How the Oldsmobile Toronado got its name
07/02/2012
GM designer David North, who designed the first and second generation Oldsmobile Toronado, the Buick Reatta and the Oldsmobile Aurora, among others, was also allowed to participate in the naming of various vehicles.
The team sat together shortly before the 1965 New York Motor Show and hatched ideas. Among others, "Raven" and "Magnum" were shortlisted. In the meantime, it was 11 p.m. and the cleaning crew began to sweep the hall floor with a large "Tornado" electric cleaning machine. Oldsmobile boss John Beltz came into the hall and saw the machine. He then looked at the name suggestions from his people and said: "If you don't find something better soon, we'll just call the car "Tornado"!"
However, due to the devastating effects of these annually recurring storms, the idea was rejected. Then someone remembered that Chevrolet had a purple convertible show car with the name "Toronado" in the pipeline - for the same motor show, no less! The name had no meaning whatsoever, but thanks to the "Toro" it would be more reminiscent of bullfighting and toreros than natural disasters. Of course, this suited the large-volume 7-liter Toronado perfectly.
At the show, nobody noticed that the model designation was used twice. Everyone only paid attention to the new miracle Oldsmobile...
David North also designed the Buick Reatta convertible and coupé, which appeared in 1988, and was once again busy finding a name. He remembered the last movie James Dean had starred in before his death: Giants. There was a ranch there called "Reata". North suggested the name and was immediately applauded by the marketing people because the name - now spelled with a double T - was reminiscent of a regatta and therefore of leisure. The car was also visually reminiscent of a boat.
But it wasn't that simple. You couldn't just decide on a name at random. There had to be at least three suggestions, and the best one had to be filtered out in an evaluation process. No sooner said than done. At Disneyland, three archways were erected in front of an attraction bearing the names of the three suggestions. Quite "coincidentally", the middle arch, i.e. the one most visited, was named "Reatta". As expected, the evaluation in the evening revealed that the Reatta sheet had won out over the other two. "So much for market research" said David North (in an interview for the Toronado Owners Association TOA's "Front Wheel Driver" club magazine in September 2008) mischievously ...
By the way, we will soon be publishing a detailed and extensively illustrated article on the Oldsmobile Toronado.
