The fourth-generation Oldsmobile Toronado was never a common sight even when it was new, but if the 1990–1992 version had come out about five years earlier, it could have been a quintessential ’80s icon, like Members Only jackets, Patrick Nagel posters, and The Sharper Image. Unfortunately, Oldsmobile took too long to get it right, and the final Toronado quickly faded away in the harsher climate of the 1990s.
Does everyone remember The Sharper Image? Though founded in the late ’70s, the brand became a defining phenomenon of the ’80s, a mail-order business selling high-tech electronic gadgets to cash-flush yuppies. A few of the brand’s products were useful, and some were ahead of their time, but there were a lot of tacky novelty items and silly, overpriced gizmos so pointless they verged on self-parody. How about a digital Horse Race Analyzer? Just enter in the facts from the Daily Racing Form (not included) and let the handicapping computer predict which horses will win, place, or show, with 51 percent accuracy! Only $69 (a relative worth of $209 in 2025 dollars) plus shipping and handling, battery not included.
As far as I know, The Sharper Image never got into cars, but if they had, this Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo could easily have been one of them. Especially in gleaming Platinum Metallic, it looks like it went to the same tailor as R2-D2, and it was laden with accessories calculated to attract affluent Reagan-era yuppies. If this car had been the initial fourth-generation Toronado that bowed for 1986, it might conceivably have worked, catching the wave of mid-’80s techno-futurist affluence. Its color-keyed sci-fi styling could have been GM’s riposte to the very successful aero-styled Ford Thunderbird, putting Oldsmobile back on the radar of buyers under the age of 45.
Alas, the Toronado that actually debuted in for the 1986 model year had looked like THIS, with awkward bob-tailed proportions, terrible detailing, and a perilously small trunk. Like its Buick Riviera and Cadillac Eldorado platform-mates, this Toronado laid a giant egg, appealing neither to Olds traditionalists nor the younger yuppies Oldsmobile had been after, and its sales were disastrous.
In typical GM fashion, the final 1991–1992 Toronado (there was no substantive difference between the last two model years) was more or less what this generation should have been from the start. The 1990 facelift had introduced the R2-D2 look, tidied up the clumsier aspects of the original styling, and stretched the exterior dimensions to about the size of the more popular 1979–1985 Toronado. The 3.8-liter V-6 engine had picked up 30 hp by 1991, there was a new automatic transmission, and Teves ABS and a driver’s side airbag were standard equipment. Unfortunately, the damage had been done, and the Toronado would shortly become an early casualty in the decline of big coupes.
The styling of the facelifted Toronado was an improvement over the 1986–1989 car, and it had character in a way it really hadn’t before. However, by 1991–1992, it also seemed contrived in a way that was rapidly falling out of fashion. While this Toronado looked like a prop from the dystopian future Detroit of 1987’s Robocop, that aesthetic had already become passé. The Sharper Image was also struggling by this time; the ’80s were over, and the self-consciously futuristic has a tendency to age like milk.
Also, while the new styling and longer tail rectified the worst aesthetic sin of the 1986 Toronado — the awkward relationship between greenhouse and rear wheel arches that had made so many Irv Rybicki-era GM cars look like they’d been rear-ended on their way out the assembly plant — I’m not convinced that the altered proportions looked quite right. There were simply too many of the original structural hardpoints that it would have cost too much to alter without a more complete redesign.
There was at least one practical benefit: The extended tail provided a useful improvement in trunk space, which had been a (literal) shortcoming of the initial cars. There was now room for a couple’s weekend luggage, if you could wrestle it over the rather high liftover.
Since 1988, most Toronado production had been the sporty Troféo version. However, someone in the depths of the Oldsmobile product planning offices apparently held out hope that the traditionalists of the Great Brougham Epoch might still return to the fold. There were no longer any padded landau tops on the options list (although I’m sure Olds dealers would have been happy to add one), but if you ordered a base Toronado, you could still order simulated wire wheel covers and whitewall tires, specify velour upholstery instead of leather, and opt for the 55/45 split bench seat with a column shifter and electronic instrument cluster instead of buckets and console.
In retrospect, Olds needn’t have bothered: The base Toronado was rarely ordered in these final years, and take-up of the bench seat was very limited. Only 1,239 base cars were built for 1992, only 637 had cloth upholstery, and just 302 had the split bench.
A Toronado Troféo was distinguished from the base model by its sill extensions and front air dam, which had integral fog lamps.
The Troféo also had 16-inch alloy wheels and the considerably stiffer FE3 touring suspension, although you could order the latter on a base model. (Commendably, four-wheel disc brakes had been standard on the fourth-generation Toronado from the start, and ABS, optional from 1988, had become standard in 1991.)
The Troféo came with adjustable power sport seats and leather upholstery. You could theoretically order Ultrasuede upholstery in place of leather in 1991 and 1992, but it was rare.
All late Toronados were extremely well equipped, but the Troféo added a number of extra features, like steering wheel control switches for the climate control (left) and radio (right). To the left of the wheel, you can see the controls for the Twilight Sentinel automatic headlight controls, which were standard, and also the pedal-operated parking brake below the dash, which was regrettably also standard even with bucket seats.
The 1986–1989 Toronado had been afflicted with a totally ’80s electronic gauge cluster, but from 1990, cars with bucket seats got a full set of real gauges along with an electronic reminder system and trip computer, which displayed various warning messages above the speedometer and tachometer. On the Troféo, that small LED panel could also display an electronic compass.
Although this Troféo doesn’t have it, Oldsmobile still offered an option that would have guaranteed this car a place in The Sharper Image catalog: the $1,295 Visual Information Center (VIC), a CRT touchscreen that displaced the normal climate control buttons, the radio, and the compass. First offered in 1989, VIC could also integrate with the available cellular telephone (a separate $995 option). The above video explains the various functions. (If you’re wondering, there ARE still people who can repair the VIC if it goes sideways, although it’s a specialist job.)
Without the VIC, the Troféo driver had to be content with a vast array of small, similarly sized, sometimes cryptically labeled buttons. (These were at least better than the tiny silver Chiclets that littered the dash of the 1986 Toronado.) This car has both a cassette deck and a CD player, which cost over $500 when ordered together, but came with that other essential ’80s and ’90s gimmick, the five-band graphic equalizer. I never saw the point of these things — in my experience, if you had good enough speakers (or headphones), equalizers were unnecessary, and if you didn’t, they wouldn’t help — but they were very trendy for at least a decade. I had them on various devices; I rarely used them.
For 1991, the Toronado had traded the original TH440-T4 automatic for the electronically controlled 4T60-E, which did a better job of deciding what gear to be in. Behind the shifter and console cup holder were the auxiliary controls for the power sport seats, which controlled seat back rake, lumbar support, and (unusually) thigh support. That was all well and good, except that these controls were separate from the standard 6-way power driver’s seat controls, which were mounted on the door armrest by the driver’s left elbow.
In addition to the power driver’s seat, the Toronado came with power windows, locks, and outside mirrors — the days when Oldsmobile tried to nickel-and-dime buyers for these frequently ordered features was long over — as well as six-speaker “Dimensional Sound,” with cute little door-mounted speakers in addition to the normal quartet.
Back seat room wasn’t a terribly high priority for cars like this, but you could put two adults back there without too much squawking. They got reading lamps and individual ashtrays to distract them from fighting over the tiny center armrest.
The Toronado still offered only the normally aspirated 3.8-liter V-6, which was rated at 170 hp in 1991 and 1992. I haven’t seen any instrumented road tests of the 1991–1992 car, but Car and Driver managed 0 to 60 mph in 8.7 seconds in a slightly lighter 1992 Bonneville SE with this same powertrain, so I’d expect the Toronado to be in the same realm. Such acceleration was more than adequate, and it would have been considered pretty snappy in 1986, but by the early ’90s, it wasn’t outstanding.
That was an overriding theme of these cars. By 1991, the Toronado had become a decent-enough domestic car with no really serious deficiencies other than a high incidence of what Consumer Reports termed “chassis electrical” problems, marring an otherwise average repair record. However, unless you were in love with the Robocop styling, the Toronado and Troféo also had no really outstanding virtues.
I don’t think I ever bought anything from The Sharper Image, although I was certainly aware of their catalogs, which aside from being ubiquitous were much-parodied in the ’80s. However, I did spend a lot of time back then combing through new car brochures and buyer’s guides, imagining what cars I would buy if I could (which at that time I could not) and how I would spec them. I remember finding the late Toronado perplexing. I loved (and still love) well-equipped coupes, and the Toronado had most of the right pieces. I also liked the facelifted styling, although I think even back then, I felt it was teetering on the brink of ’80s kitsch. Still, for better or worse, I was pretty squarely the target audience for a car like this, in tastes if not in income.
Yet, the Toronado somehow left me almost completely unmoved. Its front-wheel drive, once the Toronado’s claim to fame, was no longer unusual or special. Neither its looks, its performance, nor its features were compelling enough to fire the imagination. The Oldsmobile name no longer meant anything in particular, and for the price, the Toronado’s materials, workmanship, and ergonomics felt a little weak. A 1992 Troféo started at $27,295, and this car’s Astroroof and fancy stereo brought the sticker to more than $29,000 (a relative worth of more than $76,000 in 2025 dollars). Sales were so sluggish that it wouldn’t have been hard to negotiate a steep discount, but even at $24K, this couldn’t have been called a bargain.
In this respect, the Toronado was a lot like some of the stuff in The Sharper Image catalog — not junk like the Digital Horse Race Analyzer or the Quacky IV animated Duck Phone, but stuff like this Proton 320 audiophile clock radio with dual independent alarms. It had some interesting features, but nothing that even a dedicated clock radio user just HAD to have, especially not for a hefty $109 (a relative worth of about $330 in 2025 dollars).
Even if Oldsmobile had introduced this Toronado for 1986, and even if it had been a hit, the story would probably have ended the same. Luxury coupe sales were drying up in the ’90s, for reasons not of Oldsmobile’s making, and many rivals would not survive the decade. Since actual sales of the Toronado had never topped 17,000 units a year in this generation, it became one of the first to fall. Production slumped to 8,053 for 1991 and just 6,436 for 1992. After this year, the Toronado was gone, a year before its Buick Riviera sibling. There were rumors that the G-body Aurora might become the new Toronado, but GM no longer had much confidence in the Oldsmobile brand, much less the now commercially moribund Toronado nameplate. Oldsmobile would expire on April 29, 2004.
The Sharper Image managed to resuscitate its flagging sales for a while thanks to founder Richard Thalheimer’s nose for new fads, but the company did itself a lot of harm with a series of ill-advised legal showdowns with Consumers Union. Thalheimer was eventually forced out, and the company went bankrupt in 2008. Much to my surprise, The Sharper Image had successfully reorganized by 2010 and is still in business today, although it’s no longer what it once was 40 years ago. I’m sure many of us could say the same.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1988 Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo – The Downward Spiral (by Brendan Saur)
Car Show Classic: 1989 Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo – Ooh Boy, Am I Gonna Be In For It… (by Tom Klockau)
Curbside Classic: 1991 Oldsmobile Toronado – Lost In A Changing Landscape (by Joseph Dennis)
CC Outtakes: Passing, Then Getting Passed By A 1990-1992 Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo On The Right (by Brendan Saur)
I was always heart broken after the mid eighties GM downsizings. I was only 20-25 years old at the time but I must have been an older soul. Anything front wheel drive & no V-8 made me sad. (Going through it again now at 60 as the V-8 slowly disappears) And yes the first few years of this model were offensively ugly. Great article, thank you
This may have been a better looking Toronado; the problem was, it wasn’t a good looking car. The previous bobtailed freak was an awful starting point to try and make a Thunderbird-class coupe, let alone a valid competitor.
Oh well, we learnt one thing from this generation Eldo/Toro/Riv: GM could make a car so ugly that people wouldn’t buy it.
I respect the fact there’s a complete gauge package with info centers, but it looks they were borrowed from one of GM’s work trucks.
Otherwise future me now likes the car much more than back then me. It looks elegant despite the overhangs, though it’s small dimensions and lowness would make it look dwarfed by a RAV4.
This car is certainly an antidote for all the complained-about new cars that are all screens and no buttons, knobs, and sliders. Wow, what a mess – little black buttons against a black background with no contrast. At least screens can display large graphics and change with the context. Except those with the optional Visual Information Center which was one of the earliest touchscreens in cars. The Buick Riviera and later Reatta got there first, but I recall the Toro was the first with a color screen; the early Buick screens were monochrome.
The car with the blue bench seat displays another of my pet peeves – an absolutely useless door armrest. How can you rest your arm on that misshapen piece of plastic?
The ’92 Toronado existed because Olds have been making Toros for 25 years and they were slow to change. In 1966 front wheel drive was downright exotic – the Toronado was the only American car with that layout, and imports that used it included even more exotic numbers like the Citroen DS. But by 1986 when this generation debuted, FWD was associated with cheap econoboxes and was commonplace. The Toro didn’t even use the innovative Unified Power Package anymore. There was little to distinguish it from all the other FWD coupes GM (and other companies) were cranking out millions at a time.
I don’t think a poorly laid out button-heavy cabin *is* a good antidote to the touchscreen era (see, for example, certain Hondas and Acuras from between about 2007 and 2014). This Toronado is sort of in that arena, and while it’s nerdy and kind of cool, in terms of fitness-for-purpose, it is far worse than simpler, better layouts from contemporary Lexus or Mercedes-Benz models.
As far as the FWD thing, remember too that the Toronado’s FWD itself was exotic at first. It was a longitude-mounted engine offset to one side, with a sort of U-shaped transmission that routed power back to the front. The two sections of the transmission were driven by a chain. The early FWD Toronados and Eldorados were famously underbraked and this was not an ideal handling setup, but it was the only way GM was putting any kind of FWD anything with its divisions’ giant 7-plus-liter engines. This was callled the Unitized Powerplant Package (UPP), because it basically put everything for propulsion up at the front of the car, in a single unit. In fact, the early UPP cars had semi-length frames that terminated ahead of the rear wheels at the leaf springs.
Weirdly, the Riviera was also an E-body, but stuck with a different frame and standard longitude-RWD and seemed to be closer to a B-body (I personally suspect the B- and E-body were versions of the same thing throughout the 60s and 70s). Then the Riviera became a B-body for ‘77-‘78, before finally joining the Toronado and Eldorado (and bustleback Seville, which was nevertheless designated a K-body) and using the FWD UPP setup for the last iteration of that setup, for ‘79-‘85.
In ‘86, amid GM’s second wave of downsizing, the E-bodies went transverse-FWD and never looked back. The Toronado and Riviera also lost their V8s. In absolute terms, the ‘86 models were better than their forebears in just about every way. They were more efficient, performed better, were safer and were more reliable. But they were styled poorly and the backseats were cramped. The relaxed personal luxury coupe market was shrinking anyway, but GM didn’t help matters by releasing such uncharismatic cars.
The Trofeo must have appealed to SOMEBODY. or at least its wheels did. I spotted one perched on cinder blocks in the parking garage at San Francisco International Airport, its brake rotors plain to see. It was in the Trofeio’s first year.
I realize I’m in the minority, but I always liked the look of the ’90-’92 Trofeos and actually preferred their styling to the 1979-1985 models that seem to be everyone’s faves. They’re non-traditional and unique, and I think they can look rather menacing in all-black. I barely recall seeing these when new. I’m sure they’d earn a lot of Radwood street cred nowadays!
There’s a nearly identical model that’s been on Hemmings for a few months now.
https://www.hemmings.com/listing/1991-oldsmobile-toronado-coventry-ri-127260
Btw Aaron, your performance comparisons to the Bonneville are pretty close. Motorweek tested a 1990 Trofeo and measured 0-60 in 9.1 seconds, with the 1/4 mile done in 17.0 at 81mph. Certainly not a barn-burner but not bad for the era, and actually slightly quicker than some tests of the original 1st gen Toros from the ’60s.
Definitely an ’80s car in a ’90s world – good way of looking at it. I did like the styling, though I’m probably in the minority. There’s a ’92 Toronado that lives near me; I just saw it last week. From where I’ve seen it, I’m pretty sure it belongs to a college student. That’s an impressive car for a student to keep running. The only photo I have of it is from two years ago when I first saw it parked in a driveway, but it’s still going.
Now, Sharper Image. I used to love their catalog. My mom worked for a law firm, and the lawyers all got Sharper Image catalogs, so she’d often bring them home for me to look through. When I graduated from high school, mom’s boss bought me a Sharper Image alarm clock – similar to the one you pictured here, but it’s a “Sound Soother” model. That was 36 years ago, and it’s been by my bed ever since – through dorms, apartments, houses, marriage, kids, and so on. Still works, though one of the “dual alarms” quit working a few years ago.
I actually genuinely like the look of these and have since I was a little kid and think it was not only a remarkable revamp of the dud 86 but also much more successful than the similarly restyled Eldorado and Riviera (which to me didn’t look attractive again until their full redesigns in 93-94). I loved sharper image too, trips to Woodfield mall were once or twice a year trips for the family and unlike our local mall they had a sharper image and being a kid looking at all those high tech and now laughably antiquated gadgets was amazing to me…. But I don’t think I owned a single object from it or knew anyone who did, which is kind of like this Troféo, it’s very neat but it’s not on my wishlist to Santa
Only thing I truly disliked about these is the Troféo name tacked onto it, just like Cutlass Ciera. Toronado didn’t have enough cache?
The Troféo was a sub-model, like “Super Sport” at Chevrolet. It was the sporty version, which had the body kit, fog lamps, FE3 suspension, alloy wheels, sport seats, and a few other things. There was still a base Toronado that didn’t, all the way to the end of the line.
It wasn’t at all like the Cutlass Ciera, which was a desperate attempt to suggest a relationship between the FWD A-body Ciera and the RWD G-body Cutlass Supreme.
Robo Cop especially from the back. Either that or Gort.
For me, this was the best looking Toronado since at least 1970 – find it truly attractive and one of GM‘s best efforts of the era. A friend had one in about 1999 – in the course of a year, every single thing that could’ve gone wrong with that car, did.
While it may be true that the Toronado last years were not what this model started out to be in the 60’s. Having grown up with the first gen as a teen it was one hell of a car. Started out as a catagory 5 and slowly died down to breeze in the 90’s. I was lucky enough to get my “fathers oldsmobile” 1988 Troféo as a second owner in 2000 and was still a great car at the time for me. Life changes and I made the choice to let it go in 2003, between to two of us there was never a problem other than basic upkeep. Everything worked after 15 years, the digital dsh was flawless, okay the drivers seat had a little wear but as a daily driver with 150k, I’d say it was minor-no holes. Sad to see the whole brand go away as what once was the GM high end – HP leader across the board, even over Chevy.
This is a car I’d forgotten about, and was only ever dimly aware of. That said, it’s a rare case where I find a GM product genuinely appealing. Definitely a case of the right car at the wrong time – a decent step forward (like the MN12 Thunderbird) that the market never cared about. At least the T-bird got a little good press with the Super Coupe.
While it actually holds up quite well, I can see the point about it having been a hit five years earlier (think how much more competition the Taurus would have had if it had been going up against something that looked like this). If you sleep at the wheel, you’re probably dropping your response just in time for the next craze…
I think this, and cars like the MN12, are analogous to the Damn Yankees. It’s amazing how much tastes and preferences changed right around 1990. Like hair metal, it was so hot and you had to be in on it, then it was like somebody flipped a switch. Even a legitimately talented mega-group went nowhere because it wasn’t grunge. Same thing with these: would have made a great car for the typical yuppie, but SUVs were the craze, and coupes were yesterdays newspaper.
Oh, and as an 80s child, I remember Sharper Image well! As a kid, now and then we’d get a copy of their catalog from someone (my parents were far too practical for that), and ooo and awe over the gadgets. I was blissfully unaware of how useless most were, but never put my hands on them, so it was a sort of fantasy. Oh the good old days! I’ll have to scoop up the next Sharper Image piece I come across if it’s functional and at all interesting; you do come across that kind of thing at Goodwill or such occasionally. Looking back, it was mostly for showing off, and was killed by online retailing that was quicker and cheaper at churning out that junk we all want even though it’s mostly garbage.