It is a nice car. Great color combination and a beautiful interior. But this is definitely not cool. About a foot or so forward of the rear edge of the hood on the driver's side is a small bulge. This looks like the hood bent when it was being closed. Not sure how easy it is to get that bend out or if a replacement hood is needed, but I would consider this a serious detriment. The right side doesn't show this issue, so they apparently stopped trying to close the hood before the damage progressed too far. One thing they don't show is any photos of the engine, which would require the hood to be raised. It would be interesting to see what that part of the hood likes like from underneath.
That was a huge problem on '70s cars and trucks, where improperly pushing down on the hood to close it ran the risk of bending it where early attempts to make the hood safer in a frontal collision also ran the risk of getting a bend like that above. Damned shame, the hood will likely have to be replaced.
And $6500 without meeting the reserve? They probably are counting on no one opening that hood up before the sale.
Yep, I've seen where ppl (and this may be the case with this car) left the hood open for an extended period of time and when they went to close it, it was was stuck, and they manhandled it, not noticing they were bending the heck out of it. You even see this with some junkyard cars that have the hood open for a long period. My guess is this one was sitting in a garage with an open hood. Man, that sucks....
Was a Sunroof standard on the XS model? Also don’t remember seeing a lot of these without the body side moldings. Is this right to you Jaunty?
According to the 1978 Olds Sales Handbook, color-keyed, body side moldings were standard equipment. Here's a photo of a black '78 with the body side moldings intact. They run the full length of the car at the same level as the side marker lights/turn signals/cornering lamps. If they're missing, it's usually because the car was repainted, and the moldings were either too damaged to put back on or perhaps were damaged in removal. When my '78 was repainted, the shop did not remove the moldings but rather just masked them off and painted around them.
Actually, nearly every piece of molding on these cars was standard equipment. In addition to the body side molding, the bottom-of-door and rocker panel, wheel-well opening, roof drip, and windowsill moldings were all standard. The only optional molding, which, if you're going to make all the others standard, why not this one, too, was the rear door edge guards. This is indicated with the yellow arrow below. Interestingly, my '77 has this option, but my '78 does not. It was a $9 option in 1977 and an $11 option 1978. Inflation, you know.
Yes. It was also available as an option on non-XS Toronados. It was officially called "Astroroof," and it was an $898 option in 1977 rising to $978 in 1978. What's also interesting is how much the cost of the XS option itself jumped between 1977 and 1978. For 1978, it was $2,700 and included the "panoramic rear window," the Astroroof, and the paint stripe that runs the length of the car along the top of the fenders as well as around the bulge in the hood. You can see the side paint stripe in the photos above and on the ebay car, on which also can be seen the hood stripe. But if you bought the XS option, there were two other "options" that were required. You had to buy the vinyl/landau roof and the rear window defogger. For 1978, the landau roof was $268 and the rear window defogger was $94. So the true, full cost of the XS option in 1978 was $3,062. The base price of the car was $8,899.35, so adding the XS option raised the sticker price to $11,961.35, a 34% increase. For 1977, the XS option was $2,250. The required landau roof was $258, and there is no mention of a requirement to purchase the rear window defogger. So the total cost of the XS option was $2,508. The base price of a '77 Toronado was $8,133.55. The XS option raised that to $10,641.55, a 31% increase. These were not cheap cars. An $11,000 car in 1977 is equivalent to a $53,000 car today. Not an entry-level vehicle.
What's also interesting, at least to me, is that even though both the '77 and '78 Olds dealer manuals definitely show the vinyl roof as an option, I have never seen a '77 or '78 non-XS Toronado, and I've collected lots of photos of them over the years, that did not have a vinyl roof. One other thing I like to throw out there is that the '77 Toro represented a milestone in Oldsmobile history in that the 1977 Toronado was the first Oldsmobile ever, and this includes Olds Ninety-Eights up to and including this year as well, to feature air-conditioning as standard equipment. It was the base "Four Season" air conditioner, but it was still air-conditioning. On the '77 98, the Four Season a/c cost $539, with the apparently more popular Tempmatic a/c costing about $40 more. I've seen the Tempmatic a/c on these Toros much more often than the base Four Season, and on the Toro it was a $40 option. Like the door edge guard, my two Toros each feature a different a/c system. The '77 has the base Four Season while the '78 has the Tempmatic. I get to experience everything (assuming the a/c system in either car worked, which they don't).
