Really Rare 1966 Oldsmobile Olds Toronado in Trumpet Gold

Arnold Boris has owned this Trumpet Gold 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado since 2012, and its 40,000 original miles show in every panel. What makes it special isn’t just the paint — it’s the chain-driven front-wheel-drive system Oldsmobile hadn’t attempted since the 1930s, paired with a 425 cubic-inch V8 that could reportedly out-accelerate contemporary muscle cars. See why this design still stops people in their tracks nearly six decades later.

In 1966, General Motors did something no American automaker had attempted in three decades — and almost nobody who buys a modern front-wheel-drive car realizes they’re looking at its ancestor. This Trumpet Gold Oldsmobile Toronado belongs to Arnold Boris, who’s owned it since 2012, and it looks like it rolled off the showroom floor yesterday. But the real story here isn’t the paint. It’s what’s turning those front wheels, and why an engineering department known mostly for comfortable cruisers decided to bet an entire flagship model on it.

The Return of Front-Wheel Drive

Front-wheel drive wasn’t new in 1966, but nobody in America had built one since the Cord 810 and 812 of 1936 and 1937, three decades earlier. Oldsmobile’s engineering team revived the layout for the Toronado using a chain-driven transaxle rather than conventional gearing, a solution that let them mount a massive V8 ahead of the front axle without the packaging nightmares front-wheel drive usually created for a car this size. It was a genuinely radical decision for a division known mostly for comfortable cruisers, and it meant the Toronado handled unlike anything else on a Chevrolet or Ford showroom floor that year, or for years afterward.

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A Rare Car Even When New

According to longtime viewers who remember shopping for one, the Toronado was uncommon even in period — one commenter recalled it being a rare sight in northern Wisconsin when new, let alone decades later. Arnold Boris has owned this particular Trumpet Gold example since 2012, and its 40,000 original miles suggest it spent most of its life being cared for rather than commuted in. That combination of low mileage and a color GM specifically featured in its 1966 sales brochures makes this one of the more desirable Toronados still on the road today.

More Power Than It Looks Like It Should Have

Despite all that weight sitting over the front wheels, the Toronado wasn’t slow. Viewers who watched this car in period say it could smoke its tires and keep pace with genuine muscle cars of the era, a claim that lines up with the Toronado’s 425 cubic-inch V8, one of the largest engines GM put in any passenger car that decade. That combination of big-block torque and front-wheel traction gave the Toronado a completely different feel off the line than a rear-drive muscle car — less wheel hop, more of a shove, and a very different sound doing it.

Motor Trend’s Car of the Year

The Toronado’s engineering ambition didn’t go unnoticed at the time. Motor Trend named it Car of the Year for 1966, a rare honor for a car built around a fundamentally new drivetrain layout rather than a simple restyle, and the award recognized exactly what made this Oldsmobile different from every other full-size GM product that year. Winning that kind of industry recognition for a genuinely experimental engineering package, rather than an incremental update, is part of why serious GM historians still treat the first-generation Toronado as one of the most significant American cars of the 1960s.

A Cockpit Ahead of Its Time

Inside, the Toronado matched its exterior ambition with details that felt genuinely futuristic for 1966, including a horizontal rolling-drum speedometer that one longtime admirer in the comments still remembers marveling at as a kid, riding in a wealthy friend’s example. The dashboard and switchgear were laid out to feel less like a traditional Oldsmobile and more like something out of a Jetsons-era vision of what driving would eventually become. Combined with the low, wide stance the front-wheel-drive layout allowed, the cabin reinforced that this was Oldsmobile’s flagship statement car, not just another full-size cruiser wearing a new grille.

Styling That Still Doesn’t Look Fifty-Nine Years Old

The Toronado’s long hood, short fastback tail, and hidden headlights were designed as a rolling interpretation of a rocket fuselage, and viewers in the comments consistently point out how little the shape has aged. Several call it one of GM’s most elegant designs of the entire decade, on par with the contemporary Buick Riviera. That styling wasn’t an accident — GM gave the Toronado real design department attention specifically because it was meant to prove the corporation could still lead rather than follow, and in Trumpet Gold, that intent still reads clearly nearly sixty years later.

A Design GM Never Quite Matched Again

Multiple longtime owners and admirers in the comments make the same observation: nothing GM built afterward, including later Toronado generations, ever recaptured the balance this first-generation car struck between drama and restraint. One viewer who drove a twin to this car in the 1970s still describes the chain-driven front-wheel-drive system as “awesome” and “experimental,” a word rarely used for anything Oldsmobile built before or since. It’s a reminder that the Toronado wasn’t just a styling exercise, it was GM engineering taking a genuine risk on a division not known for taking them.

The Hillclimb History Nobody Talks About

One commenter recalls a purpose-built Toronado famously tearing up Pikes Peak against dedicated competition cars, a detail that surprises viewers who only know the model as a comfortable boulevard cruiser. That kind of period competition pedigree rarely survives in public memory the way muscle car drag records do, but it underlines just how capable the chassis and drivetrain combination actually was when pushed hard. For a car engineered around comfort and styling first, that hillclimb history is a genuinely unexpected footnote.

Why Toronados Are Finally Getting Respect

For decades, first-generation Toronados were undervalued next to the muscle cars they could actually outrun off the line, overlooked because they didn’t fit the small-block-and-four-speed mold collectors chased. That’s changing as buyers rediscover just how much engineering went into the car, and as clean, low-mileage, documented examples like Boris’s become harder to find. A 40,000-mile Toronado in its correct factory color isn’t just a curiosity anymore, it’s a genuine blue-chip piece of GM history finally getting the respect its engineering always deserved.

Even among Oldsmobile loyalists, the first-generation Toronado occupies a strange place: too radical to be a typical Olds, too comfortable to be cross-shopped against a Camaro or GTO, and too early to benefit from the front-wheel-drive boom that eventually took over the entire industry decades later. That in-between status is exactly what makes a well-preserved example like this one worth a second look today.

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