CarBrandLogos archive · Oldsmobile · 1966

OldsmobileToronado

American front-wheel drive, revived after nearly thirty years and 425 cubic inches.

Photo: Karrmann · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Oldsmobile history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Oldsmobile Toronado, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

No American manufacturer had built a front-wheel-drive car since the Cord 810 went out of production in 1937. Oldsmobile brought it back in 1966, and did it in the least cautious way imaginable: with a 425 cubic inch V8 in a large personal luxury coupe.

1967 Oldsmobile Toronado engine · No machine-readable author provided. Sfoskett~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY-SA 3.0

1970 Oldsmobile Toronado - Flickr - denizen24

Design and engineering

The engineering problem was fitting the drivetrain under a conventional bonnet. Oldsmobile's answer was to split the Turbo-Hydramatic transmission from the engine and mount it alongside, driven by a heavy-duty chain running over a sprocket, with the differential in the sump area. The package was compact enough to keep the engine longitudinal and low enough to allow a flat floor.

1970 Oldsmobile Toronado - Flickr - denizen24 · denizen24 · CC BY 2.0

In production

The body, developed from a David North sketch in Bill Mitchell's studio, is what people remember: a fastback with concealed headlamps, a strong wheelarch line and no external decoration to speak of. It won Motor Trend's Car of the Year award for 1966 and has been in design retrospectives ever since.

1972 Oldsmobile Tornado · GTHO · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

The drivetrain also went to work elsewhere, most visibly under the GMC motorhome. Later generations of the car itself grew heavier and then, after 1978, much smaller and much less distinctive, and the name was retired in 1992. The first two years remain the interesting ones.

At a glance