Though you wouldn't guess it, this car is as fast as a Corvette made the same year. Yes, once upon a time Buick of America sold cars to someone other than your grandmother. The owner of this car was kind enough to let me take a look at its turbocharged V-6, which he as upgraded with some of the performance parts that found their way into the final edition of the Regal-based turbos, the 1987 Buick GNX which was the fastest car built in America.
There are some neighborhoods in Seattle where you can street store the cars you're (slowly) restoring.
Folks have forgotten what an admired brand name Oldsmobile used to be. It was for a long time the most popular mid-price car brand in America, with the Olds Cutlass frequently the country's best-selling car. Olds was also an industry leader in innovation: the first car with an automatic transmission (1940), the first car, along with Cadillac with a high-compression V-8 engine (1949) and the first mass-production car with front-wheel drive. That last car was the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.
There's a long list of technical innovations created just for this car. I'm not going to go over them all, but take a look here. The early Toronados did have an Achilles' Heel - disc brakes were not available until 1967, and then only as an option. Depending on drum brakes to stop a 4,500 pound car with the engine and transmission up front is asking for trouble, and anyone restoring one of these cars includes upgraded brakes.
