The XSR
My '78 Brougham

My '70 "thrasher" (one of my favorite drivers)

Someone's cool "personalization" of a Toro:

a 1970 ad

From 1971-1978, the Toro was still huge, but had more of the Eldorado's personal-luxury Roofline, instead of the rakish-fastback of the '66-'70 models. Also, net HP, and compression ratio's dropped so that unleaded, lower octane gas could be used. After '76, the Rocket Olds 455 was replaced by their 403 engine-which made its way into the '79 silver special edition Pontiac Trans Am-- which had the OLDS 6.6L, some Pontiac-fans think is a travesty).

my Winter-car (well, actually I use a Lexus for that, but this car would be better suited for it with its excellent traction), 1978 Toronado. Sorry, I don't have better pictures--and it's a shame. It is a original 36,000-mile car that basically still new.

it's interior was GM-excess at its worst/best (depending on your taste). Super-pillowed velour Lazy-boy seats, with a huge flat floor board.

I've had Toronado's before (1970, etc.); and more "powerful" ones; but this '78 is more refined. It rides better than my Lexus LS400 (which is not being posted). It can easily navigate through a snowdrift or rush-hour traffic (that sounds like a line from a car-ad!).

Working on these huge FWD leviathan's can be problematic. The THM-425 is actually and probably one of the finest FWD transmissions. The prevailing philosophy--before the '66 Toro- was that nothing bigger than a 2.0L engine could be put in a FWD car because or torque steer, that would "pull" the car to the right under hard acceleration. Well, not with the big Toronado or Cadillac's Eldorado.

But, maintaining the CV joints, boots, trans-axles must be part of regular maintenance. And although there were loads of these cars made, I still find getting parts for them difficult. For instance,. my '78 Toro has a unique vacuum-advance mechanism, which was one of the first (before fuel-injection, computer-controlled timing, engine management, etc.) to take a hots of variables to control the vacuum-advance on its HEI. Only that year. even though I could put another olds HEI in there, the original is specific just to the '78 Toronado. Next year, it was massively downsized.

If you really want to impress people , the XSR edition, with its wrap-around rear glass and power astroroof (initially power T-tops in the concept car, which never worked well enough for production) is the edition to get.