Personal Luxury With Power

When Ford introduced the Thunderbird in 1955, it was intended to try to take a bite out of the huge number of sales being racked up by Chevy's Corvette. But the Ford brain trust didn't directly target the Vette with their marketing strategy, instead dubbing their T-Bird as a "personal luxury car." This basically established a new classification in the ongoing attempt to entice buyers.

Ford's personal luxury car was a hit and though it did succeed in stealing a few potential Vette owners away, it also robbed from other lines and brands. The Thunderbird embraced its new image and by the introduction of the third generation in 1961 it had become more luxury than sports car.

General Motors decided that they needed something to compete with what they were seeing as a lucrative market. Enter Oldsmobile stylist David North who created the initial design of what was to be the Toronado. Though the people behind the car, including GM styling chief Bill Mitchell, wanted a smaller frame, GM insisted that the new Toronado share its shell with Buick's personal luxury car the Riviera. But while the 119 inch wheel base and 211 inch frame was shared, little else was.

Since these were the halcyon year of the muscle era, engineers decided to give the Toronado a performance based 425 cubic inch Super Rocket V8 engine with a Rochester Quadrajet four barrel carburetor that helped it to generate 385 horse power and 475 foot pounds of torque. It used a Turbo-Hydramatic three speed automatic transmission and something that hadn't been seen coming from an American auto maker since the last Cords rolled off the line in 1937: front wheel drive. Keep in mind this was a luxury car with an automatic transmission but still clocked in a 0-60 time of under 10 seconds. In a word, the car was fast.

With mostly minor cosmetic changes and the introduction of a 455 cubic inch V8 that pushed up to 400 horse power, the first generation of the Toronado ran fairly successfully through the 1970 model year.

Introduced in 1971, the second generation saw wholesale changes that took the car away from being a tourer into full blown luxury class. The car got bigger, both longer and wider, now matching the dimensions of the full sized cars such as the Cadillac Eldorado and the Olds Delta Ninety Eight. Performance was still there though, through the change in the way horse power was measured during this time, the 455 cubic inch V8 fell first to 250 horses and later, thanks to new regulations, to 215. The Toronado was part of GM's first experiment in driver's and passenger side air bags.

The car began to shrink with the third generation in 1979 in an attempt to meet tougher fuel economy standards. An optional V6 power plant was made available as well. By the fourth generation, introduced in 1986, it was smaller than when it was originally introduced. This last generation saw the car powered by a smaller 231 cubic inch V6. The run ended in 1992 as buyers were firmly caught up in the SUV craze that hurt a number of family cars.

The Toronado seen here is a first generation model from 1967.