I take it from your comment that it was well-built. I wouldn't have considered an Oldsmobile at the time because I was ticked off with their "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" ad campaign. I grew up riding in my father's Oldsmobiles and he was a good man! I took it as almost an insult of him. lol Still don't understand why a company would bite the proverbial hands that fed it for so long.
Oldsmobile had reached a point by the time of this ad where their offerings were hardly unique. The Toronado/Trofeo lines were too similar in appearance and size to the Olds/Pontiac/Buick Calais/Grand Am/Skylark-Somerset along with the Buick/Cadillac Riviera/Eldorado; The Ninety-Eight was a virtual clone of the Buick Park Avenue/Electra; Eighty-Eight models were a copy of the Buick LeSabre. They were a car division in serious distress, thus leading them to any tactic to stall falling sales while alienating longtime reliable nameplates and customer base. Had the engineers designed models unique to Oldsmobile, more dissimilar to offerings from other divisions (which, ironically further killed sales since they competed with other GM divisions), they would have likely survived. However, by the time Oldsmobile finally caught on, it was too little too late.
But they were still too cheap to pay Roger Moore to be in this commercial. James Bond has always had the best product placement, his appearance would have helped.
Oldsmobile was so befuddled and confused at this point. They split the Toronado line into base and Trofeo trims, but didn’t advertise the Trofeo as a Toronado, so it had no brand identity at the time. The styling was the best of the 1986-93 E-bodies, but this ad campaign was terrible. And it failed to get buyers into showrooms. Olds sales continued their freefall from 1 million units sold in 1986 to only 300,000 by 1993. The Trofeo only moved 6,143 units for 1989, and total Toronado sales were just 9,877 that year. Down from 42,145 just 4 years prior. “Not your father’s Oldsmobile” was a terrible ad campaign and utterly failed to tell buyers rapidly switching to imports what Oldsmobile was actually supposed to be. Commercials talking about how approving famous dads were of their kids’ new Oldsmobiles gave the exact opposite message of “Not your father’s Oldsmobile.”
This commercial gets an A+ for creativity but the problem for Oldsmobile, and all of GM, was awkward styling on many passenger cars, declining fit and finish (cheap interior plastic, trim, and exterior paint), reliability, and the public's move to minivans, sport utilities, and pickups.
Appleman1964 For me, it gets an F for creativity and an A+ for total incoherence. If the message is “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile,” why are they featuring past-their-prime famous fathers approving of their no-name kids’ cars? Doesn’t that send the opposite message? I mean, just 2 years before this ad, you had an aging Dick Van Patten pitching the new H-body Delta 88 as the perfect car to fit his adult children in. The only thing that changed about the Delta 88 between 1986 and 1988 were the lights. They absolutely were still selling your father’s Oldsmobile. And while all GM divisions suffered from poor quality, questionable styling, and the utter chaos and confusion brought on by Roger B. Smith blowing up the divisional structure, Oldsmobile’s sales suffered the most, by far. Because while Pontiac had their successful “We Build Excitement!” image and Buick had “The Great American Road Belongs to Buick/The New Symbol for Quality in America,” Oldsmobile was busy telling us what they weren’t... not what they were. And it was a lie. They were still building your father’s Oldsmobile. The utter idiocy of the campaign came to a head with the 1989 Cutlass Ciera ad featuring the Judds singing, “This is not your Father’s Oldsmobile” as Wynona gets out of the driver’s seat, looks at the camera and says, “It’s my momma’s!” So not only was it a terrible campaign that didn’t tell you what Oldsmobile was about, and that lied about the newness of their lineup, they couldn’t even get their message straight.
@@judethaddaeus9742 Marketing is very subjective...people respond to it either positively, neutrally, or negatively. Whether you don't like it and I do really makes no difference but either way it only at best played a very minor role in declining sales for Oldsmobile. The reasons I already gave were more critical. My father loved Oldsmobiles and had four...a 1976 Ninety-Eight and three Cutlass Supreme Brougham Coupes from the 1980s. The Ninety-Eight already had flaking factory metallic paint in the Spring of 1980 as a four year old car. The metallic paint on all the Cutlass models held up better over time but the interior plastics and carpeting were cheap and the body construction was creaky. I had a 1982 Buick Regal Limited Sedan with factory metallic paint that started to check and oxidize badly in 1987 even though the car was garaged. Later I had a neighbor with a 1987 Cutlass Calais Coupe with its factory paint literally shredding in sheets. For many years GM had more than 40 percent market share in the U.S. Now their market share in the U.S. is about 17 percent. Oldsmobile lost so many sales because its existing customers were fed up with poor quality and/or they were not interested in their newest passenger cars. Doubtfully, few potential customers were offended enough by their marketing campaign to not purchase a new Olds.
@@SpockvsMcCoy All of that was true about Buick and Pontiac buyers in the '80s, as well. But their sales didn't tank nearly as badly as Oldsmobile's. Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Pontiacs were all built in the same plants on the same platforms by the same workers with the same basic component sets and quality control by this point. So why did Oldsmobile's sales collapse by 70% in 7 years, and Buick and Pontiac sales didn't? Oldsmobile didn't have particularly radical styling to turn buyers off. Oldsmobile's product line didn't have holes in it that were filled in Buick and Pontiac showrooms. In fact, by 1991, Oldsmobile was unique among the three brands in offering an SUV, a big wagon, AND a minivan, and the more expensive Buick range offered only one of those - the poorest selling among them, to boot. So why did Oldsmobile suffer uniquely in this era? I think it's because poor marketing meant Oldsmobile couldn't replace the customers that were turned off by the poor cars of the recent past with new customers that understood what it meant to have an Oldsmobile.
@@judethaddaeus9742 Oldsmobile heavily pushed the landau vinyl roof, pillow seats, and wire wheel design in their models during the early to mid-1980s. Then the 1986 Ford Taurus was introduced and demand for more aerodynamic European-like family cars increased which made GM's signature sheer design look become old-fashioned overnight. Also, the television and print ads with Dick Van Patten and family reinforced to younger buyers that bigger Oldsmobiles were driven by old, conservative, and dull men. Older customers don't buy new cars as often when they are retired, and the Baby Boomers never liked the "boat" cars as much as their parents. Remember that most Olds and Buicks were priced nearly the same but that Buick was a more upscale division so if that cushy old-styled look was in decline, buyers would choose a Buick instead. Pontiac heavily emphasized sportiness during the mid-1980s so their image was more appealing to a younger demographic. Also, like I earlier said, more Americans were choosing minivans, pickups, and sport utility models in the late 1980s any Olds did not have any of those until the early 1990s and those were crappy.
I remember this ad campaign well, part of GM's clumsy attempt to lure young "upwardly mobile" buyers into their showrooms. It was a bit of a cringy laughing stock in the car mags at the time and was emblematic of GM's problems. I was exactly the customer GM was looking for in 1989 and should have been an easy "get". I was a car nut who grew up in a GM family, around 30 at the time, new family of my own, my career was taking off and I was making good money in a secure job. I was looking to move up in the automobile world with a new sport sedan, but GM had spent the previous twenty years ruining their own reputation with one idiotic move after another, and their products in the late '80s seemed so cheesy, plasticky, and heavily reliant on gee-whiz gimmickry. Like so many other sport sedan/coupe buyers of that era, I was turned off by domestic offerings at the time in general, so I looked overseas and bought an Audi. That car is still one of my favorites of the 40 or so I've owned thus far.
@@kristinazubic9669 The known celeb (or ANY known celeb) could have been in the commercial even if he/ she was not the owner of the Oldsmobile featured therein. A commercial referencing celebs yet showing none comes off as weak.
Oldsmobile had no effing clue how to market itself after big 2 door cars and "Brougham" style luxury of huge cars, vinyl roofs, excess chrome, wire wheel hubcaps, whitewalls, soft rides, fake wood dashboards, and pillowed velour seats went out of style. There was a HUGE change in style in the late 80's where cars like the 70's/early 80's Cutlass Supreme, big 88 and 98 sedans went out of fashion. Then this "Not your father's Oldsmobile" campaign got people thinking, hey Oldsmobile kind of is an old man's car, its not fashionable. Not to mention the complete shit products they introduced in the mid-late 80's like this Toronado that was about the same size and looked very similar to a Cutlass Calais. You could almost buy two Calais for the price of one Toronado.
@@CJColvin 442 was gone in 1987 with the demise of the RWD Cutlass Supreme. Also the 80's version was a gutless turd, emissions strangled 307 V8 was all you got.
I've owned a couple Tornado Trofeo's. They was one of the more advanced automobiles for the time
I take it from your comment that it was well-built. I wouldn't have considered an Oldsmobile at the time because I was ticked off with their "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" ad campaign. I grew up riding in my father's Oldsmobiles and he was a good man! I took it as almost an insult of him. lol Still don't understand why a company would bite the proverbial hands that fed it for so long.
Oldsmobile had reached a point by the time of this ad where their offerings were hardly unique. The Toronado/Trofeo lines were too similar in appearance and size to the Olds/Pontiac/Buick Calais/Grand Am/Skylark-Somerset along with the Buick/Cadillac Riviera/Eldorado; The Ninety-Eight was a virtual clone of the Buick Park Avenue/Electra; Eighty-Eight models were a copy of the Buick LeSabre. They were a car division in serious distress, thus leading them to any tactic to stall falling sales while alienating longtime reliable nameplates and customer base. Had the engineers designed models unique to Oldsmobile, more dissimilar to offerings from other divisions (which, ironically further killed sales since they competed with other GM divisions), they would have likely survived. However, by the time Oldsmobile finally caught on, it was too little too late.
@@terrymeadows1827 old folks are demonized.... you know that. now olds is a dead brand anyway....?
I bought one for 100.00 about 15 yrs ago. Blown away how advanced it was for its time. I graduated in 89 😂
Wow! They sure put a lot of effort and money into this commercial!
But they were still too cheap to pay Roger Moore to be in this commercial. James Bond has always had the best product placement, his appearance would have helped.
@@kevinmcadams805 Harry Belafonte wasn’t in the one his kids were in. “Not your father’s Oldsmobile” = dad’s not in the commercial.
Roger Moore is neither a William Shatner nor a Ringo Starr,@@kevinmcadams805
They put more money in commercials then in the car itself😂
They had Gina and David Belafonte in this ad campaign too, singing “Trofe-o” to the tune of “Day-o”
Somebody gets killed in a commercial...
I miss the good old days. 😆
This was the Toynado version of the former Toronado Oldsmobile.
Cool my dad told me to watch this i like this
Very beautifull and nice of Oldsmobile Toronado Trofeo
Wow...she's a knockout.
Still is.
Oldsmobile was so befuddled and confused at this point. They split the Toronado line into base and Trofeo trims, but didn’t advertise the Trofeo as a Toronado, so it had no brand identity at the time.
The styling was the best of the 1986-93 E-bodies, but this ad campaign was terrible. And it failed to get buyers into showrooms. Olds sales continued their freefall from 1 million units sold in 1986 to only 300,000 by 1993.
The Trofeo only moved 6,143 units for 1989, and total Toronado sales were just 9,877 that year. Down from 42,145 just 4 years prior.
“Not your father’s Oldsmobile” was a terrible ad campaign and utterly failed to tell buyers rapidly switching to imports what Oldsmobile was actually supposed to be. Commercials talking about how approving famous dads were of their kids’ new Oldsmobiles gave the exact opposite message of “Not your father’s Oldsmobile.”
This commercial gets an A+ for creativity but the problem for Oldsmobile, and all of GM, was awkward styling on many passenger cars, declining fit and finish (cheap interior plastic, trim, and exterior paint), reliability, and the public's move to minivans, sport utilities, and pickups.
Appleman1964 For me, it gets an F for creativity and an A+ for total incoherence. If the message is “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile,” why are they featuring past-their-prime famous fathers approving of their no-name kids’ cars? Doesn’t that send the opposite message? I mean, just 2 years before this ad, you had an aging Dick Van Patten pitching the new H-body Delta 88 as the perfect car to fit his adult children in. The only thing that changed about the Delta 88 between 1986 and 1988 were the lights. They absolutely were still selling your father’s Oldsmobile.
And while all GM divisions suffered from poor quality, questionable styling, and the utter chaos and confusion brought on by Roger B. Smith blowing up the divisional structure, Oldsmobile’s sales suffered the most, by far. Because while Pontiac had their successful “We Build Excitement!” image and Buick had “The Great American Road Belongs to Buick/The New Symbol for Quality in America,” Oldsmobile was busy telling us what they weren’t... not what they were. And it was a lie. They were still building your father’s Oldsmobile. The utter idiocy of the campaign came to a head with the 1989 Cutlass Ciera ad featuring the Judds singing, “This is not your Father’s Oldsmobile” as Wynona gets out of the driver’s seat, looks at the camera and says, “It’s my momma’s!” So not only was it a terrible campaign that didn’t tell you what Oldsmobile was about, and that lied about the newness of their lineup, they couldn’t even get their message straight.
@@judethaddaeus9742 Marketing is very subjective...people respond to it either positively, neutrally, or negatively. Whether you don't like it and I do really makes no difference but either way it only at best played a very minor role in declining sales for Oldsmobile. The reasons I already gave were more critical. My father loved Oldsmobiles and had four...a 1976 Ninety-Eight and three Cutlass Supreme Brougham Coupes from the 1980s. The Ninety-Eight already had flaking factory metallic paint in the Spring of 1980 as a four year old car. The metallic paint on all the Cutlass models held up better over time but the interior plastics and carpeting were cheap and the body construction was creaky. I had a 1982 Buick Regal Limited Sedan with factory metallic paint that started to check and oxidize badly in 1987 even though the car was garaged. Later I had a neighbor with a 1987 Cutlass Calais Coupe with its factory paint literally shredding in sheets. For many years GM had more than 40 percent market share in the U.S. Now their market share in the U.S. is about 17 percent. Oldsmobile lost so many sales because its existing customers were fed up with poor quality and/or they were not interested in their newest passenger cars. Doubtfully, few potential customers were offended enough by their marketing campaign to not purchase a new Olds.
@@SpockvsMcCoy All of that was true about Buick and Pontiac buyers in the '80s, as well. But their sales didn't tank nearly as badly as Oldsmobile's. Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Pontiacs were all built in the same plants on the same platforms by the same workers with the same basic component sets and quality control by this point.
So why did Oldsmobile's sales collapse by 70% in 7 years, and Buick and Pontiac sales didn't? Oldsmobile didn't have particularly radical styling to turn buyers off. Oldsmobile's product line didn't have holes in it that were filled in Buick and Pontiac showrooms. In fact, by 1991, Oldsmobile was unique among the three brands in offering an SUV, a big wagon, AND a minivan, and the more expensive Buick range offered only one of those - the poorest selling among them, to boot.
So why did Oldsmobile suffer uniquely in this era? I think it's because poor marketing meant Oldsmobile couldn't replace the customers that were turned off by the poor cars of the recent past with new customers that understood what it meant to have an Oldsmobile.
@@judethaddaeus9742 Oldsmobile heavily pushed the landau vinyl roof, pillow seats, and wire wheel design in their models during the early to mid-1980s. Then the 1986 Ford Taurus was introduced and demand for more aerodynamic European-like family cars increased which made GM's signature sheer design look become old-fashioned overnight. Also, the television and print ads with Dick Van Patten and family reinforced to younger buyers that bigger Oldsmobiles were driven by old, conservative, and dull men. Older customers don't buy new cars as often when they are retired, and the Baby Boomers never liked the "boat" cars as much as their parents. Remember that most Olds and Buicks were priced nearly the same but that Buick was a more upscale division so if that cushy old-styled look was in decline, buyers would choose a Buick instead. Pontiac heavily emphasized sportiness during the mid-1980s so their image was more appealing to a younger demographic. Also, like I earlier said, more Americans were choosing minivans, pickups, and sport utility models in the late 1980s any Olds did not have any of those until the early 1990s and those were crappy.
If there was an American James Bond he probably would've driven a Trofeo
"The New Generation Of Olds."
A terrible Generation of Olds…
That was Sandy Farina who sang this for eight years from March 1986 until June 1993.
I remember this ad campaign well, part of GM's clumsy attempt to lure young "upwardly mobile" buyers into their showrooms. It was a bit of a cringy laughing stock in the car mags at the time and was emblematic of GM's problems. I was exactly the customer GM was looking for in 1989 and should have been an easy "get". I was a car nut who grew up in a GM family, around 30 at the time, new family of my own, my career was taking off and I was making good money in a secure job. I was looking to move up in the automobile world with a new sport sedan, but GM had spent the previous twenty years ruining their own reputation with one idiotic move after another, and their products in the late '80s seemed so cheesy, plasticky, and heavily reliant on gee-whiz gimmickry. Like so many other sport sedan/coupe buyers of that era, I was turned off by domestic offerings at the time in general, so I looked overseas and bought an Audi. That car is still one of my favorites of the 40 or so I've owned thus far.
You've owned 40 Audis? I assume you lease? What is your current one?
Audis are complete money pits as well.
@@CJColvin Today, yes Audis are money pits. But not in the early 90s. Back then, they were sophisticated, very well made and technologically advanced.
This is allot like the 1989 300zx comercial
GM of all corporations couldn't afford 5 secomds of Roger Moore?? Beancounters running the asylum.
Who was that randō at the end? Wasn’t 007 lol
Harry Belafonte wasn’t in the one his kids did, either. The point was it’s NOT father’s Oldsmobile.
@@kristinazubic9669 The known celeb (or ANY known celeb) could have been in the commercial even if he/ she was not the owner of the Oldsmobile featured therein. A commercial referencing celebs yet showing none comes off as weak.
@@charlesjwin it would have been cool if the fathers had been in the ads, they just didn’t want to do it that way.
@@kristinazubic9669 $$$
Weirdly european ish commercial
Oldsmobile had no effing clue how to market itself after big 2 door cars and "Brougham" style luxury of huge cars, vinyl roofs, excess chrome, wire wheel hubcaps, whitewalls, soft rides, fake wood dashboards, and pillowed velour seats went out of style. There was a HUGE change in style in the late 80's where cars like the 70's/early 80's Cutlass Supreme, big 88 and 98 sedans went out of fashion.
Then this "Not your father's Oldsmobile" campaign got people thinking, hey Oldsmobile kind of is an old man's car, its not fashionable. Not to mention the complete shit products they introduced in the mid-late 80's like this Toronado that was about the same size and looked very similar to a Cutlass Calais. You could almost buy two Calais for the price of one Toronado.
What about the Oldsmobile 442?
@@CJColvin 442 was gone in 1987 with the demise of the RWD Cutlass Supreme. Also the 80's version was a gutless turd, emissions strangled 307 V8 was all you got.
@@AaronSmith-kr5yf Yep you got it brother, you can thank the corrupt government for destroying the American car industry.
@@AaronSmith-kr5yf everything was a gutless turd in the 80’s, in 87 had good styling though.