Junkyard Find: 1990 Oldsmobile Toronado Trofeo

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The pre-1990 Troféo had a shorter trunk than today’s Junkyard Find, but the same Buick V6 engine and not-so-great 1980s GM build quality. The General hoped to steal away some buyers of German luxury cars with the Troféo, but (as with so many of GM’s plans of the era) sales were on the disappointing side.

I found this ’90 Troféo in a Northern California self-service junkyard. My cousin from Minnesota was with me, and he said these things were once status symbols in his state (Minnesotans also loved the Buick Reatta)… but they’ve all rusted away by now.

The 3800 was quite reliable and fairly powerful, but not quite up to the smoothness level that earlier generations expected from their Rocket V8s.

This one doesn’t have the very cool touchscreen instrument display, which is disappointing— I might have pulled it for my collection of weird instrument clusters.






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 47 comments
  • Darkhorse Darkhorse on Apr 20, 2012

    I worked with a guy who bought one of these new in 1989. I did not think it was a bad car. It had a lot of front seat leg room (not so much in the back) and was quite comfortable for two 6 foot plus 200 pounders. But I often thought what has happened to GM? I remember the first gen Toronado. How could it have morphed into the Trefeo?

  • MRF 95 T-Bird MRF 95 T-Bird on Apr 21, 2012

    A few years back I considered one of these to replace my 87 T-Bird. I have always been a personal luxury coupe fan having once owned a 80 Toronado so I figured I'd consider the newer model. Liked the styling and comfort, they handled great but the build quality, mainly electronic issues and cheap Roger Smith era plastics made me leary. So I just bought another T-Bird a 95 LX 4.6 and have been content with it. It's too bad GM never offered these with the 3800 SC which was 200-240 HP vs the 165 HP 3800 to differnate these from the pack since they were Olds halo car and the Toronado was always perceived as cutting edge.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
Next