Innovative Olds Toronado a sensation
Stylish front-wheel drive car delivered engineering pizzazz to luxury market
Although General Motors has been accused of being staid and conservative, it did introduce some interesting and exciting automotive engineering features in the 1960s.
Chevrolet and Oldsmobile pioneered passenger-car turbocharging, Chevrolet produced the rear engined Corvair with a flat-six, air cooled engine, and Pontiac Tempest introduced a rear transaxle, four-wheel independent suspension and curved “rope drive” driveshaft.
Another of its 1960s developments that had a significant impact was the introduction of front-wheel drive on the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.
While not the first American front-wheel drive, it was the first in the modern era. And while front-wheel drive is now a popular way of sending power to the road, its widespread use is relatively recent.
Although it took the American industry until the 1980s to make the widespread transition to front drive, significant pioneering work had been done earlier in both Europe and the United States.
Alvis of England and Tracta of France introduced production front-drive cars in the 1920s.
In 1931, Germany’s Audi introduced its truly advanced Front model, which predicted many present configurations with its front drive, transverse engine and four-wheel independent suspension, a layout revived by the British Motor Corp. Mini in 1959.
The car that probably did the most to popularize front-drive was the French Citroen Traction Avant built from 1934 to the 1950s.
On this side of the Atlantic, the Christie Front Drive Motor Co. had front-drive racers as early as 1904, with production models available by 1905. But the bestknown American front driver was the Cord, first introduced in 1929 as the L-29 model.
Although front drive continued to be used in Europe, it languished in North America until GM revived it in 1966 in the innovative Oldsmobile division as the Toronado model, followed a year later by Cadillac’s Eldorado.
Front-wheel drive had been considered by GM in the early 1950s for its LaSalle II Motorama concept car, but was abandoned because of time and cost considerations.
The idea was revived and promoted in the late 1950s by John Beltz, a bright young Olds engineer who later became Oldsmobile’s general manager.
Oldsmobile wanted a specialty car to compete with the successful “personal luxury” cars Buick Riviera and Ford Thunderbird.
But Beltz envisioned something with extra engineering pizzazz. He rallied his colleagues and convinced the corporation to let Oldsmobile build a front-drive car.
The 1966 front-drive Toronado was a sensation. With a wheelbase of 3,023 millimetres, overall length of 5,359 mm and weight of 2,041 kg, it was so big and heavy some skeptics predicted that front-wheel drive would not be successful on a vehicle so large.
To power this big car, Olds used a 7.0 litre overhead valve 385 horsepower V-8 mounted in the normal longitudinal position with the torque converter in its usual location at the rear of the engine.
To achieve front-wheel drive, the three-speed Hydra-Matic was “folded” around 180 degrees and mounted on the left side of the engine, where it was driven by a 51 mm wide multi-link chain.
Because the drive axles occupied the area normally used by front coil springs, Oldsmobile replaced them with longitudinal torsion bars. Rear suspension was a beam axle with single-leaf springs.
The feature that initially impressed prospective Toronado buyers the most was the virtually flat floor front and rear.
Eliminating the transmission hump and driveshaft tunnel enabled Oldsmobile to build a true six-passenger car.
The Toro’s styling was almost as dramatic as the engineering. Its nose was made to appear even longer by stretching the leading edges of the fenders forward ahead of the hood to subtly emphasize the front-drive feature.
Hidden headlamps pioneered by the 1936 fwd Cord 810 were used. Substantial fender flares front and rear gave a muscular look, and the short, sloped, fastback ended in an abrupt vertical chop following the precept of pioneering German aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm.
The Toronado was well received by the motoring press and public. Motor Trend made it their car of the year and Car Life magazine awarded it its engineering excellence award.
Almost 41,000 1966 Toros were sold, which would turn out to be the best sales year for the first generation Toro, which lasted until 1970.
Cadillac joined Oldsmobile in 1967 with its front-wheel drive Toronado clone, the Eldorado. These two models remained GM’s front-drive flagships until the introduction of the 1980 compact X-cars (Chevrolet Citation, et al.) in mid-1979.
The Toro/Eldo twins provided GM with the confidence and reservoir of front-wheel drive engineering experience that would prove invaluable in their almost universal transformation to front-wheel drive in the 1980s.
The front-wheel drive Toronado also provided the powertrain for GMC’s stylish front-drive motor home, enabling it to provide a low, flat floor front to rear.