado became that to the Eldorado from 71 on and I don’t respect either for the same reason.
The best one for me would be a ’67 with a ’66 grill and wheels. It’s got the discs as an option, collapsible column and even shoulder belt anchors.
Imagine taking a ’66, which had the peak of peak styling, and making a resto-mod version with a fully upgraded and updated powertrain. Four-wheel-disc brakes and everything. I don’t think the original Toronado is too hyper-valuable to do that. They were sort of the duck-billed platypus of cars. An oddity, to be sure, that gathered a lot of attention. But not in the top echelon of collectables.
Jay Leno has done exactly that already. He even had the stock wheels recast in 18″ (I think) to fill the fenderwells better with lower-profile tires, but not to lose the classic style of the car.
It’s even been converted to rear wheel drive. That guy must be in heaven, just going into his garages everyday and trying to decide what to drive.
http://www.carscoops.com/2013/12/jay-leno-tries-out-own-1076-hp.html
If a ’69 seat would fit you would even get headrests to complete the package.
I think by end, ’77-’78, the Toronado had seen a pretty bad beating with the ugly stick. They were fairly clean, if gargantuan, in the very early years of the 2nd generation. At least it was still a hardtop. But I still think the Eldorado outsold it, and at a higher profit margin.
I think the later ones have some bad traits but I think the snub nosed 71-76 always versions looked worse to me in terms of ugliness, hardtop or not. The 77-78s look a tad more conventional up front at least, so I think that softens me on them a little. Plus I don’t find the Eldorado of this generation any more attractive either, whatever ugly stick the 77-78 got hit with the 75-78 Eldorado got hit with it too.
I always liked the Eldorado better from a styling perspective. I think the final years, ’76-’78 were smoother than the Toronado and it had the benefit of the convertible option. That was the best look for the E-body, and only the Eldorado had it. The 2nd gen Eldo coupe suffered from that awkward rear window treatment, especially on the ’76-’78 cars.
To me,the 1971=76 Toros and Eldos had too much visual mass up front — it gave them proportions similar to an American bison.
I’m not saying any iteration of the ’71-’76 was a great beauty, but I liked the last Eldorado convertibles the best. I think the Mark IV and V beat them in the personal luxury styling sweepstakes.
“The 68 nose was all sorts of weird, GM styling was still cranking out excellent designs for 1968 models and in my opinion still was firing on all cylinders in that department up until the 73&74 bumper mandates took effect, so why the 68 E-bodies got such a poor styling treatment is very confounding to me..”
Exactly, they didn’t have any excuse like 5-mph bumper requirements in ’68. This seems to be a GM wide problem that year, consider the ’68 Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick Skylark. And those weren’t just bad nose jobs, they were all kinds of ugly all over. Change for the sake of change is a deadly sin, especially when it’s change for the worse.
We must remember also that there was no “GM Styling” back then. Each Division had it’s own styling unit at that time. The days when the same stylists would have to come up with multiple variants for the same car would not come until much later. It seems to me that Oldsmobile in the 1960s and 70s had a harder time coming up with consistently good looking cars than did styling departments of the other GM auto Divisions.
Actually, “GM Styling” was the first major centralized function at GM, with the creation of the “Art and Colour” section in the late 1920s. Harley Earl and GM Styling/Design was a separate corporate function, and Earl was a corporate VP. There were studios for all the divisions in GM Design, but it was a centralized function and Earl oversaw it. The divisions were his “customers”.
The interaction between GM Design and the various car divisions, as well as the body divisions, which also were separate, was part of the endless dynamics/politics/tension within GM.
This is probably insane, but do you suppose certain divisions were given orders to “ugly it up” or something in order to make another division look good by comparison? I’m sure I’m just being a conspiracy theorist, but it’s fun to speculate.
I’m just blown away by how beautiful virtually everything was at GM for ’65, and how quickly it began to deteriorate at some divisions over the next few years.
I don’t ‘know about a conspiracy,but there was a; tendency to; increase the amount pf chrome as you moved up the divisional ladder, so at least in some cases. the purity of the design was obscured by the “jewelry” as you went upmarket. Consider how much busier the grille treatment of the 1957 Pontiac Safari than the prow of the ’57 Chevy Nomad.
It’s easier to see the tendency at Chrysler and Ford. Exner era Plymouths and Chryslers showed a bit more restraint than Desoto and Dodge. Mercury stylists slathered on more chrome than their Ford counterparts
I suspect VW uglies up Skoda a tad so it doesn’t outsell the parent brand in markets where both are available .
You make a good point. I was thinking of the separate studios. Didn’t those go away in one of the 80s restructurings? I need to read more about GM.
I am thinking when DeLorean got a look at the ’68 GP, the last Catalina based one, he said ‘enough’ and green lit the A-Special mid size version.
I’ve always liked the 1966-70 Toronado’s a lot although I have wished they were rear wheel drive like its Riviera sibling was, for some reason the 1971-72 Toronado is starting to grow onto me, I always feel they have some sort of a sportiness and performance left in these vehicles, I never liked the 1974-78 Toronado’s and I always thought the 1974 front end looked awful, is it just me or does a 1974 Toronado resemble a front end of a 1971/72 full sized Pontiac?
I have to strongly disagree with you regarding the ‘halo’ effect and your statement that the ’66 Toro didn’t resemble any other Olds. By ’67, the Toro’s influence was very apparent in the restyled 88s and 98s- especially the wheel arches and lower body crease. Then, in ’68 the Cutlass received those same styling details. I think Old’s styling was very cohesive as a brand in the late 1960’s.
Enjoyable article, otherwise!
I still say it’s a fairly weak link. Note the ’67 Delta 88 I attached. The wheel arches and lower body crease are like a 2% lowfat version of the Toronado’s. And the parts that people really notice, like the front end styling and the roofline, have no familial resemblance. I admit the way the front bumpers curve up is similar on both cars. The first gen Toronado was so radical, it couldn’t possibly be expected to carry much visual resemblance to the traditional sedans.
Compare it to the Thunderbird, and its relationship with the rest of the Ford lineup. The Bird, being much more mechanically similar to Galaxy/LTD, had a head start at carrying the family look. You had the formal roofline, some variant of the Ford face, [edit-but it was the rears that were most similar] even Thunderbird logos on anything with a 429 Thunder Jet. Ford had established the practice of letting the expensive Thunderbird set the style and giving the cheaper models a little trickle-down design cue love. I don’t see nearly as much evidence that Oldsmobile planned on doing things that way with the Toronado, at least with the first generation.
The gargantuan 2nd generation model looked more like other Oldsmobiles, but all GM big cars were all starting to look more similar as the lines between Chevy and Cadillac blurred, mixing up Oldsmobile along the way. In other words, everything was starting to look more like everything else in the Malaise Era.
Someone else commented that we blame GM for broughming it up in the 70s, but he was right in saying that we the American consumer are to blame. The domestic auto buyer rejected advanced engineering, even when it was offered to us on a silver platter. We bought conventional pushrod powered, rear-wheel-drive opera windowed mush buckets. Until we didn’t, and the hippies starting buying Toyotas, Datsuns, Hondas, BMWs and Mercedes as soon as they got jobs and moved out of the yurt in 1973 when someone woke them up and told them the 60s were over.
I think that the market for the Thunderbird, Riviera, Toronado, Eldorado and the Lincoln Mark xxx was limited. I think that for whatever reason, the Toronado sales were taken away by both the Riviera and Eldorado. I don’t think styling was the problem for the 67 model year, for which sales dropped ominously.
The probable reason sales dropped so much for ’67 was that the Toronado had a very limited potential audience to start with. Everyone who wanted one, and they did want it badly, bought one in ’66. Demographically, they were a narrow but deeply committed audience.
I think Olds knew they were in trouble right out of the gate when the three year old Thunderbird design handily outsold the brand new Toronado. From a target customer who was supposed to chase the latest trends. Which they did in ’67, when a completely restyled Thunderbird hit the market and absolutely creamed the Toronado in sales. Oldsmobile certainly expected better results than that, and no doubt the sales results had an influence on the ’68-’70 styling tweaks.
I think the whole front-wheel-drive thing was ultimately pointless on such a huge car. The interior packaging benefits were dubious, a flat floor is nice and all, but a car like the Toronado would have been more appealing with a giant center console and four bucket seats. It’s about personal luxury after all. And the fact that the Riviera generally outperformed it, weighed less and cost less is the nail in the coffin. Where were the supposed benefits?
If they had used it as a test mule for smaller front-wheel-drive platforms, that might have made more sense. Imagine a nice little ’73 Omega with a transverse V6 and a transaxle. The could have beat the Toyota Camry by ten years. But instead they barely reskinned the Nova and muddled along. What did they care, they sold the hell out of the Cutlass Colonnade in the ’70s, that was clearly what America wanted. But the whole 455 hooked up via chain drive to the TH400 didn’t translate into a smaller, more economical package.
But wouldn’t the ’68 Toronado front end have been designed and tooled months before the debut of the ’67 Thunderbird? I never heard of any no-expense-spared rush to make the Toronado more T-bird-like, but perhaps that did happen nonetheless.
Another possibility is that GM received complaints about the delicacy of the blade-like, virtually unprotected leading fender edges of the Toronado and Riviera, and gave them the sturdier (although heavy-looking) loop bumpers that were becoming common across the non-Cadillac GM lines (e.g., the full-size 1969-70 Buicks, 1967-69 Pontiacs, and 1969 Chevies). There would have been some advantage in reduced front end length too; those ’66-’67 Rivs and Toros must have been difficult to park without risking such damage.
Whereas the original ’55-57 T Bird had a very strong stylistic relationship to the big Fords, that diminished over time, and was weakest right during this time frame you are discussing. How do the Bullet Birds and Flair Birds loo like a Galaxie, never mind that they have totally different construction (unibody)? And the ’67 Bird took that to a new extreme; it’s front end was as different from the Big Fords as possible.
I see some Flarebird in the original Mustang and even more so in the 67-68 Cougar. The Tbird influence trickled through the lineup in different ways, and as mentioned the Thunderjet engines were a way to tie them together as well. Not all siblings in a family look alike but sometimes they share personality traits, Ford did a much better job with the Tbird and other Fords(and Mercury to their usual detriment) at having a product range like that than Oldsmobile did. There wasn’t a Tornado V8 or anything else FWD to tie other Oldsmobiles to it past styling (which wasn’t either), as Ford’s marketing department did, it was much more orphaned in the lineup.
Well, from the rear, I believe the ’61 bullet Bird has a very strong resemblance to the ’61 Galaxie.
Here’s a ’66 Flair Bird and a ’65 Galaxie. I think the rectilinear angles are similar, although not as close as the ’61 models.
And finally the ’68 T-Bird and Galaxie. While I agree the styling was diverging more than it had in the past, I think the addition of the covered headlights option to the restyled ’68 Galaxie was a T-Bird influenced move.
I always wondered about the ’68 full-size Fords – in retrospect it seems kind of radical to switch from vertical to horizontal headlamps on the same body, and only for one year before the all-new 1969s debuted. (Yes, I know, they were much the same underneath, but the ’69s had modern-type curved side glass like GM and Chrysler had been using for years – that is, without framed edges on the hardtops and convertibles – and a more modern windshield design, among other major changes).
I find a personal nexus here in that my dad gave up his ’68 LTD for a ’73 Toronado, the car I eventually learned to drive in. I can appreciate the LTD’s style more in retrospect, particularly those (vacuum powered?) headlight doors that took forever to fall closed when the headlights were turned off. I thought they were cool. At the time I was more partial to the Olds for its sheer presence and luxury features. After reading this article and in the sobriety of the present, I wonder what the hell I was thinking.
Let’s be realistic, though – if the conventional Buick Riviera offered the same level of handling and SUPERIOR braking, why should buyers automatically go for the Toronado? What functional advantages were there to front-wheel-drive in this type of car?
The front-wheel-drive layout was supposed to offer superior space utilization and the benefits of a flat floor. The Toronado wasn’t appreciably roomier than other personal luxury coupes. As Paul noted in his “Deadly Sin” article on the Toronado, the personal luxury coupe market was probably the one that would least appreciate the absence of a driveshaft tunnel, given that this genre was all about bucket seats and consoles in the 1960s.
The Toronado did offer superior traction in snow, but it also had a healthy appetite for front tires. Remember that tire technology in those days wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is today.
Front-wheel-drive made sense on smaller cars. When Honda and VW offered this layout with the Civic and Rabbit, respectively, Americans had no trouble accepting it.
I’m not so sure that we can blame the lackluster sales of the early Toronado on the clueless American car buyer. Perhaps the real problem is that GM didn’t offer front-wheel-drive in a car that could really benefit from that technology.
I agree on all points regarding the application of fwd on a giant luxury coupe like the Toronado. But as you recall, Oldmobile didn’t really play up the fwd aspect of the Toronado in most of their marketing literature. The owners manual didn’t even mention it. So that probably isn’t primary reason people didn’t buy the Toro. I believe it was purely about style. The Thunderbird, Riviera, and later the Eldorado were punching all the right buttons with the buyer. In fact, the Eldorado was the same FWD powertrain with a different wrapper and outsold the Toronado despite costing $2000 more. There’s proof positive that the prospective buyer probably didn’t care that much about which wheels were doing the driving. It just had to stroke their ego.
How could the owner’s manual not mention FWD? It must have mentioned how to install tire chains; manuals for RWD cars of the same era (the two I used to own, at any rate) did so.
The 1966 Toronado brochure clearly states in big type that the Toronado is FWD. I don’t know about the owners manual. My impression is that very few people ever read their owners manuals. The Toronado brochure makes the point (true or not) that the FWD is supposed to give it greater traction. On slippery surfaces I think this is true. Where I was in college at the time, one of the profs had a Toronado and got to work in a blizzard that was bad enough that classes were canceled anyway.
However, the FWD design was not a transaxle design, which the modern approach to FWD. One of the problems with the Cord may have been torque steer (I am not sure about that), I don’t recall that torque steer was a serious problem even with the 500 CID Eldorado. Sales of the Riviera from 66 through 70 averaged about 45,000 annually. In the 71-73 period sales were down considerably. I think the Toronado was just one too many personal luxury cars.
I find it a bit hard to believe that FWD wasn’t mentioned in the owner’s manual, as it was clearly prominent on the brochures and the ads. In fact Olds’ ad campaign slogan “Step Out Front In ’66” clearly alludes to the Toro’s FWD, and it was the big thing in all the press coverage, etc.
Regarding the owner’s manual omission of FWD, here’s the archived C/D road test.
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/oldsmobile-toronado-archived-test-review-bewildering-complexity-page-3
References to fwd were so low-key that there were contemporary accounts of drivers affixing chains to the rear wheels
Regarding the prominence of FWD promotion, I am referencing this article from our resident Ate Up With Motor blogger.
http://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/oldsmobile-toronado-1966-1970/5/
“Surprisingly, in a 1970 interview with Motor Trend, John Beltz insisted that the Toronado wasn’t intended to promote front-wheel drive. Indeed, Oldsmobile marketing made surprisingly little reference to the Toronado’s FWD layout. Early advertising mentioned it almost as an afterthought; there were none of the highly technical ads that Campbell-Ewald had done to promote the Corvette Sting Ray’s independent rear suspension. By 1968, Car and Driver noted with puzzlement that even the Toronado owner’s manual made almost no reference to its FWD powertrain. Nonetheless, buyers were definitely aware of it — a 1970 Popular Mechanics survey of Toronado owners found that more than 40% had chosen the Toronado specifically because of its front-wheel drive.”
Vol. 22, No. 12 (December 1970), pp. 72-76, 92-93
Stan Wilen, the chief designer of Oldsmobile Studio, he made it known to all of us that he wanted to take cues from the Toronado and spread them around on future Oldsmobile designs. He was very successful at that. We got a headstart on Buick and Cadillac with the Toronado, they played catch-up throughout the entire program. Buick and Cadillac did not have the futuristic look of the Toronado, but both were beautifully executed with very strong themes. As a driver, the Riviera was probably the best with disc brakes and rear wheel drive. Very likely Jay Leno used a Riviera rear underbody andsuspension, put it into his Toronado as well as disc brakes.
Of coure the ’66 Toronado was a c assic — much of its ;design consisted of contemporary interpretations of the’ Cord 810/812 penned by Gordon Buehrig 30 years earlier. Both cars share front-wheel drive of course, but the Olds also has hidden ‘headlights. a grille of horizontal louvers and wheels of similar design. From a design standpoint. the well-defined wheel arches address mechanical issues, but are also reminiscent of the Cord’s freestanding fenders. Both cars share a sloping rear.
Interesting that you missed the ‘l’ in classic. That got me wondering – do we need to coin a new word ‘crassic’, to denote styling so crass that it becomes iconic of an era?
The original Toronado, along with the ’63-’64 Riviera, ’65-’66 Mustang and ’67-’68 Cougar were all prime examples of the 1st gen being the best looking.
My vote for the best era of the Ford Mustang was the 1967-68’s, I always preferred those over the 1965-66’s and for the Buick Riviera my vote for the best era was the 1966-67’s.
Agreed, I find the 65-66s too boxy overall, and the fastback looks awkward to me. 67-68 look great in all three bodystyles, have hands down the best interior, widest array of options, and the bloat had yet to set in(even though I do like the 69-73). The 67-68 were the best all rounders in that they still had all the everyday spunk the 65-66 had to appeal the masses and the extra style to appeal to the enthusiasts as well.
I also love the 66-67 Riviera but I think the 65 deserves mention, I always thought the hidden headlights completed the 63-64 style. I know others disagree though.
Sure, you’re not talking about Toyotas,,,
But the sporty RWD Toyota 2000GT would be more of a muscle car than a FWD Toronado would be.
The Toronado was never meant to be a muscle car… An F/85, Cutlass 442, Dynamic 88, yes(maybe), but a Toronado, heck NO.
Now, it’s cousin, the RWD 455 early 70’s Buick Riviera, now those I would consider, kinda a muscle car with all the toys. 🙂
I think he’s referring to the eras the cars existed and transformed between, not the cars themselves.
I was confused by the title too, from the first 4 of this series. I think the title is supposed to mean from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies more or less.
All the cars I have identified as “transition cars” (which is a designation I made up) were made between 1969-1974. There might be a few outliers, but I was trying to define a time block that covered most of the the cars I’m talking about.
The transition years, 1969-1974
The title of this post is a bit misleading, in the interest of alliteration. In this multi-part series, I’m examining that period of automotive styling that transitioned us from the zenith of the sixties into the full-blown “Malaise Era” of the seventies. But not all my examples are muscle cars, strictly speaking. Some representatives from the personal luxury class earned a spot on the list. In fact, some of the muscle cars morphed into bloated broughams as auto companies chased market trends. The more I thought about it, the more of these transition designs kept popping into my head.
To make the transition list, the candidate car needed to meet the following criteria.
Have an attractive, direct ancestor from the sixties
Have a monstrous, direct descendent in the seventies
Be larger, heavier, and have more convoluted styling than the ancestor cars
But not be definitively ugly like the Malaise cars that followed
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-muscle-cars-to-malaise-era-the-transition-years-1969-1974/
I agree in general, crisp and sporty looks gave way to over the top ‘luxo cheap’ for the ‘avacado era’. Same in the clothing industry too.
Yes XR7 Matt, you are correct.
Regarding the Toronado’s sales (or failure of):
The first year sales were quite good at 40,000. Then sales fell off but did recover in 68. I think sales in the 66-70 period were about 30,000 or nearly. The Riviera over this time period was 45,000 on average.
When we get to the 71-78 time frame, I don’t have numbers for the Toronado, but Wiki states that the toronado does better than the Riviera. The 71-73 Riviera sales are about 33,000, which is down a lot. The 74-76 does even worse @20,000 or less.
When we get to the 79 Riviera, sales are better than ever. I think the Toronado sales continue at a low level, but good enough to survive to the next generation in 86.
The problem was the 1966 Thunderbird sold over 69,000, and it was on year three of the Flair Bird style. You could argue that it had a convertible that the Toronado lacked, but that only sold about 5000 units in ’66.
http://automotivemileposts.com/prod1966tbird.html
The Toronado was not an unsuccessful nameplate, by any stretch. I think it did ultimately help bolster Oldsmobile’s image as the innovative engineering arm of GM, but it took a long time to get there.
The problem was that most domestic personal luxury car buyers didn’t understand or care about engineering. They wanted glitz, size, and obvious prestige. I think a lot of upscale shoppers started migrating to BMW, Mercedes and Porsche in the 70s. Those guys could have become lifelong Toronado owners. I would love to know how many people who purchased the original Toronado came back to the showroom in ’71 and were turned off by the new model. How many became first time Mercedes / BMW buyers, and then continued to buy German for the rest of their lives?
I did discover that the Cadillac history website has some sales numbers for other make/models including the Thunderbird. I was surprised to see that in the early 60’s the Bird was selling close to 100,000 annually, typically 80 to 90 thousand. So clearly Ford’s Thunderbird really owned the personal luxury car segment, at least during the 60’s.
I was kind of surprised no one commented on the ’78 XS with its bent-wire glass backlight. Although it looked really awkward, now that I’ve thought about it for a couple days, I like it. Not for the styling, but for the plucky “look what we can do” engineering spirit. I’m sure no customer clinics told Oldsmobile, “we really want a massive, 3 piece, wraparound rear window.” But they went ahead and did it away, just because it could be done. A small flicker of the original spirit that created the Toronado.
I think that it looks much better than the “opera window” Toronado’s that we got when the B-pillar was put in place. I have owned a number of Riviera’s and never really looked for a Toronado. Once I considered and Eldorado, but not seriously. I think that the 66-67 Toronado’s were best for looks, and the XS would have been one I might have bought. The 79 Riviera was at least as good as the Eldorado, leaving the Toronado last from my persective.
I believe that technique of bending glass with ‘a hot wire was pioneered by the experimental mid-engine, four rotor Corvette built by Chevy.
I agree, it wasn’t distinctive in a good way like the 66-67 was but it was distinctive to what everyone else was doing at the very least. I also find the 78 frond end less awful than the 71-76
My buddy’s grandfather has a junkyard on his acres of land. On that land, he owns 5 Olds Toronado XSs… Yet none run.
He won’t even sell any of them… Thinking he’ll hold out for top dollar. Nice cars, but I don’t see collectors knocking at his door. lol
He’s almost 90 years old, don’t you think it’s time to sell? Like, they say… Use it or lose it.
On a side note, it must be a dickens, to try to get a replacement backlight for that car.
Oh it must be impossible, to the point that if you have a pristine XS with a broken/missing backlight, it’s probably unsellable. If any of the 5 your buddy’s grandfather owns have good glass all around, he needs to make sure those don’t go to the crusher with intact rear glass!
The fourth generation Toronado no longer had any mechanical or styling distinctiveness. Front-wheel drive and a longitudinally-placed powerplant made it and Cadillac’s Eldo distinctive. The transverse V6-automatic drivetrain could found everywhere in GM’s divisions. Maybe if the two coupes went to AWD, a different outcome might have resulted.
It did have one feature that was distinctive – grille blended hidden headlights. Not Pop up headlights or Lincoln style body colored headlight doors mind you. Not really classic Toronado distinctive, unless you count the 68-70, but for 1986 it was the only car wearing them since at least 1972(which I believe the final holdout up to that point was the Charger. Correct me if I’m wrong).
I always had a softspot for the 86 to be honest. The 79 Riviera gets a surprising amount of praise comparatively here but it too looks nothing at all like it did in 1966 or 1963, and it’s drive layout switched to the UPP out of the blue. As did the Bustleback Seville for that matter, which these growing number of adopters, not to mention the growing number of transverse pedestrian models, pretty much made whatever luxury gimmick the UPP had in 1966 bland by 1986 anyway.
In hindsight what I think should have been done was introduce AWD to it, play off the traction angle the original touted and use the system that eventually was utilized in the 6000STE.
I don’t care what the enthusiasts will say, I’d take that ’78 Toronado over the ’68 Toronado without a moments hesitation. I find the original Toronado interesting from a historical perspective, but I’d much rather have its Broughamtastic successor in my garage. I love that rear window and the interior, looks so inviting.
Sir, I fully respect you for your unabashed love of the brougham. Not every car has to pull .80g on the skidpad or look like an atomic banana. I wonder if the 20 year long obsession with making every sedan a BMW wannabe will finally end, and someone might come up with a worthy Town Car or Cadillac Fleetwood successor. And what’s wrong with P 205/70 R 15 tires? Give me a little sidewall between my seat and the road – the potholes aren’t getting any smoother.
“…the original design was too radical…”
True, Olds loyal buyers wanted a loaded 98 sedan for that price. Also, younger gearhaeds couldn’t afford it, and got 442’s, etc.
Buyers shunned “sporty” looking mid/full car sales by 1970. And ‘personal lux’ was the key afterwards. If one wanted “sporty” during the ‘avacodo era’, it was Vette, Camaro, Trans Am.
I really enjoy this series!
As you mentioned, the contrast between the Camaro and Firebird was striking.
I was a kid in the 70s, and even then I could tell the two cars were related, but the Firebirds always looked sleek and sporty and the Camaros just looked to me like “in between” a sporty car and a “regular” car. Not to mention the difference of performance and 5mph bumpers I knew nothing about.
Even as a kid, I thought stripes and spoilers combined with big chrome bumpers looked mismatched. I always liked the versions with the “regular” bodies but rally-type wheels.
Hubcaps looked lame to me then and pretty much now as well. White walls were for big Fords, not sporty cars.
Again, love this series.
I remember reading somewhere that a lot of people driving ’66 Toronados did not know they were front wheel drive. Most of the Toronado drivers I saw during the 60’s were older and probably more conservative, and that feature was not mentioned for fear of scaring potential customers off with all the controversy surrounding the Corvair at the time. In the 60’s GM really turned their engineers loose on all sorts of projects and the results were disappointing; of course there was the Corvair, then the Tempest with the rope driveshaft, the Buick aluminum v-8 and the Pontiac OHC 6. The Corvair was totally outsold by the Falcon, the rear drive Rivera outsold the Toronado, the aluminum v 8 was gone after three years and the OHC 6 never sold very well. GM’s results with these projects were disappointing, maybe Alfred Sloan was right when he said cars should have no more engineering than necessary.
6.
I actually think that appeal of the Malaisemobiles was easy to explain. Some may have purchased these cars due to brand loyalty. But I suspect that in most instances, buyers of the Malaisemobiles wanted cars with far superior comfort to that provided by imports.
Yes, it is easy to see why a sizable portion of consumers fell in love with the super-efficient and reliable imports of the ’70s and ’80s. But for me–and I’m sure for many others–the comfort and roominess offered by the Malaisemobiles were the foremost considerations in purchasing a car. (FYI, I most definitely was not of car-purchasing age back when these cars were new, but I’m speaking as if I were such an individual. And of course, I wouldn’t purchase a Malaisemobile that was a lemon or lacked a few critical features such as seat belts, air-conditioning, or velour seating.)
My prior criticisms of imports aside, I think that the Japanese don’t get nearly enough credit for upping their game in the 1990s. In this respect, I’m not referring to efficiency and reliability, as they were obviously light years ahead of their American counterparts in these respects. Rather, I’m referring to the fact that the Japanese succeeded in making their automobiles equally as comfortable and roomy as American cars during the 90s. And I suspect this fact has had a lot to do with the continued shrinking market share experienced by the U.S. automakers over the past thirty years.
I actually think that appeal of the Malaisemobiles was easy to explain. Some may have purchased these cars due to brand loyalty. But I suspect that in most instances, buyers of the Malaisemobiles wanted cars with far superior comfort to that provided by imports.
Yes, it is easy to see why a sizable portion of consumers fell in love with the super-efficient and reliable imports of the ’70s and ’80s. But for me–and I’m sure for many others–the comfort and roominess offered by the Malaisemobiles were the foremost considerations in purchasing a car. (FYI, I most definitely was not of car-purchasing age back when these cars were new, but I’m speaking as if I were such an individual. And of course, I wouldn’t purchase a Malaisemobile that was a lemon or lacked a few critical features such as seat belts, air-conditioning, or velour seating.)
My prior criticisms of imports aside, I think that the Japanese don’t get nearly enough credit for upping their game in the 1990s. In this respect, I’m not referring to efficiency and reliability, as they were obviously light years ahead of their American counterparts in these respects. Rather, I’m referring to the fact that the Japanese succeeded in making their automobiles equally as comfortable and roomy as American cars during the 90s. And I suspect this fact has had a lot to do with the continued shrinking market share experienced by the U.S. automakers over the past thirty years.
P.S. My apologies if this is a duplicate post, but I did not see what was written above posted after I hit the “Post Comment” button.
I remember seeing a first gen Toronado on a Chevy dealer’s used car lot in 1973. It sure looked impressive next to the other plain sedans and coupes. It was even more awesome than the ’66-’67 Riviera. The bulging wheel wheels and the sloping decklid with that flat,oval tail light panel. It had such a muscular and aggresive look. Once the fuselage styling of the C pillar was changed the car lost a lot of appeal in my eyes. Though I do like the front end of the 1970.
Back in ’67-’70 I was in the 13-16 age demographic, prime car talk age, and the Eldorado was the “it “car. Everybody loved them and wanted one. Later, the Lincoln Mark IV and V were much the same thing, that was the car that you bought if you wanted to look like you were “cool” and you’d made it!
Here’s an ad for the ’70 Toronado. I loved those ads that depicted an affluent car collector who bought that new Olds, Lincoln, or Grand Prix to go along with his car collection.
Here’s the Mark V version,
Finishing up is the Grand Prix. These ads were showcased in an article on the website, Indie Auto, a very interesting and well produced site. If you like statistics and graphs, you’ll love this site