These days, the introduction of an automobile usually includes the timeworn phrase “all-new” in its advertising. However, there was a whole lot of truth to those words when Oldsmobile introduced the Toronado in 1966.
The new Toronado was completely out of the automotive mainstream. Every other Oldsmobile on the dealer’s lot would push you around in comfort, but with its then-unconventional front-wheel drive, the Toronado pulled you along, When the weather got nasty–and in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year, it can–its 54/46 weight distribution kept you rolling without any rear-drive angst.
At the time, much was made over the Toronado’s front-wheel drive; after all, who’d have thought it would be the direction General Motors would start taking only fifteen years later?
That said, I hereby nominate the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado as CCOTY: Did the Toronado predict the future simply by coincidence, or was it truly clairvoyant?
Amazing car. I dig that side view pic at the top, looks timeless.
Does anybody know why FWD was so important to the General in the 1960s? Was it a gimmick or was something else involved? Because I see little use for FWD in a big, heavy personal luxury coupe, other than the wow factor it created.
My answer to your question: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1966-oldsmobile-toronado-gms-deadly-sin-16-lets-try-a-different-position/
It certainly was an impressive looking car in 1966. As a kid then, it had plenty of wow factor, but even then I wondered why GM was building the very similar Riviera with RWD.
The short answer is that you’re quite right on the latter point. The main reason FWD ended up on the Toronado and Eldorado was because GM’s senior management was extremely leery of the cost of adding front-wheel drive to the regular lines. Oldsmobile originally wanted FWD for the F-85, where it would have made a good deal more sense.
This one brings out mixed feelings. It certainly was the most significant domestic car for that year, and the styling is gorgeous. The drivetrain was trouble-free, and the car was built like a tank.
But I don’t know if one could say that the Toronado predicted the future. It did have front-wheel-drive, but the Toronado did not use the transverse-mounted engine configuration that was REALLY the wave of the future.
Oldsmobile itself was very ambivalent about promoting front-wheel-drive, and, after the inital splash, didn’t seem to know what to do with the car. By 1968 the division barely mentioned the front-wheel-drive layout, and with the 1971 restyle, Oldsmobile sure that the Toronado rode and handled just like any other domestic personal luxury coupe.
The 1966 Toronado did have better handling, but that was supposedly because of stiffer springs and shocks, which were softened for 1967. By the early 1970s, the car really didn’t outpeform its competitors in any significant way (and the drum brakes used on early models were, in some situations, downright dangerous).
As Paul noted in his “Deadly Sin” article, a personal luxury coupe, with a long hood and short deck, isn’t going to show off the potential space savings that a front-wheel-drive layout can bring. In the 1960s, the whole point of a personal luxury coupe was the seating configuration featuring the bucket seats and console, so did anyone care about the flat floor?
This car perhaps represents a time when GM was big enough and rich enough to take a “flyer,” and build car that was a little different for the sake of being different. These days, I don’t know if any mainstream manufacturer can afford to build a car like the Toronado.
In that respect it reminds me of the L-29 Cord. This was also an impressive car, low with a long hood, with the front-wheel-drive being not much more than a gimmick.
When this car came out I remember many references to the L-29 Cord in the automotive publications at the time.
While the idea of FWD was predictive, their “unitized power package” was an evolutionary dead-end, ie:longitudinal V8 attached to the transmission via chain drive.
Having said that, the chain drive certainly was sufficiently engineered. They used the UPP in motorhomes, after all. my uncle owned two Toronados, the second with a 455. According to my dad, he would freak people out at stoplights by putting on the parking brake and mashing the gas to get both front wheels doing a burnout, then release the parking brake when the light turned green. He was very hard on cars, but the Toros took his abuse.
The Toronado was also highly criticized for poor braking performance due to having undersized drum brakes up front. Discs weren’t an option till 1967.
That version of the UPP was, but the idea of just being able to slap an engine and tranny into car at once, lowering production costs and time was something that GM continued to want, they finally got the refined version of that with the X-cars in 1980, a front subframe, engine, trans and suspension you could pretty much bolt right up to the car as a unit.
I don’t consider this to be something pioneered by the Toronado, and not necessarily unique to FWD.
The front subframe in C-body Mopars was bolt-in. After undoing about 8 bolts, one could drop the entire front subframe including the suspension, engine and transmission and roll it out from under the car.
The Toronado was a huge disappointment to me. As a sporty coupe it would have worked much better as a mid-sized car. Its front wheel drive would have made far more sense on a sedan — or even better — a wagon. The ideal might have been a line of premium-priced mid-sized cars that included the Vista Cruiser.
Ah, to vainly dream of a Detroit that didn’t succumb to bigger is better.
There was a Toronado wagon built but it didn’t go further then the prototype stage. http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2008/10/31/toronado-serendipity-the-long-and-the-short-of-it-hah/
A fullsize station wagon with the UPP drivetrain would have made a ton of sense. They would’ve captured what is probably the FWD minivan’s greatest asset, a large, low, flat floor, a generation earlier.
According to ateupwithmotor, the first front-wheel-drive prototypes Oldsmobile tested were based on the F-85 platform. We could have had an upscale, mid-sized, front-wheel-drive, unitized family sedan with a fuel-efficient engine (for the times) about 20 years before Honda hit upon the idea with the Accord sedan.
I also recall reading that Oldsmobile wanted the Toronado to be smaller, but Ed Cole nixed that idea. He wanted it to share the Riviera body shell. Interestingly, Bill Mitchell later said that he felt that the original Toronado was too big.
Olds and GM management found FWD technology too costly and complex for a compact car. Consequently, olds engineers liked the small car’s idea but they hadn’t choice to turn their attention to full-size coupe like Toronado, more profitable.
Olds actually tested FWD in both F-85s and Eighty-Eights, although obviously both were ruled out for production. Installing the UPP in an Eighty-Eight or Ninety-Eight was no great technical feat — if anything, it would have been easier than the Toronado because the B- and C-body cars didn’t have the sloping hood. It was really just a cost issue.
In 1972, my 6th grade teacher had a 66 Toronado. I always thought that the Toro was a really cool car. There were a few running around, but not many.
This was the first American front drive car since the Cord 810/812. My favorite feature of the 66 was the Cord-like grille. I see the Toro as the bridge between the Cord of ancient history and the modern mid-to-large size FWD car. I have always suspected (but never actually knew) that GM’s experience with the Toro and the 67 Eldorado gave them a leg-up in engineering larger and more powerful FWD cars than the competition. The newer package may have included a transverse engine, but I suspect that there was a lot of know-how that transferred.
I only wish that most modern larger FWD cars had the power and durabilty of the Toro.
Beautiful car–one day I’ll have one (with a disc brake conversion). Whatever comes up as competition for the 1966 CCOTY, I’ll probably stick with the Toronado.
The longitudinal FWD layout may have been a dead end, but my Subaru is set up that way (though not with chain drive). The Toro is a masterful demonstration of what GM could do with its engineering prowess – even if it was sort of an answer to a question that nobody asked.
The Subaru layout owes more to NSU/Audi or Lancia than the Toronado
I believe the question asked should be more, Was Oldsmobile the Casadra of American automobiles or better yet, the Cyclops who traded its other eye for the gift of foresight, who were cheated by only being able to look ahead to the day of their own death?
Oldsmobiles white elephant, big car with front drive was and is a stupid idea might be ok in a land of endless freeways but not on real roads.
Based on looks alone, could this car be any more different than the Chrysler in the entry just above this one? The Toronado just looks light years ahead of the Chrysler (which I happen to really like) in terms of design.
I obsessed over this car as a kid, and I remember having a dark red toy version. I don’t remember what it was, but it was bigger than a Matchbox size car. The original front end is just awesome.
That particular diecast car was a Corgi, and it even featured retractable hidden headlights. It was the size of “King Size” Matchbox.
I have one of those. It came in blue with regular wheels, and a reddish copper color with the removable “Golden Jacks” wheels, as shown in my Mini CC Rover 2000 writeup.
My first impulse was “coincidence”, but I’ll come down on the side of “clairvoyance”, because Toronado was ground-breaking in important ways.
From the American point of view, the only practical FWD cars in production at that time were small, light and relatively low-powered, like the Austin Mini. Our only previous experience with FWD in an American-sized car was the late-1930s Cord, which was said to be a monster to drive with heavy steering and torque-steer. There was a real question of whether FWD was practical in American-sized cars. Toronado’s big V8s put that question to rest, which opened the door to mainstream FWD cars in the 1980s.
I think that the introduction of power steering was an absolute necessity for large FWD cars to become practical.
No question about it. But even with power steering, I think many expected the torque steer from a 7 liter Rocket V8 driving the front wheels would pull the steering wheel right out of your hands.
PS: Did you know “Toronado” was the name of Zorro’s horse?
I had no idea about the name of Zorro’s horse. I remember the first front drive car I ever drove – a 76 Honda Civic wagon with the 2 speed Honda-Matic. When stepping on the gas coming out of a corner I still remember the sensation of the wheel trying to spin out of my hands. It was a very new feeling to me at the time. I can only imagine trying to keep control of a manual steering 1930s Supercharged Cord.
I remember the assortment of Civics I drove over the years giving me a lesson in torque steer–very manageable of course, if you knew what to expect, but still something I had to get used to. Less of a problem in the Saturn I had later, and now nonexistent in the (longitudinally-set up) Subaru I currently drive. I do notice it to some extent in my wife’s turbo MINI.
Those who say a 7.liter V-8 driving the front wheels would create gobbs of torque steer never drove one. My only experience with the first gen Toronado was when I was a senior in HS. My boss at BK had a 66. I had a 76 TA with a 4 gear 455. We had an imprompto drag race out in front of the store one late Sat. night/Sunday morning. That Toronado may have spun the wheels but it never veered off course. Years later I bought my first FWD car. A 84 Riviera T-Type. Same with that car too. I could spin the wheels but it went straight as an arrow or where ever you pointed it. How’s that? Because the longitudal mounted GM E-Bodies used equal length half shafts. Seems like it took forever for the imports to employ that trick.
Yes, that’s the point. Toronado showed it can be done. Opened the doors for X-cars, K-cars, FWD in general when it became affordable and we needed more efficient cars.
Thank you, the big FWD E’s are torque steer free.
Torque steer is/can be caused by a number of different things other than unequal length half half shafts. There’s plenty of cars that have had equal-length half shafts and still have torque steer.
It is more difficult to reduce torque steer in a strut front suspension, since it makes optimum shaft/CV joint/hub geometry difficult if not impossible. The Toronado had a more traditional SALA front suspension, with which is easier to achieve optimum geometry.
Undoubtedly that explains (at least in part) why GM’s X cars had torque steer. They either didn’t learn from the Toronado, or they were unable to recreate its front wheel geometry due to using MacPherson type struts.
Thanks!
When I was building my last Omni I started with equal shafts and had Torque Steer in abundance, when I killed the Passenger side CV I swapped in a one piece and it made no difference in the amount of TS.
SLA helps mitigate TS some but the Equal/Un-Equal shaft debate will probably never end.
Right, the article I linked to above
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_steering )
has a long list of “Root causes for torque steer”:
1. Incorrect sidewall ply design allowing deformation of the tire sidewall.
2. Asymmetric driveshaft angles due to any combination of:
– Unequal driveshaft length or diameter
– Transient movement of the engine
– Tolerances in engine mounts
– Body roll
– Single wheel bump
3. Different driveshaft torques left to right (due to wheel bearing or differential problems)
4. Suspension geometry tolerances
5. Unequal traction forces due to road surface (µ-Split) in combination with kingpin offset
Ironic that Olds did such a brilliant job of curing all the bad effects of FWD that nobody really cared.
The Toronado predicted the 1995 Aurora’s styling.
More like the Aurora aped the ’66 Toro. In fact, I believe the early speculation on the Aurora pre-introduction was that it was going to be the new Toronado.
Am I correct that GM had to pay Ford Motor Company a fee (a license fee or royalty?) for use of some of the UPP technology? I think I’ve read that somewhere.
“Look to Olds for the New”
Poor Oldsmobile, already running from its name in 1966.
Despite the handling compromises as discussed in Paul’s CC, I have to agree: The Toro is the one for ’66. They are just so cool-looking. I love ’em!
The Toro handled quite well, actually; that was one of its strengths. And they are very cool looking. It just didn’t have any significant advantages from being FWD. It would have been equally cool as a RWD car.
I guess I just assumed that was the case, with its heavy front-end weight bias and drum brakes. Perhaps packaging compromises would have been a better term. I’ve never driven one, but would love to have the chance!
The brakes were deadly. My issue with the Toronado (other than its feeble brakes) was not about the car itself. It was quite good, for what it was; excellent, in some regards.
It was simply that it being FWD was largely irrelevant, in that there were no significant advantages, and its buyers really couldn’t care less. But Olds spent a big pile of money to find that out.
A number of the GM Deadly Sin cars were not bad cars per se; their deadliness has often more to do with their lack of success in the market and how they contributed to GM’s decline.
Toronado did have a high level of owner loyalty, and a lot of buyers did like FWD — there just weren’t enough of them. In contemporary owner surveys, Toro buyers were happy with the advantages of FWD (flat floor, better winter traction), but kept wishing that Olds would offer it in something other than a big coupe.
A FWD Vista Cruiser wagon would have been a compelling package, really, although for what it would have cost I assume it would have been too much of a niche item.
Honestly I think this is the CCOTY simply based on “get them talking.” Here it is almost 50 years later and we’re fighting like cats and dogs over this.
On this CCOTY, I wasn’t aiming to start debate although it has been a fringe benefit of sorts.
I have to go with the Toro. Unfortunately it predicted nothing. It was still a beautiful car and every Toro after the 66, the looks just went downhill. The only thing I will say is the longitudinal set up worked for the large Chryslers of the late 90s. My brothers 2000 LHS is one of the best driving and riding large unit body front drive cars. Even with 200,000 mostly trouble free miles I would prefer to drive it over any transverse mounted FWD large car.
I think that the Toro has significance for one thing (besides being cool as hell): it showed the world that was possible to make a 100-150+ hp FWD without hassles, before the common thinking was that this wasn’t possible…the brakes are the real issue with this car, putting undersized drum brakes in a very powerful and very heavy top of the line car was something bordering on the criminal
I have very mixed and personal feelings about the Toro as a car. I was obsessed with it back when I was 16, and for a drafting class project made a 1/3 scale 3/4 view ‘cutaway’ down to the seat springs and foam. I loved it so much that I had to have one. Obviously as a poor high school student I couldn’t afford a ’66 Toronado. But, I found a ’78 Eldorado, which as we all know is basically the same car, but with disc brakes all round. I promptly swapped my lovely ’65 Corvair for this big old ugly beast. That was one of the mistakes that will haunt me for my entire life- and is a huge lesson in of itself.
I can say that the main advantage of this platform is only relevant in half of the country- namely, exceptional- and I MEAN exceptional traction in the snow. It is the best snow car hands down- better than any other FWD or RWD car- and even better than many 4×4’s because its safer when get hit by someone whose car is less capable.
The thing is, that giant heavy cast iron engine over the front wheels is what gave FWD the legend for traction. In my experience, FWD has lost its snow relevance as engines have gotten ligther. My ’91 Civic was horrible in the snow- to get it out of a driveway, I had to have two people sit on the hood while I reversed. With RWD, you could just throw some sandbags in the trunk, but with FWD no such option is possible.
Now, aside from its utility in the snow, My Eldo was an awful car. Hateful, poorly built to a price rather than a standard. It broke down in very annoying ways and places, often choosing to do so in the least safe place. I can’t blame the platform for my car’s personality disorder, but the taste is there.
On another note, that gearbox design is very similar to the one used by Saab- only rotated 180 degrees. As the Saab 99/Triumph 1300 (developed with shared technology) were released only a year later, I do wonder if the they and GM cribbed notes, as they both came up with a very similar solution to the FWD question.
Saab also tried their hand at building a Toronado in the shape of a classic 900 with two 16 Valves glued together to make a V8- with turbos of course. I understand it went very well, but the fuel efficiency meant it would be a slow seller and not worth the development cost. Shame.
We had an ’87 Civic Wagon (not AWD, just FWD) and we found it to be very good in the snow. I think our ’81 Eldo was better in snow, but the Civic wasn’t bad.
I have to agree with Paul that the “benefits” of FWD are lost on this platform. But I wonder if the thinking was that the car should perform with little perception of it’s FWD-ness? (except for the positive perception of it’s snow traction) IOWs, I wonder if GM/Olds was thinking that a personal luxury car would be a great vehicle to introduce FWD. The car was expensive, cool, and desirable. If the FWD was accepted by the upper middle class who could afford a Toro then it would be accepted at the lower end of the market. (If it failed, the Toro could either be converted to RWD or just dropped) I don’t think the point was to benefit from the FWD layout but rather to reassure drivers that FWD behaved pretty much like “normal” cars. Thing is, GM should have converted a lot of their cars to FWD soon after the Toro (and Eldo) were accepted.