1977 Oldsmobile Toronado XS: Glass, Class, & A Whole Lotta Mass

By 1977, the Oldsmobile Tornado had traveled a considerable distance from the audacious machine that had appeared just 11 years earlier. The original 66 Tornado, like the one that you see here, my 66 Autumn Bronze Tornado, was a genuine engineering thunderclap. A 425 cubic inch, 385 horsepower V8 under hood, front wheel drive, concealed headlights, and styling that somehow made nearly 18 feet of automobile look taut, purposeful, and actually to some degree menacing. Its exaggerated wheel arches, abbreviated greenhouse, and long unbroken body surfaces, and the lack of a bone line in fact, gave it the stance of something designed to devour interstate highways rather than merely just travel on them. It was powerful, sculptural, and technologically adventurous at a time when most American luxury cars regarded innovation with roughly the same enthusiasm that the Vatican regarded disco. But 11 years is a long time in Detroit, and by 1977, the Tornado had matured in much the same way successful men sometimes do. It had gained weight, acquired more expensive upholstery, slowed down considerably, and became increasingly interested in comfort. And that technological marvel of 1966 had really evolved into something more of a rolling living room. It was enormous, plush, heavily ornamented, and really about as discreet as Liberace arriving at a local rotary club luncheon. Yet Oldsmobile still had one remarkable trick left to play in its big, full-size Tornado that would last to the 1978 model year. It was called the Tornado XS. The centerpiece of the XS was really impossible to miss. A spectacular and unique three-sided wraparound rear window that curved dramatically around the sides of the roof. This wasn't three pieces of glass cleverly disguised as one. It was a genuinely complex piece of bent glass produced using technology developed by PPG with a hot wire that was employed to bend the glass. And it gave the Tornado XS one of the most distinctive roof treatments of the decade. And the 1970s were not exactly short of distinctive roof treatments. Remember, this was the era of opera windows and Landau bars, at least at Ford. I don't think GM ever had Landau bars. Padded vinyl roofs, coach lamps, fake convertible tops. Detroit designers were applying things to roofs with the enthusiasm of a suburban grandmother decorating a Christmas tree. Against all that Rococo XS, the XS window was something different. It was technologically sophisticated, visually dramatic, and to some degree functional. Rearward visibility was actually excellent in these cars and if you're a rear seat passenger, you could have a panoramic view. The rest of the 77 Tornado, though, I have to say was considerably more traditional and really wasn't nearly as exciting as the second generation Tornado was when it came out in the 1971 model year, which was not as exciting as the first generation Tornado when it came out in the 1966 model year. In fact, the front end styling of the 1977 Tornado XS was rather conventional and in keeping with the styling of the times. The coffin nose from the 1971 model year, 1972, had been blunted a bit by the five mile an hour bumper that was introduced in 1973. There was this very thickly textured egg crate grille that looked a bit strange, I think, on the Tornado, but was probably a copy of various Cadillac egg crate grille textures. Of course, there were quad headlamps and kind of the four fendered forms that on some Tornados were outlined in pinstriping. There was an interesting detail that there were these little metallic details on either side of the fenders that would actually illuminate at night. I thought that was kind of cool, but otherwise the Tornado styling was relatively conventional and it kind of was a riff on the 1967 Eldorado, particularly when the car came out in 1971 and 1972. Regardless, the Tornado by this point had, let's say, become inclined to corpulence and this really wasn't a car that you parallel parked. It was a car where you negotiated a territorial settlement, at least temporarily, for your vehicle. Now let's kind of turn to the rear of the car and talking about the excess glass, because that was pretty elegant, futuristic, and beautifully integrated into the roof. On the regular Tornados, the opera window kind of helped lighten the C-pillar visually, but here you had it almost look like a floating roof, but for the B-pillar. I think it was a decent look and something that was certainly different for the time frame. And as you approach the rear of the car, you'll notice that you have this very strong vertical signature on the rear, very similar to Cadillacs. And as I mentioned, the front, the grille texture was very Cadillac-y. The overall styling is kind of a riff, as I mentioned, on the 1967 Eldorado. And out back, you have the vertical signature that Oldsmobile was employing, on some cars like the Oldsmobile 98, but here it is again. Unfortunately, while the glass was rather well integrated into the overall body, the bumper assembly, I don't know if that could be said that that really was. This was very much a 1977 General Motors bumper assembly. Most people know that federal bumper regulations had pushed Detroit stylists into some extraordinary compromises, and the Tornado wore enormous bumper fillers between its body and the bumpers themselves. In fact, at the rear, there was so much social distance between the sheet metal and the chrome bumper that the two appeared to have been introduced formally, but had not yet decided whether to shake hands. And certainly as time has gone on and those fillers degrade, well, they aren't shaking hands anymore. Often they have parted ways, let's just say, because those urethane fillers at this point, being almost 50 years older, not necessarily holding up all that well on many of these Tornadoes, and they're hard to find replacements and hard to get a body shop to fit them very well. In any case, the Tornado styling, by this point, I don't think was really a high watermark for Oldsmobile. It had really become a caricature of what the Tornado really was originally, and one that was rather portly at that. Inside, however, the Tornado kind of returned to familiar Oldsmobile territory, whereas the 1966 was more high-tech with the driver-centric instrumentation, and that was actually all finished in one color along with the integrated floor mat. Now you had kind of those typical Oldsmobile traits, deep seats, broad expanses of trim, and enough interior width to conduct any minor diplomatic negotiations between the driver and the passenger. This was an automobile from the period when luxury meant isolation, and you didn't necessarily so much sit in a Tornado as you did establish your residency there, and you established that residency in, oftentimes, you could have seats in leather, but beautiful kind of cloth seats with unique patterns, as you see here. The dashboard spread out ahead of you in a very horizontal orientation. Switch gear was certainly abundant, although by this point, you had to use more of the switch gear because, as an example, there was no more Oldsmobile Comfortron system. They had switched to Tempmatic, which meant that you had to select the fan speed as well as the mode. It would select the temperature, and that was all that it did. All the instrumentation was resolutely horizontal in these cars, and almost everything appeared to be designed to be operated while wearing a winter coat. There were lots of large switches, and frankly, I think that was one of the things that was a success about the interior of these cars is that you could operate them with a gloved hand. A lot of the modern cars with the touchscreens, I have no idea what you're supposed to do. Maybe they work, but they don't work all that well. Mechanically, the Tornado remained interesting, although not as interesting as it was back when it came out in 1966. Oldsmobile's unitized power package was developed for the original Tornado. That consisted of the engine and the front-wheel drive Turbo-Hydramatic 425 transmission that employed an ingenious chain-driven arrangement to transmit power from the longitudinally mounted V8 to that Turbo-Hydramatic 425 transmission. It was highly durable, and certainly by 1977 thoroughly proven, and I have never had an issue. I've owned tons of cars with the Turbo-Hydramatic 425. I have had zero issues with them. In fact, they were so durable that they were employed with the Oldsmobile V8s in GMC motorhomes when they were produced for 1973 to 1977, and yes, those motorhomes are front-wheel drive, and it provides them with a very low floor with lots of headroom and roominess. Unfortunately, though, in these Tornadoes, there was no longer the mighty high compression 385 horsepower V8 of 1966, and by this point, horsepower ratings had turned to a different rating scale, net ratings, but still the 403 cubic inch V8 Oldsmobile small block, the 403 was a small block Oldsmobile, produced only 185 horsepower, and while that sounds rather feeble today, it wasn't necessarily muscular then, but it did have a good amount of low speed torque, and the Tornado's mission really wasn't to terrorize Corvettes and other sports cars at stoplights. Its job was really just to move the two plus tons of automobile away from the curb and do so in comfort and smoothness, and for that, it worked reasonably well. I would say the acceleration in these Tornadoes with the 403 is leisurely, not necessarily lethargic. When you press the accelerator, there's some distant V8 murmur, some activity from the transmission, and the scenery starts to move faster, and it does so without really any fuss from the engine or the transmission. Those just fade into the background. You don't even really hear the engine or feel the transmission shift. Once underway, the Tornado was really an excellent interstate companion. The steering was great in these relative to the time period. GM's variable ratio power steering was the best of the era, didn't really have all that much road feel, but it was highly pleasant, and I think that the ratio was just about perfect. The engine delivered a very relaxed driving experience, and that enormous cabin in the Tornado isolated you from much of the unpleasantness occurring the outside. At freeway speeds, having driven a number of these cars, I would say this is one area where the 77 Tornado does indeed excel over the 66. It seemed perfectly content to continue whatever amount of freeway that you wanted to drive until the gasoline just ran out, and it ran out relatively fast with a 26-gallon tank, and probably on the freeway, you'd get about 14-15 miles per gallon with your Tornado. I have to say, as I mentioned, the 66s, you certainly can go fast in them, but they weren't necessarily the best interstate cruisers, particularly if you wanted to go really fast. They weren't as quiet on the inside, and the 66 Tornado only came with relatively undersized drum brakes that did not stop nearly as well as the disc brakes on the 1977 Tornado. And I would also say that on smooth pavement, the Tornado kind of glides along with serene indifference, but it really wasn't quite the magic carpet experience that its dimensions suggested. Over broken pavement, the suspension could become surprisingly busy. This would be the torsion bar front suspension with the coil springs out back, and you often got kind of a slight secondary jiggle that some competitors, I would say, suppressed more successfully, particularly over at the Ford, let's say, side of the automotive spectrum. I think Ford did a lot better job with the ride than General Motors did, although not the handling. Handling in GM cars was certainly better. Regardless, the Tornado was comfortable, but this is not a car that could turn every Midwestern pothole into just a rumor. And then there was the build quality by this point. This was the late 1970s General Motors, and let's just say precision assembly was not always among the corporation's more conspicuous virtues. Panel gaps could be generous, doors sometimes closed with less than Mercedes-Benz-like thunk, and really were more of a metallic clatter. Trim alignment varied, and some interior pieces seemed to have been stalled according to the venerable manufacturing principle. That's probably close enough. I've seen a lot of these where those pieces just aren't really well aligned. The Tornado XS, I would have to say, then was really an intriguing mixture of ambition and kind of kitchen cabinet execution, and that's kind of amusing or not when you consider what it costs. And so, in the context of the competitive vehicles, the Tornado was really an oddball. The Cadillac and the Lincoln announced that you had arrived when you pulled up, but the Tornado suggested that you had arrived, understood compound interest and debits and credits, and saw no compelling reason to discuss the matter with anybody else. The XS at least had something that none of them had, which was that rear window. Even today, the wraparound glass remains startling, and if you park an XS among a field of 1970s luxury coupes, your eye inevitably goes to that roof, unless there's a late 70s caprice coupe with the hot wire bent rear window, similar to the Tornado. But it's really a feature that you'll never see in a modern car, at least a mid-priced modern car, because I have to imagine the scrap rates on these back windows was astronomical, and manufacturers just don't take chances like that anymore. So, oh well. But that might be what makes that 77 Tornado XS so fascinating today. It combined genuine innovation with unmistakable foibles of its era. Here you had an automobile with sophisticated front-wheel drive engineering, by the way, proven front-wheel drive engineering, and one of the most technically ambitious pieces of automotive glass ever fitted to a production car. I can't really think of too many that are more ambitious from a glass standpoint. Maybe the third generation F-body cars in the back glass there, because those, I believe, had to be draped over a form as opposed to a hot wire bend. That was certainly complicated. But in any case, you have that rear glass and, well, kind of everyday styling, if you will. The Tornado, to some degree, was innovative as well as antiquated. Elegant, but also excessive. Sophisticated in conception, but kind of lackadaisical in execution and its build quality. In other words, it was really Detroit in the 1970s distilled into roughly 18 feet of automobile. It certainly wasn't the revolutionary machine its 1966 ancestor had been, particularly from a styling standpoint, and given that it effectively copied a lot from the 1967 Eldorado. By this point, the Tornado really exchanged its youthful athleticism for a larger waistline, softer shoes, and a membership at the country club. But every once in a while, it could still surprise you. And with that extraordinary bent glass rear window hovering above acres of sheet metal, chrome, vinyl, and that bumper filler that was facilitating social distancing between the bumper and the sheet metal, the Tornado XS remains one of those wonderfully improbable automobiles that could only have come from an era when Detroit had plenty of problems, but a shortage of imagination wasn't one of them. In fact, the Tornado XS was actually a toned down variant of something that was even more excessive, a Tornado XSR, as it was known, that not only had that wraparound rear glass, but had power operated T-tops. That was really what Oldsmobile stylists wanted for the car. And by the way, Cadillac also had a proposal with those power operated T-tops that I believe were installed by American Sunroof, just like the Moonroof. But alas, they proved, just like the execution of the interior trim and the body fits and finish, really too tough to get the fitment right. And well, the engineers just decided to scrap that in favor of the Moonroof. In any case, there you have it, the 1977 Tornado XS, a car that really was excessive, if you will, in many ways, but certainly an interesting car, if nothing else. Not one that I necessarily crave, I have to say. I do like the 71 and 72 Tornados, but by this point, you know, a conventional looking car with a wraparound rear glass doesn't entirely do it for me. But if that's your cup of tea, go right ahead, and I think you'll enjoy it, regardless of what my personal opinion is of the taste. They are decent cars, and they're just fun to drive, and rather reliable and smooth, so have at it. Put a comment in the comment section and let me know what you think. Thanks again for watching.