Junkyard Find: 1992 Oldsmobile Toronado Trofeo
You like rare cars? How about a final-year-of-manufacture Olds Toronado Troféo? I’ll bet there aren’t more than a few hundred ’92 Troféos left in the world! Here’s one that I spotted last week at a snowy Denver self-service yard.
I have an unhealthy obsession with the products of GM’s mid-80s-to-early-90s efforts to compete toe-to-toe with German luxury marques (or at least drop the average age of Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac purchase from 96 to maybe 70 years old), and so I’m always happy to write about cars such as the Buick Reatta, Cadillac Allanté, and Olds Troféo. This car is the third Troféo in this series, after this ’89 and this ’90.
Even a 70-year-old in 1992 must have been aware that the Buick 3.8 V6 wasn’t exactly cutting-edge technology in the luxury-car world.
Look, a driver’s-side airbag!
And, depressingly, molded-in fake stitching on the not-quite-leather door panels.
If this thing had had the touch-screen Visual Information Center, I’d have pulled it and bought it on the spot. Just analog gauges, though.
With all its flaws, the ’92 Troféo has a certain amount of cool going for it.
Presented without comment.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I'm a young guy. 22. This, along with a Lincoln MKVII and a Turbo Buick would be my dream car. 86-88 aren't as nice. But 88-92...what a gorgeous machine. The Eldo's of the time were just lame, (Calais) and my friend has a 93 Riv that is lovely, but there's something ultimately unique about Trofeos...
My knowledge of this car comes mainly from the article in "Crap Cars" which talked about the VIC/ECC system. Last fall a local garage which specializes in older/offbeat cars was having an open house and he had a Reatta there he was working on. When I expressed interest he told me about the car's history and opened the door, and to my delight there was VIC sleeping in the center console. The guy fired the Buick up so I could play with the computer. Given the vintage I thought the screen was actually pretty responsive and I was shocked that the software actually let me set it to the correct date and time -- I have late-90s VCRs with clocks that won't go past 2002 -- so for what it was it seems like GM actually did a lot of work on the firmware. Paging Dr. Olds -- do you have any anecdotes about this system?