1991 Oldsmobile Toronado - Sleep Well My Friend

Although I never owned one, I felt like I ran into an old friend when I saw this penultimate 1991 Oldsmobile Toronado at the Pull-A-Part in Cleveland, Ohio a couple of weeks ago. I half wanted to buy the whole thing and tow it home. Probably more than half wanted to. I've always been a fan of these 1990-1992 "Toro's". 

I was not, however, a fan of the 1986 to 1989 Toronado that preceded my old chum; above is a 1986. Too squat, too stubby and too small, it lacked the charm, character or "presence", whatever that means, any of its predecessors had going back to 1966.  

                 

Its predecessors include the O.G., class-of-1966 Toro, above left, that I think homely as hell. I much prefer the cleaner lines of the 1972 green giant on the right, vinyl roof and all. Bonus! Oldsmobile sold the '72's with a complimentary airplane. With regards to the 1986-1989's, though, in fairness, it's not like Oldsmobile designers, engineers and product planners came to the office one day and decided to screw up a staple of their portfolio. 

Facing five-dollar-a-gallon gas prices and wanting to remain in the high-end, personal luxury car space, General Motors felt they had no choice but to starve their "E-body" Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Riviera and Olds Toronado to near death. The new shrink-rayed Toronado for instance was a whopping 18.2-inches shorter, over half-an-inch less wide, 6.1-inches narrower wide and 545-pounds less heavy than 1985 models like this one. 

Thing is, $5-a-gallon-gas never happened, at least not back then. Even by the time work began on these cars in earnest in 1982, gas prices had dropped and stabilized. Therefore, when these debuted, it was like a pharmaceutical company today debuting a new, state-of-the-art Covid-era mask. 

That these cars were so much smaller than what they replaced not necessarily what cratered sales by more than 60-percent; they just weren't good looking cars. I'd say they were ugly. 

Aside from how the cars looked, another massive gaffe was that that they resembled General Motors new-for-1985 "GM-20" or "N-body" cars like the Oldsmobile Calais, above is an '86, that cost thousands less. Adding insult to injury, GM charged upwards of 16-percent more for the shrunken Toro and other E-bodies. I guess GM figured they could charge more for less just like they did with the smaller-bodied 1976-1979 Cadillac Seville. 

Back to the drawing board, boys. For 1990, Olds designers shoveled more than a foot of bondo on the Toronado and injected a healthy dose of Botox into every body panel to plump up proportions. The 1990 reboot did not include an increase in wheelbase or much of anything underneath. Not a bad thing as the 1986 Toro's were fairly modern; rack-and-pinion steering, four-wheel-disc brakes, independent rear suspension with a transverse mounted fiberglass leaf spring, unibody construction, a V-6 with port fuel-injection and a ton of gimmicks and gizmos. 

While I'm not a fan of "plastic surgery" per se, actually, on paper, I abhor the idea, if the ends outweigh the means, I'm all about it. I, for one, was a big fan of the reboot. Sadly, it seemed, few others felt the same way. Shame too since all of these cars were vastly superior transportation conveyances compared to what they replaced. 

Back in the day, I couldn't touch one of these when new. These ran about twice what I paid for my 1990 Chevrolet Lumina Euro. 

Begs the question though, did the market shift away from personal luxury cars or did the market respond to cars they simply didn't appreciate any longer by not buying them?  

Oldsmobile replaced the Toronado, well, technically anyway, with the four-door only Aurora in 1994. Sleep well, my friend. 

1978 Continental Mark V - All You Can Eat Shrimp

I made a trip to the Cleveland Pull-A-Part recently in search of windshield wiper fluid nozzles for my wife's 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse and, wouldn't you know it, ended up spending more time looking at tasty treats than literally "pulling parts". Tastiest morsel I found was this 1978 Continental Mark V. 

Under the thundering flight path of JFK where I grew up in the 1970's, if you wanted to show off you "had it" or make it seem as though you did, you drove one of these two-and-a-half ton brutes. The hoity-toity's on the North Shore had moved over to Mercedes-Benz' and Bimmers but for us slobs "down there", we aspired to Continental Mark V's. 

Lincoln built these from 1977 to 1979, and they were a, no pun intended, massive hit selling more than 70,000 each year despite the automotive press citing how slow they were, how poorly they handled, the amount of gas they used and for their shoddy assembly. Mattered little as Ford rode these land yachts all the way to bank. 

The designer series editions, Givenchy, Pucci, Bill Blass, Cartier were quite popular, our green giant here is I believe a "Pucci". It may also be a "Diamond Jubilee" edition celebrating the 75th-anniversary of the Ford Motor Company's founding. 

Sadly, the most distinctive and polarizing feature on these cars, the trunk lid with the fake spare tire hump, was gone; someone actually need that or did end up as garage art? Those trunk humps were an homage to the 1956 and 1957 Continental Mark II's that had them. The trunk hump on those cars a tribute of sorts to Edsel Ford's legendary 1939-1942 and 1946-1948 Lincoln Continentals. 

Her Rolls-Royce-esque, "waterfall" front grill was missing as well. That I could definitely see on someone's garage wall or man-cave. The trunk lid though? 

I was surprised she still has the 460-cu. in. V-8 she was born with. Is it seized and won't turn? The air cleaner top is gone, that would be cool on a garage wall. Maybe not. 

Despite selling like all-you-can eat shrimp, with government mandated, corporate-average-fuel-economy standards going up to twenty-mpg for 1980, from 18 in 1978 and 19 in 1979, the Ford Motor Company had no choice but to shrink ray these cars for model-year 1980. 

The Ozempic they put these cars on resulting in the 1980 to 1983 Continental Mark VI, coincidences of coincidences, a 1983 was on the yard as well, humped trunk lid and waterfall grill intact. Ford designers duplicated every styling gimmick and doo-dad of the Mark V, albeit smaller, but these cars sold about half as well as the Mark V did. 

The Ford Motor Company actually marketed these cars as "Continental Mark's" and not Lincoln Continental Mark's. Stemmed from the 1956 and 1957 Continental Mark II's that were not Lincoln's but, technically anyway, a separate make. Subsequently, all Mark's through 1985 were "Continental Marks". 

 

1958 Rambler American - The Rambler-iest Rambler?

Mirror, mirror on the garage wall, which American Motors' car was the Rambler-iest Rambler of them all? Good question. "Rambler-iest Rambler" meant to denote the most unsophisticated, uncool, unhip, dorkiest, dweebiest, booger eating car AMC affixed "Rambler" to between 1955 and 1969. To me it's a toss-up between 1958 to 1960 and 1961 to 1963 "Rambler Americans". Push comes to shove; my money's on the '58-'60's. This well restored blue bomber is a 1958. 

"Rambler" was the primary brand of the American Motors Corporation, or "AMC", which was what the company was named after the merger of the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motors in 1954. Apparently, the new company determined there was sufficient brand equity and cache in "Rambler" since Nash had relative success with their compact, luxurious, fairly expensive and distinctively styled "Nash Rambler" (above) going back to 1950. 

Despite Nash's success with the compact Rambler, the new American Motors discontinued its production after 1955 and moved all production to a longer wheelbase car they branded as "Rambler". With it's "what-the-hell-is-that" styling, sales of these cars were roughly half of what they were projected to be. These 1956 and 1957 Rambler's ran a close third to the Rambler Americans for Ramblier-est Rambler. 

AMC updated styling on the "big" Ramblers for 1958 making them more somewhat more conventional looking. With the country headed for a recession, they also saw an opportunity in the low-priced, compact car space and repurposed Nash's old Rambler as the "American". 

With its lightweight, aerodynamic, unibody construction and feature rich interior, the 1950 Nash Rambler was considered quite advanced when new and still held its own in 1958 as a "Rambler American". Although, American Motors decided against the upscale interior detailing that made the Nash Rambler stand out from other small cars. They did, however, kibosh the controversial rear fender skirts; the fronts, which gave the Nash Rambler its unique inverted bathtub aesthetic, had been removed in 1955.

Not a fan of the fender skirted Nash Rambler were you? Careful what you wish for. That the rear axle doesn't align with the tear-drop fender opening doesn't do the toy-car like proportions of these cars any favors. 1958 to 1960 Rambler Americans were available only as two-door sedans. 

From this rear-three-quarter view, it doesn't look as proportionally out of balance as it does from other angles. The fishbowl effect of the lens on what I assume is an iPhone camera adds a robustness that these cars don't actually have too; iPhone's typically make things look better than they actually are. They can't do anything to make this car appear less like a design out of the 1940's rather than the '50's, though. Having the domestic compact car lane all to themselves, these sold fairly well. 

The stubby little American did relatively well, though. Attribute that to the growing popularity of small, imported cars in this country and a cheap car sold in a down economy.  

Once the Big Three came out with their compact cars in 1960, AMC's small car goose was cooked. AMC updated the American for 1961 changing little more than wrapper on the 1950 vintage Nash Rambler chassis. American did eventually come with a clean-sheet "American" in 1964. The four-door versions, new-for-'61, were built on a 108-inch-long wheelbase. 

There you have it, friend-oh, my pick for the Rambler-est Rambler of them all with '56 and '57's a close second.  Honorable mention to my old man's 1961 Rambler "Classic". 

 

1968 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe - The Look

I need another blog about a Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe like I need another hole in my trunk, but I thought I'd do a quickie today on this nice looking '68 that popped up on Marketplace recently not far from the Triple Wide. Asking price is $15,000. 

To review, the Impala Custom Coupe was new for 1968 using the formal rear roofline the Caprice coupe used. While I prefer the formal roof over the exaggerated, almost cartoonish swoopy fast back of the Impala Sport Coupe. how and why Chevrolet sold two-distinct versions of the same car, and got away with it, is nothing short of amazing. Then again, Chevrolet in the 1960's could sell a moldy ham sandwich on four-wheels and sell a quarter million of them. 

For your fifteen-grand, which I think is a ton of money for this car, you'd get what appears to be a fairly clean looking car but look deeper, and we see there's a "396" engine tag on the left front fender, a "307" tag on the right front. 

Poster of the ad claims this car has the 307 so good to go there, but what's up with the 396 tag? 

Rust? Accident? Something's up. Small detail? At $15,000, I don't think so. For the asking price, even with the flaws this car has, if it had the 396, I'd think it might be priced just about right. 

Zoom in and we see the seats are awash in black duct tape too. I don't know, for 15-grand, I'd need little things like the seats to be clean and engine tags to match. My wife probably wouldn't notice the engine tags at first, the taped-up seats she'd notice for sure and give me, "The Look of Death". 

I can live with the Chevy rally rims, these weren't available on non-SS models in 1968, Fender skirts on a '68 Impala coupe? Not a factory available option. 

If you have to have this, it's better bought closer to $10,000. The mis-matched engine tags, patched up seats along with the tiny engine, that comes with the Powerglide two-speed automatic it was born with, is enough to have me continue my search. 

 

1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass SL - Hard Pass

I've had five Chevrolet Lumina\Monte Carlo's, so I know a thing or two or ten about General Motors GM10 and W-bodies like this 1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass SL. This 168,000-mile redhead popped up for sale on Marketplace recently not far from the Triple Wide with an asking price of $2,500.

Seeing I'm perpetually in the market for a two-thousand-dollar beater and being a fan of these cars you'd think I'd be all over it. Well, while priced right, the combination of this engine with 168,000-miles on it, Cutlass' my least favorite of the GM10\W coupes and it being red all conspire to have me making a hard pass on it. 

Let's start with that engine, General Motors' LQ1, 3.4-liter, dual-overhead-cam, 24-valve V-6 they put in all GM10\W-bodies except the Buick Regal's. It was GM's first DOHC, four-valve per cylinder V-6 and was their answer to the Yamaha built, 3.0- and 3.2-liter DOHC V-6 of Ford Taurus SHO fame. Incidentally, while the poster of the Marketplace ad says this car has the "3400", the LQ1 was never known as that. The GM 3400 was a different engine although they're technically related; both started out as GM's 2.8-liter V-6 that first powered Chevrolet Citations back in 1979. GM built it from 1991 through 1997. 

There were a number of reasons for its short production run. The LQ1 was expensive to build and for customers to maintain and, frankly, it wasn't a very good engine. It was sluggish, thirsty, noisy and a bear to work on. Additionally, GM's "3800 Series II", an engine they had all along and eventually replaced it with, was smoother and more responsive, simpler, less expensive to build and maintain, made almost as much horsepower and torque, got great gas mileage and was bulletproof reliable. Parts are plentiful for it these days as well whereas LQ1 parts are hard to find. You'll pay through the throttle body for them too. 

Additionally, while I'm not a fan of any of the four-door variants of the GM10\W-bodies, the Oldsmobile Cutlass coupes are my least favorite of the two-door's. Especially these cladded-up 1992-1997 models. I don't think cladding per se to be an issue, it's just that in certain applications, like on these cars, it appears fussy, tacky and unnecessary. Hey, if I wanted a mid-'90's Pontiac Grand Am, I'd get a mid-'90's Pontiac Grand Am. The red finish does nothing for it either. 

On the inside things get a bit better although the monochromatic theme gets a little dreary after a while; these buckets are fabulous and except for a nick or two here and there, appear to be in great shape. If the air blows cold, whoever bought this did pretty well for themselves and they should keep it until something goes wrong with the engine. You never know, if the engine was well-maintained, the buyer could get three or more years out of it. They might get three months out of it too. 

I still find it amazing how in less than twenty-years, Oldsmobile went from being one of the best-selling automobile brands in the world to oblivion. Many blame the lack of sales of these cars for their undoing, seeing that in the height of Oldsmobile's success forty percent of their sales were Cutlass', there might be something to that. 

Oldsmobile sold these cars through 1997 replacing it in the middle of the model year with the Intrigue. Sales of the Intrigue, which were only available as four-door sedans, while good at first, tapered off quickly, Oldsmobile discontinued production of the Intrigue after the 2001 model year. GM shuttered the Oldsmobile division after 2004.