(first posted 3/21/2016) In the magazine’s early years, Road Test accepted no advertising and prided itself on offering blunt assessments of new cars, calling out faults as well as strengths. Â So how did the Toronado fare with the testers, given that GM’s ad budget wasn’t a factor in the final review results?
Postscript by PN: I find it amusing to read the ending of this review, as they come to almost exactly the same assumption about the Toronado’s genesis as I did in my CC on it. From the above review: “Looks like the trend is back to those long-nosed old cars…like the Cord…Say! There’s an idea! Why don’t we build something like the Cord? There was a sexy car!”
From my CC: “The divisions all had their own engineering departments, with plenty of money to burn on all sorts of sexy fun projects that might have gotten their start over the water cooler: Hey! How about we build a gigantic seven-liter high-performance personal luxury coupe with front wheel drive? Yes! Brilliant! It’s just what the world was waiting for. Not.”
CC: 1966 Toronado – GM’s Deadly Sin #16 – Let’s Try A Different Position
I always thought these original Toronados were so cool – sporty yet luxurious. When you see one today they really are striking. The article was very interesting to read about them. My piano teacher had a white ’66 that she babied. Sadly she got in a bad accident with it and replaced it with a 1973 Challenger!
Looking back to my Mom’s ’72 Toronado, I remember her saying it was HORRIBLE on gas. I also remember it eating through its original triple stripe bias ply tires in about 15k miles. I remember Dad putting a set of radials on it, which lasted about twice as long, around 30k miles. They didn’t look quite as nice as the triple stripes but I remember him saying they rode and handled a lot better.
Our Toronado was very reliable, but it did suffer a major breakdown in 1976 on the top of the Jamestown Bridge, no less. We were going to see the Tall Ships in Newport. At the very top of the bridge the Toro started shaking violently. I can still remember the car shaking and the look on Dad’s face as he weaned the Toro down the bridge to the bottom to safety. We called AAA and the car ended up at an Olds dealership in Newport. We ended up coming home in a rental car, a brand new loaded LTD sedan. They had the Toro for several days before it was finally repaired.
We had the Toro for seven years until it was replaced with our ’79 Riviera. If you look at the difference between the two cars it was night and day.
The picture is of me and my sister in 1973 with Mom’s Toro in the driveway behind us!
I’m curious to know what went wrong with the Toro. Sounds like a CV went out.
Exactly. It was a bad CV joint. Apparently it was common for them to fail in those cars at around 40k miles. Never happened again, and Oldsmobile paid for the repair to both CV joints and our rental car. As a little 10 year old kid those memories tend to stay with you forever. I can still remember the look on my father’s face when it happened. He wasn’t one to show emotion but that day I could see the scared look on his face being at the top of a two-lane bridge that was scary even when your car wasn’t broken!!
This was the top of that old demolished bridge. It was scary riding over it in an Escort, let alone a huge car like our ’72 Toronado! The top was simply a grate that flexed with the winds. If you looked down you could actually see the ocean beneath you. It made the eeriest sound when you went over it, and your car always swayed back and forth because of the weird traction. Imagine Dad driving over it and then the car shaking violently at the same time! Every time I went over that bridge the memories of that day reoccurred. Not sorry to see it gone!
If you think driving over a bridge like that is scary in a car, try a motorcycle! There was a metal grate drawbridge connecting Terminal Island to the mainland at Los Angeles harbor. Wet with fog, and oily from decades of traffic, I was riding over it on an enduro type bike with knobby tires. Sliding around and looking down at the water was terrifying.
Interesting reading and actually a bit disappointing – some road tests of the period claim that the Toro was capable of 135 mph.
Guess I can respect my dads’ decision not to buy one a bit more now, in retrospect. We were allowed to bring one home to test for a weekend as a possible replacement for a 1964 Delta 1988 and my mom felt the doors were too big to open comfortably. I was devastated at the time – how could anyone NOT buy it? Certainly would look better than a Delta 88 in front of the school! The Delta 88 eventually got replaced with a ’69 Mercury Marquis mainly because it was available withOUT power windows and my mom was afraid of those, too. At least with the 429 – 360 HP, gross engine it could do a burnout when I got my license a few years later!
Interesting tire analysis. I wonder why that kind of thing is never mentioned in modern media whenever I see a loaded modern vehicle driving down the road with its rear wheels sprawled out. Odysseys are one I see frequently like that.
Most minivans are equipped with passenger car tires – ridiculous given the fact they weigh as much as most crossovers/SUVs. I replaced the OE tires with crossover tires and gained improved handing and security.
People buy minivans to haul kids around, safety’s a big selling point, but the mfrs STILL cheap out on tires? Ugh.
Tires have changed a lot since the days of the Toronado, I would be surprised if manufacturers equipped their cars without a sufficient load rating on the tires. Mind you I am sure it would be possible to get the same tires with a much lower rating in a lot of cases.
I see what Paul means by this magazine having poor editing. The specs list the wheelbase @ 211.0 and the overall length @ 119.0. And in the photo of the overloaded front tire it says see the left front tire when in fact the right front tire (sitting in the driver seat) is tucked under and trying to peel itself off the rim.
Overall, though, seems to be a pretty honest assessment of it’s shortcomings.
We need such car magazines today. While I appreciate colour photography, photos only show what a car looks like. It’s good to have honest road test and assessments about a car, truck, SUV, or van, based on that road test.
While I like the styling of the Olds Toronado, its safety is questionable, at best. I’m all for 0-60 acceleration, I’d also appreciate better braking performance, handling, and braking. Someone once said “I built these cars to go, not to stop.” What kind of thinking is that? What good is speed if you cannot control it? That’s never made any sense.
“Someone once said ‘I built these cars to go, not to stop.'”
That quote (or something like it) is legendarily attributed to Ettore Bugatti.
I’ve heard of him. Apparently, he didn’t take safety very seriously. He was more interested in speed, than the ability to control it.
Other outdated thinking back then was that “talking about accidents and car safety is bad luck”.*
Also that “Model T era” buyers didn’t like the feeling of stopping so suddenly, so weak brakes were the “norm”.
* Similar to old fashioned idea that writing a will or estate planning was also ‘bad luck’. Chicago’s first Mayor Daley was like that, didn’t plan for his passing.
I drove my friend’s 1966 Ramber with 4 wheel manual drum brakes last year and feared for my life as they faded to almost nill going down a few hills. The brakes on most 1960’s cars was lousy. That is one area where the 1970’s vehicles with front disks was a big improvement along with steel belted radial tires.
I’d love an honest car magazine, but nobody would pay for it. The reason Car and Driver is $8 a year is because all you’re doing is paying shipping for Ford, GM, Fiat, VW and BMW’s advertising to arrive at your door.
8.85×15 tires. Wow. In modern terms, that’s a 225-80D15.
For Oldsmobile to let that car leave the factory with tires that are overloaded on an empty car (much less with 5 passengers and luggage!) is an amazing testimony to how the beancounters ran GM into the state it is in today.
I recall from reading “On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors” that this was one of John DeLorean’s biggest battles with central GM management. DeLorean the engineer liked the handling and safety plusses of big tires. DeLorean the sales guy liked the way big tires made the cars look. But the 14th Floor guys routinely found ways to cut costs by skimping on standard equipment tires.
Depression era thinking, “those fancy tires will cost too much to replace, don’t need ’em”
The pendulum has swung the other way now. I know several people over the past few years who experienced sticker shock when it came time to replace tires on their CUVs.
Today, a P235/75R15 tire, of the about same rolling diameter, will safely support well over 2000lb , but at over 40psi, unheard of back then.
A long way from 28psi! I hadn’t thought of the likely lower max psi rating for the tires of the time, but I thought that running the tires at manufacturers specified amounts is usually set for maximum comfort at the cost of some grip and response.
Seeing the specs and the 4800 lb on the road figure has gone a long way towards putting me of wanting one of these! Tomcatt630’s mention of the possible original intention as a midsize car would be much better, same for the boat-tail Riviera. Olds talked up the 6-passenger seating, but who wanted that in their “personal car”?
Wasn’t the original idea for the Toro to be a compact or mid size car? I don’t see the ‘water cooler’ talk being the car that appeared.
GM back then was “bigger is better” and Olds dealers wanted that too. At least until the hey day of Cutlass Supreme coupes.
Bill Mitchell and Oldsmobile management originally envisioned that the Toronado would be the size of the 1966-67 Cutlass. Ed Cole vetoed that idea and demanded that it share its basic body shell with the Buick Riviera and upcoming Cadillac Eldorado for cost-amortization purposes.
A family friend had one of these back in the ’60’s. I remember him saying that “it doesn’t matter if you’re going 7mph or 70mph, it gets 7mpg.”
Which horrified my father, who drove a 544 Volvo.
After reading the ratings section, it seems the astute GM buyer would pay the Buick dealer a visit to test drive a ’66 Riviera.
“Astute GM buyer” is an oxymoron of the first order.
I wonder if those are real whitewalls or what they used to call ‘spats’. If they’re still available, they’d be a great way to get the whitewall look without the hassle of trying to find real whitewalls in today’s tire retail world.
Regardless, in 1966, the performance choice would have been the 300. Too bad it was just a model of the regular Chrysler line, looking for all the world like a gussied-up Newport hardtop. Even though they lacked the performance cred, because the T-bird, Riviera, and Toronado were their own separate model, they were the preferred choice for that market.
A bit of research suggests that whitewall spats actually attached like hubcaps, which leads me to conclude that this car has wide whites from Coker tire instead.
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/11954032_8-whitewall-tire-and-rim-spats
@CJ
I resemble that remark, but you DO present a rather compelling case for the Chrysler 300. 😉
On Oldcarbrouchures.org, I found the options sheet for both the ’66 & ’67 Toronado.
There’s no mention of disc brakes or radial tires for ’66 as opposed to ’67 ($78.99 and $105.32 respectively). For an extra $200, a major improvement in handling and braking was available for those who waited a year.
http://oldcarbrochures.org/NA/Oldsmobile/1967-Oldsmobile/1967-Oldsmobile-SPECS/1967-Oldsmobile-SPECS-11
Too bad they had begun to screw up the styling in ’67. That eggcrate grill didn’t look near as good as the horizontal lines.
I’m sure most were more worried about the AM radio and power window options
Within a generation, this car was little more than an Oldsmobile personal luxury coupe. So, all that innovation and hype came to naught.
A car company can go out of its way to make a completely different kind of car, but that commitment has to go beyond boosting sale numbers. What GM revealed with the Toronado, was that sale numbers is all that mattered.
The FWD was to the Toronado as the plastic poly-vinyl door skins were to Saturn, Fiero and Dust-Buster vans. A sales gimmick.
I think GM approached the Toronado with the attitude that it had to drive just like a Ninety-Eight Holiday coupe, but with better winter traction.
It spent a bundle of money to engineer and build a car with a new drivetrain configuration that drove pretty much like every other GM full-size coupe, only with much poorer brakes.
I know I’m late to the party here, but that drive train turned out to be quite robust. It was used through the late ’70’s on the Toronado, Riviera and Eldorado, and also on the GMC motor home. The motor home was considered state of the art at the time it was produced.
The original Toronado brakes? Well, that was a swing and a miss.
My parents had a ’67 Toronado from around ’70 to ’73, and both will recall that its driving dynamics were far superior to anything they had ever experienced before. Excellent winter traction (we’re North Dakota people), and rock-solid on dry pavement in the summer to 130 mph plus. Not too much traffic up here so braking wasn’t an issue. In short, the Toro was *anything* but a GM Deadly Sin; on the contrary, it embodied the excellence that was Peak GM. I don’t care what Herr Professor Doktor Niedermayer might say to the contrary…
Your comment made me chuckle. My grandfather (on my father’s side) was officially addressed as Herr Professor Doktor Doktor Doktor Niedermeyer (yes, he had three doctorates). Me? I’m a high school dropout, so what would I know about the Toronado?
Seriously, I never said the Toronado was a “bad car” (except for the brakes). It was a waste of engineering money and talent, and was quite obviously a dead end. And it didn’t sell well either, so there’s that too. But it would undoubtedly have been a great car with which to gobble up the miles quickly zooming across ND.
Having experienced academia in both Germany and the U.S., it’s been interesting to compare how each regards those with more than one doctorate. Of course, in the U.S.–and possibly the entire English Sprachraum–it doesn’tmatter how many doctorates you have, you’re still just “Doctor.” Not so in Germany, Austria, etc.; no, then the person’s form of address must account for *every* doctorate, whether “earned” or “honorary.” I never got used to that in Germany…
What issue is this magazine? I don’t see it mentioned in the text.
Thanks
Amazing and interesting to see that very British product, the BMC Mini, one of the best known fwd cars of the time. BMC, the British equivalent of General Motors, was a very forward looking car corporation, whose three best selling models were fwd by the mid sixties and were praised for their handling and excellent ride, using Hydragas and rubber cones. Sadly, though, unlike the Toronado, none of these were capable of 135 mph and air conditioning was only available as an option on Rolls Royces, although fuel consumption was significantly better and parking was easier.
As someone from Britain, where you had to be seriously wealthy to afford a car that could do more than 110 mph in the sixties and where 2 litres was considered a large engine, it’s amazing far ahead American cars were in terms of performance and how a V8 engined car was in the price range of most people. I daresay a two year old Toronado that was traded in for a 1968 model could be picked up quite cheaply and would have all the factory options fitted. In Britain, at the same time, a two year old car that could do 130 mph would be beyond the reach of most buyers and, of course, it would probably be an exotic like a Ferrari. How much better we considered American cars at the time.
I have a 66 Toro. It’s just a joy. It’s a car that deserves to be seen.
I was a regular reader of Road Test magazine back in the late 1960’s. I bought the April ’69 issue that tested the ’69 Toronado and the Buick Riviera. Both of these models were at the end of their mid 60’s run and annual face lifts had ruined the clean good looks of the original models. The testers seemed to feel that the Toronado’s restyle was an improvement, probably because it made it look more mainstream. Their conclusion was that the Toronado drove like a conventional personal car that had better traction in inclement weather. They concluded that the average driver wouldn’t be able to tell that the car was FWD.
This was in contrast with the Riviera, which they felt was exactly what a personal car should be; quiet, smooth, powerful, silent and comfortable. I had been a fan of the original Toro, I remember looking at one in a used car lot with my Dad back in ’68. The car seemed so long and low, with the short tailed rear deck,and those impressive wheel arches. The dual exhaust exited through the bumper with dedicated circular cut outs, this is always a feature that I favor, and appropriately enough, it was one of the attractions in the selection of my Flex.
In the 90’s when I bought my first Riviera, a ’71, I was wary of the FWD set up, I’d seen the Chilton and Motor’s repair manuals that depicted the CV joints that contained a number of oversized ball bearings, and roller bearings, held in place by a number of snap rings and other complicated fitments. I steered clear of old Toros and Eldos and stuck with the conventional RWD Rivs.
I think that the ’66 Toronado was a design breakthrough, it sure seemed like a Car of the Future, as least to my teen aged brain. In that same issue there was a road test and thorough examination of the Mercedes 300SEL 6.3. I was impressed by how hard this car ran, it was a true Supercar that would blow away any current muscle car. None other than local legends, Dean Moon and AK Miller were featured in the engineering review. To me, it was just dull looking four door sedan, without a/c, that cost much more than the featured Toro and Riv. I was left with the hope that in the Future, there would be a melding of the style of the two American personal cars with the engineering and performance of the German Mercedes. It was a long wait.
I have the October 1969 issue of Car and Driver in front of me. They handed a 300SEL 6.3 over to Don Garlits. It was capable of quarter mile times between 14.2 and 14.6 seconds, which made it competitive with all but the hottest muscle cars of the day. Street Hemis were meaningfully quicker. Its superiority lay in its composure at high cruising speeds, which was remarkable considering it had an antique suspension system that lacked ball-joints, anti-dive geometry and its low pivot swing arm rear didn’t work with an anti-roll bar, leading to massive understeer which tempted the driver to back off so the tail swung around. It also had brakes that Detroit wouldn’t put on a sedan for decades.
Putting a vinyl top on a first generation Toronado reminds me of when Cadillac dealers pimp out GM’s efforts to make contemporary luxury cars.
When I was a Junior in High School, I went to the local Oldsmobile/Cadillac dealership to get my annual collection of new car literature (that I still have). I not only got the literature on the Toronado, but also a flexible record “The Sounds of Toronado”. I thought it was so cool. I still have it also.
One of the docs in my small town had a blue one; not sure if it was a “66” or a “67”.
I know he replaced it come 1973 with a two door “98”. That one was dark green/black top.
A car I should have paid more attention to. A neighbor got a very early one. At 11 or 12 or so it was just another car to me. Mostly. Even at that young age I somehow got it was something special, but I wasn’t sure how or why. I do recall being appalled even at that young age that with the hood opened I couldn’t see the ground, anywhere. Quirky neighbor I guess, a year or two later he got a full on VW Westphalia camper van to replace the Toronado. I liked it better.