What Were They Thinking?: 1968 Olds Toronado Facelift

I wrote about the iconic 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado here and redesigned Toronados here.  This post deals with a facelifted version of the original design.  As I mentioned in the first link, the design was slightly compromised in 1967 thanks to a minimally revised grille.  It got worse for the 1968 model year, the focus of this post.  (For some background on Toronados, go to the Wikipedia entry.)

I titled this post "What Were They Thinking?" for two reasons.  First, there was a pretty obvious rationale for the revised grille that I'll suggest below.  Secondly, that and other changes completed the destruction of the purity of the 1966 design, and "What Were They Thinking?" expresses my horror.

Gallery

An advertisement for a 1968 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight (the top of the sedan line).  The '68 model year was when Oldsmobile introduced two-segment split grilles, a feature that continued for years thereafter (see my book "How Cars Faced the Market" for more about split grilles).

My conjecture is that Olds management wanted Toronados to conform to this new theme.  The resulting Pontiac-like grille and hood design is shown in this ad.

The rest of the car also received some unfortunate restyling.  This Mecum Auctions photo shows a Toronado Holiday Coupe.  The vinyl covering on the roof is a phony feature in the first place.  Worse, it extends down over the C-pillar zone destroying the original blending of the greenhouse and lower side in the area of the rear wheel opening.  The striping near the fender line of the car shown here further degrades the original concept.

Here is a publicity photo of a 1966 Toronado for comparison.

What Were They Thinking?: Type 34 Karmann-Ghia

"Styled by Ghia's Sergio Sartorelli with assistance from American Tom Tjaarda" is how this article summarizes the 1961-1969 Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia Type 34 design's origin.  Total production of the Type 34 was about one-tenth that of the original Karmann-Ghia launched in 1955 and manufactured until 1975.  Clearly, something went wrong.

Volkswagen introduced its new, larger Type 3 in 1961 and the Type 3-based Type 34 Karmann-Ghia was soon added to the product line.  More information on the Type 34 is here (scroll down).

Type 34s were fairly expensive, but to my mind the reason they sold poorly was the styling.  Bear in mind that the original Karmann-Ghia is widely considered to be a classic design, so matching its quality would have been difficult.   The Ghia stylists instead opted for a considerably different theme based roughly on the "three box" format that was into its long design fashion reign.  That in itself was not necessarily a problem.  What went wrong was the detailing.

Gallery

1955 Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia -- the original, classic version by Luigi Segre using some features by Chrysler's Virgil Exner.

1961 Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia Type 34.  Like the original, it had a rear-mounted air cooled motor, and that influenced its proportions.  The side character line is split into two segments, perhaps to introduce variety.  If they had to be there, they should have been offset vertically to add even more interest to an otherwise fairly static feature.

The greenhouse has plenty of glass. Probably too much, as a thicker C-pillar with a wider base than top would have better integrated the greenhouse with the main body.  The aft end reminds me of the first Chevrolet Corvair's.

The most serious styling problem is at the front.  The curved character lines that wrap around to the sides form a pattern that is both questionably arbitrary and at odds with the basic body shaping.  My guess is that the idea was to harken a relatively squared-off zone to the rounded prow of the first Karmann-Ghias.  Big mistake.