The comparison of the Toronado to the Riviera is slightly askew from the more directly similar Cadillac Eldorado, which used the same GM front wheel drive system, whereas Riviera comparison leads to Thunderbird, Lincoln Continental Mark cars, and then in '67, even the larger intermediate AMC Marlin.

It's true that Buick rejected front-wheel drive for the Riviera until the late 1970s, but the Riviera, Eldorado, and Toronado all shared the same E-body shell. It would be reasonable to describe them as fraternal triplets; not identical, but closely related.

Although the Toronado was not that mechanically similar to the Riviera, the need to share the latter's body shell strongly influenced its design, particularly its overall size. Their overall dimensions are nearly identical. They were also direct competitors; the Toronado was actually a few hundred dollars more expensive than the Riviera, but their "fully equipped" prices were very similar.

All the personal-luxury cars were intended to compete in the same market segment as the Thunderbird. The Eldorado and Continental Mark were aimed at a richer buyer, of course, but they were conceptually similar to their less-expensive brethren. The Eldo, naturally, was very similar to the Toronado, whereas the Continental Mark III was derived from the Thunderbird.

My parents owned 73, 75, and 79? Toronados and loved them all.
I bought a 74 Toronado 455 from a junk yard and drove it for several years and many miles. I don't remember the brakes being poor, but it was a monster of a car; the hood was a mile long. It was one of my all-time favorite cars.
Interesting memories:
Mine was an dual airbag car. GM offered it as an option for a couple years, before it disappeared for +20 years.
The ride was so smooth, I blew a rear tire and never realized it until ALL the rubber was gone and I was running 60mph on the rim.
I probably owned it for a year before I "burned rubber". OMG! The torque steer was almost uncontrollable! I was amazed by the tire smoke curling over the front fenders.

Great story! I would love to find such a car today. The airbags made it super rare too, only about 10,000 cars were made with those over three years. That's not just Toros, but over all of Cadillac, Olds and Buick-about 9 models in total.

The story abot blowing a tire at speed is impressive! In a way, I would love to exprience something like that in a car.

Thanks again for another great article.

I owned a 66 Toronado. It was indeed a stunning car to look at. The brakes, however, were hair-raisingly bad. What for a modern car was just a normal stop could become a standing on the pedal and pray longest moment of your life count your sins event.

How they could allow this design to be produced is beyond me. And yet, its sheer massive sculptural beauty compelled me to hang on to it for many years.

The Oldsmobile engineers were aware that the brakes had their work cut out for them -- that's why they had finned drums and the slotted wheels -- but I've never heard a convincing answer as to why they didn't use discs, at least in front. The Toronado was an expensive car, so cost wasn't as pressing an issue as on an A-body. A set of Corvette discs all around would have made the Toronado a lot more reassuring to drive.

I have a 92 red Trofeo that I bought new in April of 92 after two years searching for the perfect car. It is just getting ready to turn 70,000 miles.........and is still the most beautiful car I have ever seen.

I'm a kind of car nut, constantly looking at new models.......but nothing has come close to my Toronado in terms of aesthetical beauty.

I have two 92 Tornado Trofeos and both of them will not start after running for awhile. I have to wait about 30 minutes for the car to cool down before it can be started again. Otherwise I love the car and put up with it. If there are any fix its I would like to know about it.

Olds built two front wheel drive prototypes (using Corvair bodies) with an over-square 60 degree V6 engine transverse mounted, and automatic transmission. By the time we had these things running around, the F85 dressed up as a Cutlass was selling like hotcakes, so the idea of a small fwd car faded. I drove one of the cars once or twice, as it was being used as a utility car at the time. When Buick developed the 215 aluminum V8 into the iron V6, Olds wanted to use their own aluminum V6 from the fwd for the ’64 F85, but Buick won out and Olds had to use the Buick V6 as a base engine. I saw one of these Olds V6 engines sitting on the floor a couple of years ago at the Reo/Olds museum and no one there even knew what it was.

We built up the first Toronado prototype was using a production Buick Riviera that we modified for the fwd package.

John Beltz was a real class guy. Died early from a brain tumor I think.

Interesting! I knew that Olds had a V6 prototype, but I didn't know it was aluminum, as well.

John Beltz was definitely an interesting guy. John DeLorean later described sitting next to Beltz in a big group meeting with senior management; Beltz turned to DeLorean and whispered, "I wouldn't hire any of these guys to run a gas station." They were of like minds in that.

I'm not sure what kind of cancer John Beltz had. One source I saw made it sound like it was prostate cancer, but whatever it was, it spread very quickly. A sad thing.

Olds had an experimental iron V6, probably in 1948 or 1949. Looked just like the 303, same style heads and valve covers, manifolds, etc. Might have had a balance shaft in it, everyone back then thought a V6 needed one. Don’t know whatever happened to all those old experimental engines.

The aluminum V6 was a 60 degree engine, a small and narrow package, very modern, and as I said was very over-square - big bore and very short stroke. One of the engines we evaluated in our development was a Lancia V6. A nice engine too, but not as nice as the Olds. The Buick V6 was a 215 V8 cast in iron without the front two cylinders. We had a early prototype for test, from Buick I think, but maybe we at Olds built it up. Anyway this prototype was a cast iron 215 V8 with nothing in the front two cylinders. Cheap and easy, just cast a V8 in iron. This is a 90 degree block. At the time no one thought that a 90 degree V6 would work because of the uneven firing. Today there are big diesel 90 degree V6 engines.

For the Toronado transmission drive, we first tested timing belts instead of the chains that were eventually used. The belts were quieter and didn’t require lube, but belt life was a question.

long time ago…

Was that the three-liter engine Charles Kettering developed to test the benefits of high compression ratios? I recall that there was an experimental engine running 12:1 CR, too high for any pump gas at the time.

You've already done the Toronado and Eldorado. (Both are terrific write-ups, BTW.) Are you planning on doing a write-up on GM's UPP-powered GMC Motorhome?

The GMC Motorhome will appear in Part 2, coming soon.

Too bad you neglected the last Toros...
My daily driver is a 1990 Trofeo, and it is as fun to drive as the Alfa 164 I had! 28 mpg in mixed driving, too.
And folks still say it was GMs best looking car that year...

The second part of this story, coming soon, will talk more about the later Toros.

tks, i know u put alot of work into this

Good to have you back writing new content, Aaron! Your work is in my opinion incomparable, and has been missed.

My best friend was an ASE Master tech, and he owned an immaculate 1980 Toronado that came with the 350 Oldsmobile engine.
He put in a rebuilt 403, but it came with a piston slap... so he "dropped in" a high-compression 455 from a wrecked late-60's 98.
Of course, he had many problems to overcome, but he was an extremely skilled fabricator. By the time he got done, the 455 was running Holley ProJection, a modified '74 HEI distributor, 2.5" exhaust from a diesel, a fake catalytic converter, and about its ninth or tenth 'strengthened' TH325 transmission (sending torque through the fifth or sixth differential). I found him a set of heavy torsion bars from a diesel Eldorado, and an Eldo Touring Coupe donated its swaybars and rear springs. We had to put a steel T-brace to tie the front of the powertrain down: otherwise, the AC compressor would pop up high enough to lift the hood.

This car was ridiculous. Dry roads were like rain-slicked pavement; damp roads were like glare ice, and snow? Forget it! It was capable of hiding itself in a cloud of tire smoke, and it would chirp the tires when floored at 60+ mph. At highway speeds, he could actually warn the passenger "Brace yourself: I'm gonna bounce your head off the headrest..." and, even though they tried to hold still, flooring the pedal would cause their head to snap back like a rear-end collision.

In one of his "Miscellaneous Ramblings" columns, Road & Track editor John R. Bond said he thought it was pertinent that the Toronado wasn't offered with a stick shift. He speculated that snap shifts would have been rough on the Hy-Vo chain.

While this may have been true, my 2 cents is that the typical Toronado buyer probably would have preferred automatic anyway.

Only similar drivetrain layout I can think of (longitudinal engine, transmission alongside engine, chain drive) would be the Saab 99 and early 900. But Saab turned the engine end for end to put the flywheel in front.

Oldsmobile engineers told Car and Driver that they were still not confident a manual gearbox would work with the UPP. The torque converter played an important role as a vibration and shock damper, as well as acting as a fluid clutch. Even if it didn't present chain durability problems, a friction clutch and manual gearbox may have been hard pressed to provide acceptable levels of NVH. (It's worth noting that reviewers of the original Pontiac Tempest, with its big slant four engine, found that it was notable smoother than the manual-shift car, for much the same reason.)

But yeah, even if they had gotten a manual gearbox to work, it's hard to see many Toronado buyers caring, even as a no-cost option. In terms of flexibility, the Turbo Hydramatic didn't give up very much to a four-speed, in any case. Breakaway multiplication (torque converter x low gear) was 5.46:1. The switch-pitch converter acted as a sort of 3.5-speed transmission; the stator pitch would change when you stabbed the throttle, providing a torque boost without an actual downshift (which was also available if you pressed hard enough to trigger the kickdown). A well-ratioed four-speed might have given better acceleration in the 0-50 mph range, but not enough to make buyers in that class want to shift for themselves.

The Strato bucket seats were a no-cost option on the Toronado Deluxe from 1966 to 1970. For 1966-67, cars so equipped could also be ordered with a short consolette with storage compartment as could the Eldorado and Riviera (latter also available with a full shift console). The 1968-70 Toronado Deluxe models with the bucket seat option could be ordered with a full center console that included floor shifter and storage compartment. That console was nothing special as it was the same one found in bucket-seat equipped Cutlass Supreme and 442 coupes, and the full-sized 67-68 Delta 88 Custom and 69-70 Delta Royale coupes.

While bucket seats were considered a very important part of the personal-luxury image of most such cars (i.e. Grand Prix, Thunderbird), they just weren't very popular among Toronado (or Eldorado)buyers due to the front-drive, flat floor configuration, so the Strato bench seat was the most popular for both cars. Riviera also went to a standard bench seat with the '66 models, which turned out to be more popular than the optional buckets and Ford made a bench seat standard on the '68 T-Bird in response to the popularity of such seats in Riviera, Toronado and Eldorado.

The 1971-78 Toronados didn't offer any bucket seat option, just a standard notchback bench or optional 60/40 bench in cloth or Morocceen vinyl, with velour added for 1974. Sportiness was out and Brougham-style luxury was in - with the base model now called the Toronado Custom (trim same as previous Deluxe models) and the uplevel was now the Brougham. Due to the slow sales of the original Toro, Oldsmobile chose the '67-70 Eldorado for the styling direction of the second-gen Toro while the flagship Caddy got boxier styling with opera windows and a convertible - and Buick went wild with the boattailed Riviera.

Although the '71 Toronado still came with the 455 Rocket as standard power, it was considerably detuned as part of GM's mandate that its engines be designed for regular leaded or unleaded gasoline.

It's interesting to note that while buckets were a no-cost option on the Toronado deluxe, they were not free on the Eldorado -- Cadillac charged $184 with leather, or $292 with cloth (as a special order). As the interior photo in this article indicates, with the Deluxe interior's upholstery design, a Strato-Bench with the armrests folded down looks like buckets at a casual glance. Since most contemporary buckets aren't any more supportive than that anyway, there wasn't much reason to switch.

The installation of bench seats in the Thunderbird was only partly in response to market trends. Until the 1967 model, bench seats had not really been possible with the four-seat Thunderbirds from a structural standpoint. The '58-'66 unitized T-Birds had a very prominent driveshaft tunnel, which also served as a structural spine. Since there was no hiding it, the Thunderbird design team decided to decorate it and turn it into an interior styling feature. The '67 models went back to body-on-frame construction, so the tunnel was no longer any more prominent than any other RWD car; since there was also the Landau sedan, a bench seat made sense. However, the Thunderbird design team also said they had essentially exhausted the possibilities for the previous interior treatment, which had been so widely imitated. I think it's likely they would have gone for six-passenger seating, even if GM had not.

We'll talk more about the styling and features of the second-generation Toronado in part two. It's worth pointing out that the trend toward Eldorado styling was apparent even in 1970, the last year of the original body. I don't have a rear three-quarter shot of the 1970 Toronado, but if you look at the rear fender treatment and the reshaping of the rear fenders, it definitely looks like they were straining for an Eldorado look. I've reached out to some contacts to see about getting more specific information on the design process of the '71 Toronado.

Strange that Cadillac charged more for the bucket seats with cloth upholstery than for the leather. Usually it's the other way around - leather was an extra-cost $200 option on T-Bird during this time. And despite the high cost of the bucket-seat option in Eldorado, you still got only a consolette - no floor shifter to go with it. And it wasn't very popular so the option was dropped with the advent of the second-gen front-drive Eldo in 1971.

The next Eldorado to offer bucket seats was the 1982 Touring Coupe, which included leather upholstery and a short consolette. Eldorado would not offer a full shift console until the downsized '86 model.

The buckets option did not include leather upholstery, which was a separate, $158 option. If you ordered leather, the buckets were an extra $184. Without leather upholstery, you could only get bucket seats as a special order, which then cost $292. So, in that sense, the cloth buckets were $50 cheaper.

Extremely confusing. But that was the way Detroit was back then. And I suspect the short consolette was yet another separate option, too. It too is possible that Cadillac made the cloth bucket seats an expensive special order (at only $50 cheaper) to discourage such orders or possibly to better sell the leather option. Actually, cloth bucket seats weren't all that common back then - most bucket interiors were only offered with all-vinyl upholstery, or optional (extra-cost) leather on the more expensive models such as T-Bird, Grand Prix, Corvette, etc.

Oldsmobile didn't offer leather upholstery on any of its cars in this period - not even the flagship Ninety-Eight, where the convertible had Morocceen vinyl and closed bodies had cloth. The last Olds I'm aware of to have real leather seats was the '65 Starfire (the final '66 version was downgraded to all-vinyl to lower the price to the market segment previously held by the short-lived 64-65 Jetstar I, which was directly competitive to the Pontiac Grand Prix).

Olds would not offer leather as an option on the Toronado until 1978, final year for the '71 body before the '79 downsizing. Buick offered real leather on the first '63 Riviera but dropped it after that year and would not offer such trim again until 1974.

Odd "mandatory option" combinations are still quite common, so that much hasn't changed.

Aside from cost, I think Detroit went through a period where automakers didn't really see the advantage of vinyl (or actual, rather than simulated wood), and "synthetic" was not necessarily a derogatory term. Detroit was getting better at making leatherette look like leather, and it usually wore better. (Finished automotive leather upholstery didn't necessarily look that rich, either, which is also the case with some modern leather packages.)

During this time, Pontiac claimed that its Morrokide vinyl upholstery had the "look and feel of top quality leather" but with far more durability and practicality for everyday use. The Wide-Track people during this time only used leather on the top-line Bonneville convertible through 1965 (from 1966 to 1970 only when the Brougham option was ordered) and as a $199 option on the 69-70 Grand Prix but wasn't very popular so it was dropped for 1971.

The early 1970s set an all-time low for the use of leather upholstery in American cars. In 1972 you could count fingers on two hands all the cars that still offered real hide either as standard or optional and several makes didn't offered leather on any model including American Motors, Plymouth, Dodge, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick.

Only the luxury makes including Cadillac, Lincoln and Imperial offered it on most models while the lesser makes only on certain flagships including Chevrolet (Corvette), Ford (Thunderbird), Mercury (Cougar XR-7), and Chrysler (New Yorker).

The Toronado section of the '67 Oldsmobile full-line brochure shows a photo of an all-vinyl bucket seat with the sentence "If you think buckets are basic, these tailored Morocceen upholstered bucket seats are available at no extra cost on Toronado Deluxe."

I also have the '66 Olds full-line brochure on which the listing of popular options on all model lines on the back cover. The one for "Strato bucket seats" states under the Toronado heading as "Optional".

Also note that while Eldorado offered bucket seats as an expensive extra-cost option in either cloth or optional leather, Toronado only offered them in all-vinyl or possibly cloth-and-vinyl as did Riviera, while T-Bird offered buckets with vinyl, cloth or leather.

The Eldorado's most direct competitor, the Continental Mark III introduced in 1968 did not offer bucket seats as an option or otherwise. Only seating choice was a Twin Comfort 50/50 bench with dual armest in cloth or leather. Just as Eldorado shared body/chassis with Riviera and Toronado, the Mark III used the Thunderbird base.

In addition to the front-drive flat floor of Toronado and Eldorado, probably another reason that bucket seats were become increasingly passe were the emergence of even sportier personal-luxury cars based on intermediate platforms such as the Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo, which were lower in base price but could be similarly optioned in plushness and power.

I haven't done a detailed study of Toronado interiors, but some contemporary reviewers, notably Car Life, were not terribly impressed with the Toronado's interior materials, either stylistically or in terms of quality. Car Life's reviewer felt that leather upholstery would have been more appropriate for the first Toronado's GT character, and wondered if Oldsmobile had cut corners on the interior to make up for the cost of the drivetrain.

Toronado interiors on the early models were no better or worse that that of Riviera or T-Bird, or even other Oldsmobiles - and pretty much on par with the C-body Ninety-Eight. Possible that the tester was comparing the Toro's interior to that of the Thunderbird's "rolling jukebox" full of gadgetry or the 1963-65 Riviera's dash with round instruments, brightwork and walnut trim. Both of those cars had 4-place cabins with bucket seat/console interiors.

A friend's dad had a 66 and a 70 Toro. The 66 was a very impressive car, although I never drove it or the 70 model. I thought the 66 was and is one of most beautiful cars ever. The 70 looked a prehistoric beast and was just ug-lee. It's a shame that Olds felt it had to make the Toro styling just as boring as the rest of the line, which traditionally had about as much flair as a top-loading washing machine. They screwed up the Aurora too by making a (surprisingly) lesser copy as a Riviera and diluting the cachet the car had for a brief while. I did drive an Aurora and it was one of better 90s American cars I've experienced. The Olds staff never seemed to lack for imagination but it seems they were always stifled by clueless division and GM management.And then they wondered what happened...

Well, 'clueless' needs some qualification. While the Oldsmobiles of the seventies didn't win a lot of critical acclaim for their styling, they were amazingly successful. Olds displaced Pontiac in the number-three sales slot in 1972, and held on to that position in 1973 and from 1975-1981. (They lost out to Plymouth in 1974, thanks mainly to the OPEC embargo.) By 1977, they were consistently selling more than a million cars a year. The second- and third-generation Toronados, while never a big hit, sold a lot better than the original. So, while I don't care much for the aesthetics personally, it certainly worked commercially. Whether they would have maintained that success into the eighties if not for the dramatic loss of autonomy under Roger Smith, though, is an interesting question.

Indeed.
The Buick T-types of the 80s sure performed and handled tho GM tried to make Olds the sport-luxo group, but then into the 90s GM made Buick more so as the sport-touring division, with Olds less sporty. The 4th gen Toros/Trofeos were the sportiest E-boies, and the last Trofeos were great road cars. MT compared the Trofeo to the BMW 326i and the Olds beat it in the slalom, and Motorweek TV proclaimed the Trofeo the rebirth of the American GT, just in time for the SUV craze/insanity.

The fourth-generation Toronado introduced in 1986 was a sales disaster due to a drastic downsizing to near-subcompact dimensions (in comparison to generations 1 and 2, and still much smaller than the "downsized" 79-85 models which were mid-sized). It did have more common styling to other Oldsmobiles such as the split grille (with hidden headlights for first time since '69)but looked way too much like a Cutlass Calais that sold for half the price.

The '86 Toronado (along with Riviera and Eldorado) were designed in 1981 when gasoline prices were $1.50 per gallon and rumors of $2 to $3 per gallon gas by 1985 were running rampant so GM pushed the panic button and made plans to drastically downsize all of their cars including the C-body luxury models and the B-body full-sized family cars - both of which also courted disaster when their front-drive replacements appeared due to the fact that gas prices had dropped to around $1 per gallon and Americans weren't "thinking small" and went back to larger cars.

Production for 1968-70 W-34 optioned Toronados:

1968: 111 (NOT 150, as mentioned in this article)
1969: ?
1970: 5,341. 1970 W-34s were referred to as GTs.
0-60 times was about 7.5 seconds
On a good day, quarter mile times were about 14.7 sec @ 97 mph.
1968 w-34 only had the "Force Air-Induction" and radtior switch 1968 and 1970 W-34s had a notched rear bumper, 1969 did not.
All W-34shave aOM transmission code and dual exhaust. Most 1968-70 Toros are/were single exhaust, when these E-Bodeis left the Lansing factory.

Jerry,

If you look back at the text, it does not say there were 150 W34 cars in 1968; it says there were fewer than 150. I've seen at least two sets of conflicting figures -- one was 124, one was 111. Since I didn't have a definite total, I said "fewer than 150," just to illustrate the general magnitude of production (i.e., not a lot).

Automotive Mileposts quotes 2,844 for 1969 W34 production. I don't know what their source was.

I was a 10 year old car nut in 1965 when the Toronado was introduced and my parents were "Oldsmobile people", so I followed all the news about the Toro. I remember very well the reports of the many underwhood fires in '66 Toronados. I don't remember the cause, but there was a recall to correct it. I tried in vain to get my parents to buy one, but in addition to having only two doors, they thought it was ugly. I still think it's one of the best-looking cars ever made.

I've heard various anecdotal reports of Toronado engine fires, but I wasn't able to find any hard data on recalls, etc. -- if you know of any specific sources, please let me know!

the la salle II show cars mentioned in the article- the 2 seat roadster and 4 seat/4 door hardtop- were both configured as f/r drivetrain, not fwd. joe bortz is currently restoring the roadster, and i had this car in my shop recently to renew the brake system. i also inspected the hardtop car for reference on the many parts missing from the roadster. both cars have identical drivetrains and chassis features, except the roadster has rear coil springs while the longer hardtop uses rear leafs.
the drivetrains are very convincing from the outside. all aluminum DOHC V6 with direct injection. all aluminum automatic transmission with, very very short center section as if it was all to be driven from the torque convertor without bands or planetaries. conventional driveshaft goes to a chassis mounted differential with independent axle shafts, but the wheel hubs are mounted on a large beam that goes behind the differential to both sides, so it is not truly independent. all done with very elaborate castings and chromed accessories such as starter, axle tubes, injection lines, etc, but everything is completely for show only. engine and trans have no internal parts nor do they include any castings where cylinders, cam, valves, etc could even be placed.
i've owned many toros and eldos over the years, still have my '66.
best regards
larry claypool

Thanks for the clarification!