(first posted 11/12/2012) CC reader Bantam sent in these shots of a rare Toronado XS (I’ve been wanting to find one for years): Spotted this rare ’77 Toronado XS edition a couple of weeks ago. The Special XS had a wraparound rear window offered only in ’77 and ’78. This pic was shot in Merrick, New York. Water from Hurricane Sandy came up past this point, and I hope that this rare Toro escaped!
Front view, which doesn’t exactly give much away.
In case some of you younger readers are wondering about the headline, I’m referring to a 1950 Studebaker Starlight coupe like the one above. “What comes around (the rear window), goes around” .
Rare? Yes. Attractive? Not so much.
The rear window is cool, as are the brake lights mounted just below. The rest is very confused and unresolved. Monte Carlo meets Eldorado by way of a T-square.
Wasn’t there also a T-top option on this model?
The package originally was supposed to include a T-Top roof where the panels retracted into the center bar of the roof. They never were able to get it to work properly, and it was dropped at the last minute.
You do realize that Eldo & Toro were built in the same factory & used pretty much the same mechanicals (except engines). They were using the same platform, along with the Riviera but that was rwd. They looked the similar because they shared so much. GM has shared chassis and underbodies between divisions for many decades and definitely since the 1940’s – probably before too!
Here’s a styling clay for the 1966 Buick Riviera & Oldsmobile Toronado – I rest my case! Toronado on the left Riviera on the right.
Toronados were built exclusively at the Lansing plant while Rivieras were build exclusively at the Flint plant. This was until the 1979 restyle…when both cars (including the Eldorado) were also built in the Linden, NJ plant. I have no knowledge post-’85.
Great pic, btw. That would be my dream living room (minus the fellas of course).
Those short sleeved shirts with ties. I never realized how ridiculous that looked until a guy at work in 1998 came in like that.
I always wondered if the name ‘XS’ was an ironic in-joke at Oldsmobile.
That said, its a really cool car, stylistically much more interesting than the ’78 Eldorado I had when I was 17. Shame the electric T-tops didn’t make it into the production model though- that was a cool idea. I would be scared to drive this though for fear of someone smashing the rear window. I think you’d have to scrap the car, as even if you could find another on a scrappy, you’d be hard pressed to get it out in one piece.
I vaguely remember reading in some magazine (maybe Consumer Reports) at that time that the replacement cost for that piece of glass was $1100!
Lordy, did GM have a thing for the gap-toothed B pillar in the 70s. Shudder.
GM? What about Ford about the same time?
If the window got busted and I couldn’t find ( or afford ) a replacement, I’d give it the limo treatment- fill in the open sides with sheetmetal, install a standard flat back window, and slather everything in thick marine-grade vinyl 🙂 .
The same era Chevrolet Caprice Classic coupe had a similar rear window treatment, although not as much wraparound. Always wondered if that was one singular piece of glass “folded” at the edges, or three separate pieces joined at the corners, like a contemporary building window design where separate sheets of glass are joined at the corners without a mullion.
My high school French teacher drove one of these Studebaker Starlight coupes in 1963-64. We used to tease him about it, it seemed ancient then.
It’s a single piece of glass, bent with a hot wire.
My understanding was that it was a single piece of glass that was bent with a wire while the glass was still hot and pliable.
It’s one piece of glass, bent with a “hot wire”, same on the Chevy-B coupe from 77-79. I wonder if there was any thought of continuing this design on the 1979 and up E-body, it would have given the Toronado something unique, rather than it just being an Oldsmobile Riviera.
IMO:
I always thought the ’79 – ’85 generation Rivieras & Toronados were differentiated enough as-is. The Riviera has a feminine curviness about it while the Toronado has a more blocky & masculine appearance. I thought they were both attractive vehicles & made a quite a nice couple. Even their names echo this vibe.
Wow, although I see Eldorados of this era from time to time (and almost always converts, it seems), these Toronados with the weird fenders seem to have completely disappeared. Great find.
I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen one of these on the road. Somehow, the survival rate for similar vintage Eldo’s seems far greater. Attached is a shot that I took last week of a ’78 Toro dropped off at my favourite scrappy. Very complete car, and typical storey whereby it was owned for years by an oldster who didn’t want to part with it and left it parked. Along came the heirs of the estate and off it goes to the scrappy. About the only thing wrong that I could see was that the rear brackets holding the bumper up the frame were rotten, leaving the bumper to sag. A wealth of parts for someone that has one of these, and nearly impossible to find in a wrecking yard in this condition.
Second view. Some interesting things in the background too!
Treasures galore — that hurts! I don’t think I want to know what’s in the background. That Toronado would be coming home with me one piece at at time. I’d embrace the mud by starting with the door handles….
What a shame….so much potential….
I have all but forgotten about these, too.
There used to be one or two in my neighborhood at the time, but after a few short years, I haven’t seen one since.
I lusted over the 1977 Impala coupe with the kinked back glass, but the back glass on this must have been horrendous to replace or even RISK replacement!
As for the Studebaker, I wonder if the extreme corner glass panes rolled down or opened somehow. Anybody know? I can’t imagine Studebaker beating GM to the fixed-window game, especially in the pre-A/C era!
That said, I DO seem to recall fixed glass in some business coupes that didn’t have back seats.
I’ll take the Stude (although I doubt this will surprise anyone.) I had forgotten about these Toronados. I had always kind of liked the Toro, but these later ones before the downsizing kind of lost me. It is like the Toro kept inheriting cast-off Eldo styling themes until the poor thing sunk under its own weight.
these were dinosaurs in an era of monte carlos and grand prixs. you could load those up nice in a trim package with a v8, for what 5, 000 cheaper or was it more like half the price.
the toronado by now was a baroque graddad car that did little more than a monza coupe could. it needed abs etc type premium options badly.
I used to see one of these frequently about 15 or so years ago. It was a pale yellow version and very well kept.
Personally I like the wrap around window treatment though the B pillar doesn’t flow real well.
The rear windows of the 1947-51 Studebaker got some imitators, besides the Toronado. Derham did some coachbuilding with a 1948 Dodge with the Studebaker design
http://theoldmotor.com/?tag=1948-dodge-derham-custom
Futuristic…Toronados pioneered The CHMSL. Looked cool enough to me when I was a kid.
Otherwise, these things have NOT aged well.
Note to anyone who owns an old car like this: NEVER put blackwalls on these boats.
I agree, I put whitewalls on mine, till I can figure out what wheels I’d like to put on it, nothing larger than 17″ for sure.
Having said that, WSW tires are getting hard to find in a 15″ rim for a good price, in the size I wanted.
I hear they’re pricey, especially the traditional 1″ wides. I think Coker makes them, but they could be as much as $400+ per tire, no?
I bought a set of Uniroyals in 215/70/15 for about $450 for the set at a local tire shop. They are definitely no longer the 4 for $100 specials anymore.
Unless I have a really hard time finding WSW tires, I’m avoiding Coker, or the tire rack. I have an aversion to ordering tires by mail.
I just ran across one of these! It was at a repair shop in downtown San Diego last month.
Toronados and Eldos were popular in Minnesota in the 70s. Drove back from Fargo/Moorehead with a college buddy in one, a year or two older Toro (Non XS)……..great for blasting through show drifts on the freeway.
I knew a guy in Mpls. who had one of these when new. White/red interior Toro XS. He had a horse ranch in the country……seemed appropriate for some reason. Texas is to Coupe De Ville as Minnesota is to Toronado Ranchers???!
I preferred the post Boat-tail Rivieras, by then the Toro was too baroque.
Did he buy it from Jerry Lundegard?
It’s “Burnt Umber”.
from the B pillar back they are beautiful to me
Nice find! I love the back glass. GM was doing interesting work in rear glass in those days……the 75 Camaro and Firebird and 78 Corvette come to mind. However this Toronado must have pushed the limits in bending glass. A forgotten classic. I find so many lost classics here most every day that I really forgot how daring the Big Three were in those days of smogged motored and pre-EFI automobiles. And in comparison, I find the vast majority of cars today so vague and generic in their government mandated front ends, bloated monstrosities that question how they cheat the wind in their plow-like front ends! Give me these lost 70’s classics!
Almost forgot to mention the Boat Tail Riviera!
My favourite Toro – the thing that always gets me about these when I see them in person is how HUGE they are at a time when GM was downsizing left and right. Granted, the Toronado also had its kick at that can, but I felt that this design was just so BIG and brash – it really wasn’t like anything else! Great find!
While not a car for me, I love it for it’s uniqueness. Oldsmobile could always surprise and delight with innovation when given the chance.
Personally, I think Olds could have, and should have, survived as the innovation division at GM. Towards the end, they had the potential. The styling was right, they just needed to concentrate on the mechanicals and tech…
I know I’d still aspire to own one.
Man I can’t believe I’ve never seen this car around… I live a couple miles from here and know exactly where this picture was taken from the background. “77 XS” plates means somebody obviously loves this strange old beast, really hope it wasn’t lost in the flood…
Regarding the power T-Tops that PMC mentions, they actually did make it in to production – but only on the 1978 Cadillac Eldorado. There are only SEVEN of these cars known to exist (had to Google that), but I believe all are accounted for and in good shape. It was a super expensive option and the conversion was outsourced to ASC.
Here’s one that showed up recently on Bring A Trailer: http://bringatrailer.com/2012/10/14/bizarre-biarritz-one-of-seven-1978-cadillac-eldorado-t-top/
The lone pre-production Toronado XSR with power T-Tops still exists as well and was apparently restored in the late 90’s. Here’s an article on that one: http://www.toronado.org/FAQ/GenII/xsr.htm
Yeah, cost was the reason the power T-tops never really made it into production, particularly on the Toronado. Adding power T-tops to the Toro would have taken the price of one so equipped past the Eldorado and GM, to their credit, realizing that it would never sell at that price-point, just dropped the whole idea after they built the miniscule number of them.
It also didn’t help that the center of the roof for power T-tops was considerably wider than the roof center bar of traditional pop-out panels, making the open air experience quite a bit less.
hi there; there is a place called country classic cars at stauton, IL 618-635-7056. they have a 78 tornado with wraparound rear window with red interior they are asking about $5000.00 check it out. i could send you some pics
viru
I am hoping to bid on this XS – althought based on the seller’s history and website, it will be priced way out of my budget: http://www.ebay.com/itm/141889086485?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2648&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
I’m going to look at a 78 tomorrow. It has 38000 original miles. Pics didn’t look bad. We’ll see what happens.
I like these cars a lot. I do find the factory hubcaps fairly plain. I suppose wires were available, but it looks like a car calling out for color keyed wheel discs.
Representative of the one I owned in the early 80’s, though mine was silver with the black leather interior. I had seen one of these driving about in Ligonier, PA when I was just fresh out of high school (’80), and was bitten by the ‘I’ve got to find one’ bug. Research into the production of these showed that only 2800 of the XS’s were produced for the ’78 model year and ’77 had only 3100, so I had thought finding one was a bit of a lost cause. Wire caps weren’t an option because the Toro and Eldo ran a unique wheel at the time. Color keyed covers WERE available for the Eldo but not the Olds. I was still an undergrad when I landed my XS. I was, at the time, driving an ’81 T-bird and cursing myself for jumping into the newer smaller car; it was a genuine disappointment and a mockery of everything I had thought a Thunderbird to be and I REALLY wanted out of it. Because the ‘bird was hopeless in the western PA snow and ice, I was driving a ’66 Toro as my ‘beater’. I drove past the Olds dealer in Indiana just for kicks one afternoon and spied my vision of beauty sitting in the ‘just traded’ area. The car was owned by a salesman who had put one almost 100k in the 4 years he had it and traded on a new (shudder) diesel Toro, and the XS was still priced rather high given the odometer. I traded the T-bird that afternoon and had the pleasure of owning one of these magnificent beasts for the next 5 years of essentially flawless service. Unfortunately the one problem these cars did have was a real propensity to rust out, particularly the rear fenders and rear bumper bar. By ’86 the car looked like a derelict and I reluctantly traded her off on an ’82 Toro. Nice car, handled better perhaps and certainly better economy but nowhere NEAR the ‘presence’ the XS had. It is the one modern car I wish I had kept, with my ’66 being a close number 2.
Never been a fan of the Toronados of the ’70’s for the most part, and I never understood how that back glass (which I always though made the whole car look off-balance) was considered an “optional upgrade”.
The little known successor to the XS was the XSC of the next generation downsized Toro. My Dad had one in black over Oxblood leather just as pictured. Of all the family cars of my youth it’s the only one I’d really like to find and own today. It was a stunning car, and that interior was beautiful, IMO. Of course in typical GM fashion for the times it was a rattletrap by 1984 when it was replaced (that in itself was testament to how much it was loved, as Dad’s usual cycle was 3 years, then trade up). I’ve only ever seen the XSC in black or white. I’m not sure how many color combos it was offered in, but they were scarce even when new.
lost the exterior pics I’d pilfered from the web, but here’s an interior shot or two
and the back seat..
A unique design enabled by BOF construction. We won’t be seeing that in the age of monocoque cars—no C pillar support.
My sister owned one in the early 1980s
Unique styling, but !
It was a real Dog on gas mileage and the rear seat room was pathetic
for a huge car.
That trunk seems to say “power bulge”. Like there should be an engine at both ends.
From here and now (and even then) this era was unkind to large cars. The straight edges were a step backward in sophistication. They vaguely hinted at roominess but didn’t deliver relative to car size. X-cars and K-cars could get away with it, as they were designed to look efficient when not moving… lots of room for a given wheelbase. The tests would always tell you that their drag coefficient was better than you would think.
Definitely an interesting concept, but those humongous B-pillars and the wraparound glass were like a double-whammy for rear passengers – restricted view without the privacy of the regular Toronado roofline. Still a very cool-looking limited edition Toro though!
Sweet looking car. I’ve heard of the Toronado XS, but I’ve never seen one in person.
Interestingly, Tomica made a miniature version of this Toronado with t-tops.
Still have mine stored somewhere. One of my favorite Tomica models.
Sometimes you just had to be there to get it. That may sound condescending to those who weren’t there but I don’t mean it to be. The XS was a rare bird. I might have seen 5 or 6 when they were new and probably not any since 1984. Some have commented on the fat b pillar but when these were new, the b pillar wasn’t really noticed, everyone commented on the absent c pillar. It was radical, especially for an Olds. There was a rumor, I can’t verify how true, that the reason that the XS even was built was because GM practiced bending glass for the Olds to perfect the technique for the 1977 Chevy b body coupes which would have meant that the back windows in the XS were older than the cars that they were installed in. That was the story floating around back then anyway.
In an era where gas prices doubled and we should have gotten more efficient vehicles, American cars just kept getting more bloated, heavy, shoddy and inefficient.
Between the final designs of the ’60s and the downsized cars of the late ’70s, there came this huge pile of ‘Detroit iron’ I have no desire to own.
As a teenager that couldn’t afford the gas to drive Dad’s ’67 Chevy, even before the first oil-crunch of the early ’70s, to me these humongous FWD barges represent the most excessive of the wretched excess of the ’70s.
Happy Motoring, Mark
I *love* the back half of the car. That bent glass with the missing C-pillar is something special, and the complex deck sculpturing and tail/rear fender treatment just works for me. Then the front half goes generic and lets it down–quite unfortunate. I much preferred the ’75-’76 nose design with the slim grille; much more distinctive, if much the same in shape.
I’ve never seen an XS in person, and I haven’t even seen a Toro of this generation in longer than I can remember.
How cool is that! I remember these new. So much character – not particularly beautiful but it is interesting. Today’s cars are lucky to even catch your eye.
My favorite back window is on the 1962 Dodge Polara. What about the convex in the middle and concave at the sides in the (’69?) Mopar B bodies ?
This was one of those last gasp moments for GM design being daring in a way that wasn’t simply copying Europe. I’ll echo others that the generic front end lets it down, sadly a Toronado trait since 1968. I find literally the entire rest of the design from the doors back very interesting
Honestly, if the XS didn’t exist, I would find the Toronado from 71-78 an exercise in what was wrong with GM’s design department during the 70s and how generic and samey the majority of their products looked. Not to say that every GM product was a samey looking mediocre design, but it’s hard to say a lot of positive things about most of their products. The XS manages to transform the Toronado into something more interesting than an Oldsmobile branded Eldorado, and I think the design is still pretty cool and holds up pretty well.
A very small amount of Eldorados with power T-Tops made it out to buyers. I am pretty sure it was under ten, and according to a couple of sources the exact number was 7. I cannot vouch for either number but it was very low.. It was said here that they didn’t use them because they couldn’t get them to work right but actually the reason was because they cost too much to buy from Hurst. Now it is true that there were plans to use them on the Toronado XS, which would have been known as an XSL when equipped with them, but to the best of my knowledge none were produced. It is interesting, though, to see the picture of the toy Toronado XS with T-Tops. I wonder where they got the idea? Maybe one did make it out?