Oldsmobile Toronado



Oldsmobile Toronado


I have always loved cars. Not just for the freedom of movement and the ability to go wherever I want whenever I want, but for their beauty and engineering.

However, whenever it came time to buy a new car, practicality always won out. In fifty years I have owned thirty-five cars, but none were really outrageous like a Corvette or a Porsche.  In the late seventies, I decided that I needed to buy a car just for fun, so we went to the Kruse Classic Car Auction and came home with a low mileage 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado.

The Toronado came out in 1966 and was an engineering tour de force. It was a huge high-powered front-drive two-door luxury car. Later the Mercedes Benz chief said that Mercedes did not make front- drive cars because front-wheel drive would not hold up with high output engines. By this point GM had already sold 500,000 400 hp front-wheel drive Toronados and Cadillac Eldorados without a single drive train failure. I guess the Daimler guys had not got in the habit of looking past their front doors yet.

The 1966 Toronados were gorgeous and kept getting better though 1970. The 1971s were worse and went downhill with the rest of General Motors. Toronados, and eventually all Oldsmobiles, were allowed to die without serious corporate support.

Since I liked cars, I thought I should be able to work on them as well. I took a few auto repair courses at Johnson County Community College but didn’t really excel. 95% of the repairs I attempted ending up being redone by the dealer within months. I could change the oil and rotate the tires and I could change spark plugs if I could see them.
I have since learned that my skills were only slightly behind the average mechanic at a franchise auto service business or even an independent garage. In the past ten or fifteen years, every repair I have had done by an independent garage or national franchise has had to be redone by the dealer within a year. I don’t believe that most mechanics are dishonest, merely incompetent. Considering the complexity of modern cars, this is to be expected.

Proverbs 22: 29 says, “See a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men.” That is because there are so few really skilled people. I am more convinced all the time that our skills, more than anything else, determine our status in life.


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