For 1986, Oldsmobile redesigned its FWD Toronado personal luxury coupe, hoping to expand its market with a trimmer, more efficient new model bristling with high-tech features. In August 1985, Car and Driver sampled the new car and expressed some cautious skepticism about the Toronado’s new direction, which swiftly became one of Oldsmobile’s biggest commercial disasters of the ’80s. Let’s take a look at what C/D had to say — and at another car of this period that succeeded where Oldsmobile failed.
The original Oldsmobile Toronado (pictured in the background of the C/D cover above) debuted for 1966 as the first U.S.-built front-wheel-drive car since the 1930s. It was never a big commercial success and was eventually overshadowed by its Cadillac Eldorado cousin, but the Toronado won worldwide attention for its novel mechanical package and impressive Cord-inspired styling. The second-generation Toronado, introduced for 1971, was bigger and more conventional-looking, now aping the styling of the previous generation Eldorado. Oldsmobile redesigned the Toronado again for 1979, downsizing it to somewhat more rational dimensions and reining in its considerable thirst while continuing to hang on the Eldorado’s stylistic coattails.

1985 Oldsmobile Toronado Caliente / Orlando Classic Cars
For 1986, the Toronado and its Eldorado and Buick Riviera siblings were due to be redesigned and downsized again in the interests of improving GM’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) numbers. This raised some serious questions about what the Toronado’s mission was supposed to be. Oldsmobile had never really promoted its front-wheel-drive layout, which by the ’80s was no longer special anyway, and its previous brand of wretched excess was falling out of fashion. What, then, could Olds do next?
For the sake of my own digestion, I am going to tiptoe quietly past Bedard’s weird insistence on saying “females” instead of “women” to focus on his commentary on Toronado sales, which I think paints a grimmer picture of the 1979–1985 Toro’s sales standing than the data really supports. It’s true that the 1979–1985 Toronado never sold as well as the FWD Eldorado or the contemporary Buick Riviera, but the third-generation Toronado was a solid commercial success. The greater popularity of the FWD Riviera indicated room for improvement, but I don’t think anyone in Lansing was too unhappy about how the outgoing Toronado had done:
Model Year | Oldsmobile Toronado | Cadillac Eldorado | Cadillac Seville | Buick Riviera | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1979 | 50,056 | 67,436 | N/A | 52,181 | 169,673 |
1980 | 43,440 | 52,685 | 39,344 | 48,621 | 184,090 |
1981 | 42,604 | 60,643 | 28,631 | 52,007 | 183,885 |
1982 | 33,928 | 52,018 | 19,998 | 44,071 | 150,015 |
1983 | 39,605 | 67,416 | 30,430 | 50,234 | 187,685 |
1984 | 48,100 | 77,806 | 39,997 | 57,863 | 223,766 |
1985 | 42,185 | 76,401 | 39,775 | 65,305 | 223,666 |
Total | 299,918 | 454,405 | 198,175 | 370,282 | 1,322,780 |

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds

Ribbed grille/headlight covers/turn signals were intended to evoke the grille and concealed lights of the 1966 Toronado / Barn Finds
In terms of demographics, an average Toronado buyer age of 50 in 1984 was about five years younger than I would have expected. (The ’80s Toronado has always seemed like the kind of car retirees and affluent empty-nesters would buy to drive back and forth to their Florida timeshares.) However, an average buyer age of 50, in 1984, meant that Olds wasn’t attracting many Baby Boomers. Given the demographic swell of that generation — and the fact that a growing number of Boomers now had the money to buy $25,000 cars — that was the sort of detail that should have made Oldsmobile marketing people say, “Uh-oh.”
Bedard says Oldsmobile assumed they could expand the Toronado’s market to “bring in more younger than older buyers.” However, you’ll notice that while the Toronado in the C/D article has blackwalls and alloy wheels, the well-preserved 1986 example (in a color the seller said is called “Medium Driftwood Metallic”) still features narrow whitewalls and the awful wire wheel covers (a $199 option) that served to instantly disqualify a car from serious consideration by most Boomers and many of their Gen X children. That combination seemed to be far more common on real-world Toronados than the blackwall/alloy combination, except perhaps on the later Toronado Troféo model, marking this as a car aimed at people closer to my grandparents’ age.

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
The Medium Driftwood Metallic car (and who on earth decided “Driftwood” was a good paint color name for such an expensive car?) reveals that the 1986 Toronado did have some interesting detailing — note the wedge shape of the tail — married to an ill-proportioned basic shape whose various elements didn’t mesh in any graceful way.
The 1986 Toronado has often been criticized for shrinking too much, but while it was a foot and a half shorter than its predecessor, an overall length of 187.9 inches and overall width of 70.7 inches was not particularly small by ’80s standards, especially since a car in this class was now likely to be compared to European or Japanese rivals with smaller footprints than traditional Detroit iron. Also, for 1985–1986, a drag coefficient of 0.36 was really nothing special (the German Ford 15M P6 managed that back in 1966!). There were other cars of this time with similar dimensions and equal or better aerodynamics that looked much better than the downsized E-bodies.
The real problem was that as a design, the ’86 Toro was simply inept. While writing this post, I kept staring at the photos of the Medium Driftwood Metallic car (which is about as nice an example of this model as you could hope to find), trying to summon some charitable impulse, but the car just doesn’t look right from any angle. The aesthetic blight continued inside, where any sporty impression provided by the horseshoe shift lever was immediately counteracted by the blocky dashboard and a really awful steering wheel:

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds

In tachometer mode (the numbers under the speedometer are for engine rpm) / Barn Finds

In fuel consumption mode / Barn Finds
The digital instrument panel could display a rev counter (top), but this was only one of several display modes, selected via the buttons to the right of the IP, seen below left:

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
In my estimation, there are not a lot of things worse for automotive ergonomics than touchscreens, but this array of tiny, identically sized Chiclet buttons for radio and HVAC surely comes close. Did no one in Lansing wear gloves in the wintertime? It has been a mercifully long time since I had to deal with a Midwestern winter, but I remember sometimes needing to wear gloves while driving, at least when first getting into the car and before the engine was warmed up. Even with automatic climate control, you might have to fiddle with the buttons, and you might even have wanted to turn on the radio, for which the above layout seems ergonomically troublesome. (At least the “voice information system” with which the C/D editors were so annoyed wasn’t mandatory; the tiny buttons unfortunately were.)
Unless you were one of the few remaining masochists who still wanted to self-flagellate by ordering the miserable Olds diesel, the 1985 Toronado had been powered by the carbureted 307 cu. in. (5,033 cc) Oldsmobile V-8. This was replaced for 1986 by the ubiquitous 231 cu. in. (3,791 cc) Buick V-6 (pictured below). Although the Car and Driver article describes this as having 150 hp, 10 more than the previous V-8, Oldsmobile hedged at the last minute: The LG2 V-6 in the production ’86 Toronado was rated at 140 hp and 200 lb-ft of torque, giving it the same power as the carbureted V-8 with 55 lb-ft less torque. Despite the new car’s 545 lb weight loss, this was something of a wash from a performance standpoint. (The Toronado would get the 150 hp LG3 engine for 1987.)

Buick LG2 90-degree V-6 / Barn Finds
Oldsmobile claimed the 1986 was a second quicker to 60 mph than the 1985, but the factory’s 11.1-second 0-to-60 claim was nothing special for the time, nor was the 10.4 seconds Car and Driver clocked. For traditional Olds buyers, more concerned with ease than urge, it was probably fine, but Oldsmobile had said they wanted to appeal to newer and younger customers, for whom average performance from a ubiquitous GM V-6 powertrain wasn’t necessarily a great selling point. (I have also heard that the THM440-T4 in these cars was initially very troublesome — at least one commenter on the auction listing expressed concerns that the low-mileage car probably hasn’t had its transmission rebuilt … yet.)
I don’t have anything to add to Jean Lindamood’s sidebar on the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant (also known as DHAM, more recently rebuilt as Factory ZERO to build EVs), but people from that area may have stronger feelings about it, so I’ll set it in plain text for easier reading:
The Poletown Plant
High tech comes to Hamtramck.
• There is no “You Are Here” arrow on the map in plant manager Earl Harper’s office. The old map, circa 1929, shows an industrial section of Detroit and Hamtramck (“Ham-tram-ick”) known variously as Polonia or Little Warsaw or Poletown, named after the Polish immigrants who settled here at the turn of the century to work in area factories.In 1929, as now, Detroit’s industry was automobiles, and the map tells us that Little Warsaw was home to Hupp, Maxwell, Packard, Cadillac, and the old Dodge Main plant. All are gone now. If Earl Harper’s map were updated, the arrow would show us standing in GM’s new 77-acre Hamtramck assembly plant, which will soon be turning out the 1986 Toronado, along with the Buick Riviera and Cadillac’s Seville and Eldorado.
For a brief moment, until the General builds its next space-age manufacturing complex, it’s safe to say that Poletown (a nickname destined to stick to this plant like pirogi to your ribs) is GM’s most automated facility, boasting more than 2000 programmable devices. The sci-fi starts at the main gate, where bar-code readers record the contents of about 430 incoming trucks daily, each laden with parts for the day’s production run.
Inside the mammoth Poletown plant, computers rule the roost. Sixty unmanned forklifts, called Automated Guided Vehicles, trundle raw materials and parts wherever they are needed. Of Poletown’s 260 robots, two-thirds are at work in the body shop, mostly welding.
Ten of the robot welders are assigned to the Comau Robogate, a massive framing station that holds the structural components of each body in perfect position while they’re fused together. Each car passes next through the Perceptron, a checking station equipped with 121 “seeing” robots that check body openings and build tolerances. The Perceptron’s rejects go to the “verification room,” where their dimensions are electronically compared with the engineering data base in an effort to pinpoint supplier, design, and production problems before they become serious.
After passing through a pressurized “superclean” room, the cars are divided among eight paint booths, where 80 robots are capable of spraying 60 cars an hour. (Humans paint the second colors of all two-tone paint schemes.) Another dozen or so robots are programmed to perform the worst grunt work in general assembly: installing windshields and rear windows, mounting tires, installing rear-axle bushings and various moldings, dispensing vital fluids, and the like. Several more seeing robots check each car’s front-end alignment and install headlights, grilles, and front-end trim.
The entire plant is linked by a GM-developed communications system. Only six AT&T telephone lines connect Poletown with the outside world.
The price of progress was typically dear. The Poletown project ultimately displaced more than 3400 people and bulldozed 1362 homes, 143 businesses, sixteen churches, a hospital, and two schools. (Of the 465 acres marked for urban renewal along the Detroit-Hamtramck border, 360 now belong to GM.)
A storm of public protest raged from 1980 to 1982, postponing production for two years, pushing the cost of the plant from $500 million to $600 million, and attracting the attention of Gray Panthers leader Maggie Kuhn and Ralph Nader. The consumer crusader set up shop in a neighborhood church to fan the flames of discontent.
“GM has totally intimidated the city government,” Nader told the press.
“Ralph Nader is psychotic in his hatred of GM,” retorted Detroit mayor Coleman Young. “Whenever you mention GM, he foams at the mouth.”
Eventually the protests subsided, and Poletown came together. On the day of our visit, about 100 prototypes are spread throughout the system as 1986-model production draws near. Conveyors rumble overhead, empty—to “run them in,” as Harper puts it. The single shift of 1700 employees will gradually swell to two shifts of 2500 workers each, as Poletown reaches its modest 60-car-per-day goal.
The only remnant of the past on the grounds of the assembly plant is a small Jewish cemetery, Beth Olem.
The cemetery and Earl Harper’s map, that is.
“I’ve stood and looked at this map for an hour,” the plant manager muses. “You can almost see the families living in these little houses, walking to work at Dodge Main and Detroit Steel.”
Mayor Young was less sentimental about the demise of the colorful but rundown Little Warsaw neighborhood when the city of Detroit began buying up property for the plant. “The residents of Poletown are voting with their feet,” he told the press. “They left.”
Returning to the Toronado: As the text on an earlier page of the C/D article noted, the downsizing and shorter wheelbase did cost the 1986 Toronado a significant chunk of rear legroom — 3.2 inches, according to the specifications — and some trunk space as well. The decrease in claimed cargo volume wasn’t much (0.9 cu. ft.), but the 1986 trunk seems awfully shallow, limiting its utility.

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
Even with a conventional transverse front engine/FWD layout and the allegedly space-saving transverse fiberglass leaf spring linking the rear struts, the Toronado was not setting any records for packaging efficiency. Interior space wasn’t necessarily a big priority for coupe buyers, but for the 50something customer looking for a nice car to drive back and forth to the Florida timeshare, the mediocre trunk space might have been a deal-breaker.
The only thing I can say about the Don Sherman headlamp sidebar (above left) is that it seems like archetypal GM to respond to the greater flexibility allowed by the revised NHTSA headlight regulations by developing a proprietary lamp that looked a lot like rectangular sealed beams and was undoubtedly more expensive to replace. Since the Toronado had concealed headlamps anyway, the “F-lamps” had no particular stylistic impact.

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
Given that this is from Car and Driver, not the obsequious Motor Trend, I find the main text’s overweening charity towards the styling rather disconcerting. Bedard’s assertion that the Toronado “looks even more aerodynamic than it is” left me scratching my head, especially given that the claimed Cd (0.36) was decidedly mediocre for this time. As for his comment that the rest “has been sculptured in remarkably good taste,” I’ll freely admit that taste is subjective, but one of my usual benchmarks for it is consistency and coherency, which this Toro lacks in abundance, even when the individual elements don’t look bad. Which sometimes they do:

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
Bedard noted that the 1986 Toronado “still has GM’s trademark chopped-off roof, but the bubble-backlight theme borrowed from the GM-20 adds a new trick.” If by “trick” he meant “making the $20,000 Toronado look disconcertingly like a $10,000 Olds Calais,” I would have to agree, but I think this roofline/backlight treatment was where the 1986 Toronado’s styling went from merely “stumbling” to “falling down and hurting itself.” As with a lot of downsized GM cars of this era, the roofline just plays hell with what are already awkward proportions, and I strongly suspect that the upright angle of the backlight contributed materially to the Toro’s lackluster drag coefficient.
Since the C/D test car’s engine apparently differed from ultimate production spec, their recorded performance (0 to 60 mph in 10.4 seconds, the quarter mile in 17.5 seconds at 78 mph, a 110 mph top speed) may have been a bit better than stock (although Popular Mechanics subsequently managed a 17.1-second quarter mile with their 1986 Toronado). With the ride and handling package and sporty Goodyear Eagle GT tires, lateral acceleration was a quite decent 0.79 g, albeit with more of a sacrifice in ride quality than traditional Olds buyers would probably have appreciated. Despite four-wheel disc brakes, however, stopping from 70 mph took a mediocre 214 feet, a poor showing in this era, especially with relatively aggressive tires.

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
Actual prices weren’t yet available when C/D went to press, but the Toronado’s base price for 1986 ended up being $19,418, up a hefty $2,620 from 1985, and a loaded example was closer to $25,000. For the owner of a previous-generation Toronado (and there were almost 300,000 of those when the ’86 arrived), this was a sizable price jump for what likely seemed like less car; the sacrifices in rear seat and trunk space were pretty apparent.
I know that fourth-generation Toronados have their defenders (what weird car doesn’t?), but the grim production figures make it very hard to see this car as anything other than a commercial disaster:
Oldsmobile Toronado Production, 1986–1992
- 1986: 15,924
- 1987: 15,040
- 1988: 16,496
- 1989: 9,877
- 1990: 15,022
- 1991: 8,053
- 1992: 6,436
- Total: 86,848

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
I want to cut some of through the usual excuses for the fourth-generation Toronado’s failure, which usually imply that the Toro couldn’t have ever succeeded unless Oldsmobile had somehow stuck to its traditional guns (i.e., oversize dimensions, V-8 power, and squared-off styling resembling a previous-generation Eldorado). The idea that the Toronado was just too small is repeated over and over in almost any discussion of the late ’80s E-body coupes; even Patrick Bedard — who, like most C/D editors of the time, was more enamored of trimmer German sedans — mocked the Toronado’s “Toys ‘R’ Us dimensions.”
However, as I noted earlier, there were other upscale six-cylinder coupes of this time that were about this same size, at least as aerodynamic, and much better-looking. For example, the Japanese-market Toyota Soarer, which was redesigned in early 1986, a few months after the Toronado, was a little smaller than the Toro — 3.8 inches shorter overall and 2.8 inches narrower on a 2.9-inch-shorter wheelbase — but had vastly better proportions. Like the Toronado, the Z20 Soarer also offered a whole array of high-tech electronic toys (like digital instruments and Toyota’s “Electro Multivision” CRT touchscreen control center), although such gadgets seemed to have a much greater appeal to 30something yuppies in Japan than they ever did to Americans under 50 in this era. (JDM buyers of the ’80s loved digital instruments, but in the U.S., they almost always seemed to scream “AARP discount,” much like the aforementioned tacky wire wheel covers.)

1986 Toyota Soarer 3.0GT-Limited / Toyota Motor Corporation via Response Automotive media
Of course, the Z20 Soarer wasn’t officially sold outside of Japan, so you could argue that it wasn’t a fair comparison, but in early 1987, Honda introduced a coupe version of its upmarket Legend sedan, which was sold in the U.S., and quite successfully. The Legend coupe was even closer to the Toronado in size and configuration — a tenth of an inch longer on a 1.5-inch-shorter wheelbase and about 2 inches narrower — and like the Oldsmobile, it had a transverse V-6 engine and front-wheel drive.

1987 Acura Legend L Coupe / Bring a Trailer
In coupe form, the Legend was much more aerodynamic than the Toronado, with a sporty stance and crisp detailing, and it was a competent driver’s car. Even with the clunky Honda four-speed automatic, the Legend coupe was also faster than the Toronado, and U.S. Legends were available with a slick five-speed manual gearbox (which increased their credibility with the buff books).

The 1987 Acura Legend coupe was 188 inches long on a 106.5-inch wheelbase, 54 inches tall, and 68.7 inches wide, with an 0.30 Cd / Bring a Trailer
Considered strictly in numerical terms, the Legend coupe probably didn’t sell much better than the Toronado: It was somewhat more expensive, starting at $22,688, and Acura had far fewer dealers than Olds did — only about 300 in 1987. (American Honda doesn’t break out first-generation Legend sales by model, but the first-year sales target for the Legend coupe was 18,000 units.) However, the two-door Legend was a well-received, reasonably attractive halo model that boosted the image of Honda’s fledgling Acura brand. The hapless Toronado was a commercial and aesthetic misfire that just made Oldsmobile seem that much more out of touch, and it failed to appeal to either past Olds buyers or the younger customers the division hoped to attract.

1986 Oldsmobile Toronado / Barn Finds
People who like these cars will doubtlessly insist that the fourth-generation Toronado was a nice car: comfortable, quiet, reasonably composed. That much was true, but even in a contemporary Oldsmobile showroom, it lacked any unique selling point. The newly downsized Delta 88 coupe was better-looking and more practical; the aging RWD Cutlass Supreme still offered V-8 swagger (if not much performance); and the N-body Calais was much cheaper.
Even within the chaos of the Roger Smith reorganization, GM still managed some decent efforts that earned a modicum of critical respect and/or successfully appealed to younger buyers, but this Toronado was not one of these. It encapsulated many of GM’s worst tendencies, without the attractive styling, compelling performance, or novel technical details that had characterized the corporation’s biggest successes (and many of its more interesting failures). Looking back now, it’s tempting to regard the 1986 Toronado as the true beginning of Oldsmobile’s unhappy downward spiral — a halo car without much of a halo.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1979-85 Oldsmobile Toronado – The Forgotten E-Body (by Robert Kim)
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)
Vintage Car And Driver Review: 1986 Buick Riviera T-Type – What Is This Car Supposed To Be? (by Rich Baron)
Curbside Find: 1987 Buick Riviera In Hungary – The Best Preserved ’86-’88 Riviera Still Around? (by Rich Baron)
Having owned 3 1st Gen Toros this car made me nauseous when I first saw it at an Olds club preview. If this was the future at Olds and GM, things were looking even worse than I’d imagined, and when the also announced at the same time 88 coupe looked far better, you had to conclude the Irv Rybicki and cohort were totally the wrong people for the job. If only Chuck Jordan had been in the design drivers seat in the early ’80s there might have been a chance to make this a desirable automobile, discounting the mediocre mechanical malaise GM was suffering at the time. His star arose too late. Sadly the bland and clunky ’86 made it’s progenitor ’79 look so much better in comparison, and the ’66/7 a timeless automotive icon.
What is wrong with the word “female”?
Well, if he could call males, men, then why couldn’t he use women instead of female? A Freudian slip as female is considered derogatory and consigns them to reproduction only.
Yes, this is the point — there’s nothing wrong with the word “female” if you’re using it as an adjective or narrating a wildlife documentary, but insisting on saying “men and females” is distasteful, and a good way to sound like a Ferengi from Star Trek.
I always took it to mean “Women” rather than anything demeaning.
If there was anything that GM proved over and over again through the 1960s and 70s it was that if you could present a good looking car that appealed to a mid-to-upper level demographic, it would sell very well, even if it was wrapped around some decent but undistinguished underpinnings. This car proves that rule’s opposite.
I will agree that part of the problem was the long, slow death of the American personal luxury coupe. which really started to fall off after the early 80’s. But cars like Lincoln’s Continental Mark VII continued to show a little vigor all through the rest of the 80s, and certainly outsold these. It is sad that Ford could tart-up a non-luxury platform and get high prices for it but that GM, with its nearly unlimited resources, could do no better than this.
It is pretty clear to me that this car (along with its platform-mates) was designed with CAFE as its primary consideration. Well, GM hit that mark. It didn’t hit it very elegantly, and the product did not sell well at all, but gee, look at the jump in EPA mileage numbers! Customers recognized that Europe built better European cars than US manufacturers could, and Japan built better Japanese cars. Buyers who liked American cars (especially larger ones from GM, which had usually built pretty good ones) were screwed.
Detroit’s biggest mistake was abandoning what they had done so well for so long starting back in the 1930s: affordable big, comfortable, dependable, powerful and extroverted automobiles. Once the envy of the world, by the ’70s for numerous reasons they had became weak, less dependable, bloated kitsch-wagons, a shell of what they had once been, retaining the flash and comfort but losing many of their other unique and desirable qualities.
Pseudo-luxury by the pound has always had it’s adherents, and for it’s intended GG set the comfort, size, and image (at a still affordable price) remained hard to resist. The cars still sold, and for good reason: after 40 years of sacrifice and hard work they felt they deserved it. They deserved better, the big mistake was Detroit not taking advantage of the opportunity to make the product genuinely superior, given all the advances in engineering gained by and since WW II. A more efficient and higher quality product would have been entirely possible while retaining the unique attributes of full-size US automobile that had made them appealing in the first place. Instead they took the easy route, and it was an opportunity missed. Excuses were made, and the price was paid: Detroit has lost it’s prominence forever.
The downsizing should have stopped by 1980. B bodies A bodies E bodies and X bodies were by then all reigned into logical sizes/proportions for their respective categories. From that point they would have been better served putting the money into more efficient powertrains multiport fuel injection and all the other things that would have amounted to an equal or greater increase in fleet fuel economy than continued shrinkage using old technology
When these cars were being developed, analysts were projecting gas prices of $4-5 a gallon by 1986 (in 1981 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, the price for a gallon of regular hit a high point in early 1981 that, if I recall correctly, was not surpassed until the mid-2000s.
So these cars probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
The facelifted versions of the Riviera and Toronado were improved, but by then the damage had been done. A declining market for personal luxury coupes did the rest.
My point is though the 86 is rated at 18-26, the 85 was rated at 17-22, this downsizing program didn’t net a night and day difference in efficiency, and I’d be willing to bet the 4mpg jump on the highway rating has more to do with the aerodynamics of the 86 over the 85 than the downsizing or even V6 provided
The mediocre city rating (which was more heavily rated than highway ratings) strikes me as disappointing for a weight loss of 500 lb and a switch from a 5-liter carbureted V-8 to a 3.8-liter V-6 with port injection.
Well, the thing about CAFE is that it was averaged over total production volume, so even if the Toro had gotten 40 mpg, selling only 15,000 of them a year would not have moved the needle much.
Ultimately, I think the personal luxury coupe was probably doomed either way (child seat laws making coupes less workable for young families, Boomers discovering SUVs), but the Lincoln Mark VII and Aero ‘Bird suggest that Olds could have gotten a few more good years out of the Toronado if they’d managed to make it look decent.
For years Detroit said bigger is better. When GM downsized their cars they cost more and were smaller. This on top of the quality issues and the competition from Japan.
Damning with faint praise but I do think the Tornado is probably the best looking of the 86 E body trio. Stuff like the front end and the arched beltline I can’t help but think would have been pleasing on a better proportioned body(whose idea was it to make the rear overhang shorter than the front???). Heck apply the basic styling cues to the 79-85 platform and it might have been a decent looker, and had the substance to keep it a unique product rather than yet another alteration of the Citation’s basic engineering.
I really like the idea you present of the basic styling cues being okay if applied to the previous platform. As I was looking at the pictures of the Driftwood Beige example, I was imagining pulling the styling like taffy in certain directions and imagining a truly stunning car. It’s those Jetson’s-esque, bubble-car proportions that diminish from the car’s overall styling themes – which are otherwise just fine to me.
Thanks!. I love old magazine reviews, and it gets even better with your contextualization and considerations. I wonder what Cadillac and Buick did better than Olds to sell a lot more Eldos and Rivieras than the Toronado.
A double whammy. Buyers on the coasts had already decided that domestic brands were out and imports were in. And traditional domestic buyers hated what these E-Bodies had become. They didn’t want a high tech pod. GM was screwed.
To some extent it was inevitable, due to the issue of domestics simply falling out of favor, especially in the higher-end segment of the market. That had started quite a bit earlier and by the mid-’80s it was ripe for a rapid expansion. Upscale younger buyers do not want to be seen in a car that is not socially in.
Blame for the 1986 Toronado and many more disastrous decisions that nearly bankrupted GM are due to Roger Smith. He believed that GM’s poor quality vis-sa-vis the Japanese could be addressed through more automation. He was going to see GM become the industry leader in automation and beat the rest of the world on quality. The C&D article features the Poletown plant but there were also the Wentzville and Doraville plants. He bragged of purchasing all of the technology for automated assembly so others couldn’t have it. As the saying goes: “the early bird catches the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese”. History tells the AGVs were underdesigned and broke down under load, the paint robots painted each other and not the cars and the windshield and glass mounting robots often broke the glass. In the end GM spent enough money on these three plants that they could have bought Toyota outright. Then there were Saturn and the acquisition of Ross Perot’s EDS and Hughes.
I attended the first North American International Auto Show in January 1989. Roger Smith was the speaker at a luncheon meeting of the Detroit Economic Club. I happened to walk into the room along with Roger Smith who was surrounded by an entourage of what I would describe as looking like sychophants. I sat at a table along with David E. Davis, Jr., Buick Division Manager Ed Mertz and others. I came away from Smith’s talk thinking how did this man ever get to be the head of GM.
Smith retired not long after this and was replaced by Bob Stempel who by the way worked on the 66 Toronado. I attended the NAIAS again in 1990. GM had a reception one evening and after hanging around for a while I decided to call it a day. While making my way across an empty COBO Hall, lumbering along in the opposite direction came Bob Stempel. He was all by himself and appeared to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. We greeted each other and went our separate ways. In hindsight it was a very melancholy moment. Stempel suffered a heart attack in 1992 and GM came within an hour of declaring bankruptcy. If you can find it there is an episode of Frontline that details this.
Roger Smith became one of GM’s best known chairmen and his reputation to a justly deserved ignominious end through the film Roger and Me by Michael Moore.
The 1986 Toronado is just one excellent example of Roger Smith’s disastrous reign. It is also an example of hubris and how the mighty attract the attention of Nemesis.
The irony here is that Ford didn’t have enough money to go on a spending spree for automation, and the Taurus and Escort sucked up most of the company’s development dollars.
As a result, Ford implemented actual quality improvement procedures within its existing plants, and refined the vehicles based on the existing Panther and Fox platforms. (That effort included the aero Thunderbird, Cougar and Mark VII, which were far more convincing as personal luxury coupes than the GM efforts.)
By 1987, Ford was making more money than GM.
As I recall, the ’92 crisis was due to a ginormous required change in accounting for retirements. $22 Billion or $32 B?
The irony is that the 1986-up E/K body cars were indeed higher quality than the better looking, more appealing, and better selling models they replaced. My uncle owned a gorgeous triple-black 1985 Eldorado that may have spent more time at the Cadillac agency than it did in his garage. It was better after suffering the all to common premature HT4100 failure but overall the ownership experience was not what it should have been. In contrast, the 1989 Seville he bought to replace the Eldorado was a very reliable car that never needed much more that routine maintenance. If only it looked as good as the ’85 Eldo. I do wonder how well the 1986 E/K’s were built considering all the plant problems GM was having at the time. By 1989 it would seem they had the plants running well.
Call me crazy but I actually don’t hate this generation of Toro…so long as it’s the blackwall/alloy wheel combo we’re talking about and not the ‘old geezer’ wirewheel/whitewall/vinyl roof combo. I know it’ll never have the presence or grace of the original ’66 models, but IMHO it’s not a hideous design on its own merits and looks rather tidy in sportier trim levels. I’ve never been in this generation Toronado but I have spent time in an ’86 Riviera T-Type stablemate and found it to be a decently tought and nimble vehicle with decent power from the 3.8.
Consumer Reports on tests of the new Riviera and Toronado along with the Mark VII and Acura Legend sedan in the September 1986 issue of the magazine. The following were their recommendations.
” Our subjective impressions as well as our test scores clearly point to the Acura Legend as the best model in this group. But then the Acura is a rather different car from the three big luxury coupes. It compared very favorably with the best of the European and Japanese sports sedans. Its acceleration, ride, and handling were impressive indeed, and its seating was roomy and very comfortable. Since it’s made by Honda, its reliability is likely to be very good. Acura dealers are few and far between, however. (The Acura isn’t sold through Honda dealers.)
Among the American coupes, the Lincoln Mark VII is our choice, but not in the version we tested. We prefer the LSC. Though superficially modern, the MarkVII is basically vintage Americana. Our 1984 LSC version, with its firm suspension and wide performance tires, was an excellent compromise between domestic luxury and European sportiness. Our current, standard version rode quietly and comfortably, but its handling and braking were disappointing.
The Lincoln’s big V8 gave plenty of acceleration, and fuel economy was about that of the lighter Buick and Oldsmobile V6s. The front seats were exceptionally comfortable, and the climate-control system worked very well. Reliability has generally been average except for the 1985 Mark VII, which showed a decline. We can’t say whether that’s an aberration or a trend until the results of next year’s Annual Questionnaire come in.
The Buick and the Oldsmobile just didn’t seem like $20,000 cars, especially when compared with their previous versions. Equivalent response, handling, and comfort are available in lower-priced GM models such as the Buick Somerset T-Type, the Oldsmobile Calais GT, and the Pontiac Grand Am SE and without some of the electronic gadgetry that we found so annoying in the Riviera and the Toronado.
As for the two GM versions we tested, we would choose the Riviera T-Type. Its sporty suspension gave crisp, responsive handling and excellent braking, but the ride was harsh.
Our Oldsmobile’s standard suspension gave a comfortable and quiet ride on smooth roads, but handling and braking were substandard. We’d have preferred a suspension somewhere in between, along with the excellent Goodyear Eagle GT tires. First-year GM models have traditionally been troublesome, as our two samples amply bore out.”
Besides creating a questionably styled vehicle with too many electronic doodads for its usual clientele, these seemed to hit just as there was a generational change in types of cars desired. Flashy coupes were out, minimalist (at least visually) design was in. Like the near death of the minivan by crossovers, personal coupes were succeeded by the first round of SUVs. No one wants what their parents wanted.
I never would have guessed that those headlights were not just regular sealed beams. What a waste of effort. That might be more damming to me than anything else about those car (well any single other element)
In the early 1990s I lived in the US, having hopped over from Ireland after my degree. The Toronado really attracted my attention along with the contemporary Buick Riviera. I must have had a different visual sense then – they looked more than alright. I longed to own one of these cars (and had to settle for a 1984 Buick Century saloon). Years later the scales have fallen from my eyes with respect to the Olds. Front and rear it looks almost like an American idea of a European car. The side view condemns it though. The comparison profiles of the Honda and Toyota are almost cruelly better, by dint of just two things: details and proportions. Were GM designers really so isolated from the rest of the world that they didn´t see the Toronodo´s awful proportions in a clearer, brighter light? The Honda (we knew is a Honda) on the other hand is almost sublimely elegant. Who´d want a MB 230 CE if this was the alternative?
I messed quickly with the car to make the front wheel further forward, I lowered the roof and added some more length to the boot. And I got rid of the drooping DLO. It is still pretty awful though.
Looks a lot better than the actual ’86 model.
Well done!!
Why was Studio so hung up on wedges and dropped beltlines in these years? It’s as if someone drew an eye-catching wedge concept and all the heads turned in that direction for a decade. They needed to get off that theme and shake things up.
I tried to move the side view photo in different direction but it wasn’t worth finishing.
This has ’79 Cutlass Salon vibes going on
Why (then and now) were electronic/digital dashboards considered appropriate only for geezers in the ’80s and ’90s? Nowadays all kinds of sporty rides aimed at young people have digital speedometers and high-tech center stacks? (Later Toros may have been the first car to offer a color touchscreen). I’d guess that today’s 20-somethings grew up with lots of screens and digital gizmos, so why not have them in the car too? That and the much higher resolution of modern digital displays rather than fixed 7-segment digits and vacuum-fluorescent bar graphs. My daily driver has both a digital and analog speedometer, and I rarely look at the analog one.
The cars that had digital dashboards (which included the previous-generation E-bodies, starting in early calendar-1979) tended to be ones with an older buyer demographic, and any time that stuff would threaten to filter into models with a principal audience under 50, it would be greeted with jeers and protests from both the enthusiast car magazines and more consumer-oriented reviewers from Consumer Reports or Consumer Guide, which pretty resolutely hated needless electronic addenda and assumed it would be expensive to fix when it broke. By the ’90s, most of the U.S.-market cars that still bothered were dedicated geezer-mobiles whose aging buyers found the digital speedo easier to read, which had kind of a multiplicative effect in their lack of favor.
This was clearly NOT the reaction in Japan, where digital instruments were very popular. Toyota started offering its Electro Multivision system, with a CRT touchscreen, a TV tuner, and a rudimentary navigation system, debuted in 1985, and was available in a variety of JDM models by the ’90s. I think a little of it was just a different design ethos that was a bit more video arcade and less “digital clock on the microwave,” but those kinds of toys seemed to hit differently for Japanese yuppies in the height of the bubble economy, whereas Lee Iacocca crowing about “electronic marvels” here seemed like trying too hard.
There was definitely a more video-game vibe from Japanese digital dashes than American ones, but digital gauges nonetheless did find their way into several American ’80s cars that were marketed as youthful and/or sporty, such as several Pontiacs like the 6000 STE or Grand Am. The digital dash available in the Mitsubishi Starion and Nissan 200SX and 300ZX were arcade-like, but the digi-dash optional in the ’83-85 Mazda 626 looked more like the GM’s or Ford’s “digital clock on the microwave” (great description!) look. Notably, the digital gauge cluster on the Mazda was only available in the coupes or hatchbacks, not the taller sedans, which is in-line with Japanese brands perceiving digital gauges as sporty. It seems to me the “digital gauges are for land yachts driven by old people” attitude peaked in the ’90s or maybe ’00s.
I remember reading that article when it was “new”, and I was too gullible to understand the under-the-skin problems.
I wanted an ’86 Toro sooooo badly. Financially, it was enormously out of reach, I might as well have lusted after a Porsche or Ferrari or Lambo.
I loved the styling. They ruined it a few model years later, thankfully, so I no longer had any desire to buy one on a salary that would in no way support the purchase. The best they can do to improve sales is to staple a gigantic ass onto what was a nice-looking car?
The dashboard was a genuine downfall. Digital dashes have no place in polite society. And the engine was nothing special, gutless and crude, but reliable except for the oiling system. Buick kept making the same mistakes with their engines starting with the Aluminum V8–terrible oil pumps, poor oil galleries, attempting to route oil to the lifters ACROSS the front cam bearing/camshaft interface…it’s like the thing was engineered by high-school kids. The transmission was a disaster; although as always the aftermarket has improvements that almost make a decent unit out of the thing.
All of the “Domestic” manufacturers are (in)famous for intentionally sabotaging the suspension/steering/roadholding of their products, to keep them “safe” for idiot drivers. Suspension re-tuning is possible if somewhat expensive.
My ’88 K1500 has the “F-type” headlights. Nice system. Some really-simple wiring updates makes them appropriately bright, and allows the low-beams to stay lit when high-beams are selected.
Speaking of “Cord-inspired styling” on the ’66, I’m not sure I see it, but I recently realized the peculiar, signature central nose styling of ’71 through ’85 Toronados was probably meant as a nod to the “coffin nose” of the Cord, as its American FWD forebear. Once you see it…
I know they look like N-bodies and I know they completely failed in their intended mission but I quite liked (and still like) how these look so I’d say they very successfully captured the imagination of the younger set in 1986.
Unfortunately for GM, I was ten so maybe they should’ve taken a different approach. I was a ten year old who read Car & Driver though, so I’ll reiterate they definitely had my attention.
Just a slightly longer version of the Olds Cutlass Calais, a perfectly boring mid 80s, late ‘malaise era’ GM corporate product. Only it has more standard electronic ‘catnip’ then its lesser sister. I can count the very few I`ve ever seen on one hand. Why did GM even bother with this one?