1966-67 Oldsmobile Toronado

How can muscle car collectors overlook anything this big?

by Rob Sass

The 1966 Toronado was America’s first front-wheel drive car since the Cord 810, 30 years earlier. It was certainly Oldsmobile’s (and possibly GM’s) last stylistic tour de force. The post-1967 years became increasingly unfriendly to this type of individuality as committees, legislators, and focus groups took over American automotive design. The project that eventually became the Toronado had a long gestation period and was cloaked in all the secrecy of a Cold War spy plane. The original designation, “XP-784,” even sounds like black ops. The name Toronado was chosen to further throw off inquiring minds, as it was also the name of an unrelated 1963 Chevrolet concept car. Although it sounds like a cross between a beef entrée and a mobile-home-marauding twister, it actually has no meaning in any language—perhaps that’s where the Japanese got the idea. The reason for the car’s long gestation period was its unique drive train. Europeans had been mass-producing...