Oldsmobile Toronado

Start with what the Oldsmobile Toronado is: a 2-door coupe with 425 cuin 385 hp Rocket V8, built from 1965 to 1992, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to David North, Bill Mitchell.

The story

The Oldsmobile Toronado is a personal luxury car manufactured and marketed by the Oldsmobile division of General Motors from 1966 to 1992 over four generations. The Toronado was noted for its transaxle version of GM's Turbo-Hydramatic transmission, making it the first U.S.-produced front-wheel drive automobile since the demise of the Cord 810/812 in 1937.

The Toronado used the GM E platform introduced by the rear-wheel drive Buick Riviera in 1963 and adopted for the front-wheel drive 1967 Cadillac Eldorado. The three models shared the E platform for most of the Toronado's 26-year history.

What is underneath

The engine is 425 cuin 385 hp Rocket V8; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 4496 lb. Drive goes through a 3-speed TH-425 automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 119.0 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.

Its place in the line

In the Oldsmobile line-up the Oldsmobile Toronado has a clear place: the factory was Lansing, Michigan (Lansing Car Assembly), United States. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Alfa Romeo Spider, the Dodge Charger, the Lamborghini Miura. Nearby in the Oldsmobile catalogue sit the Oldsmobile 442 and the Oldsmobile 88.

Owning one today

MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Oldsmobile Toronado has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.