olds67

I'd like to know where they were born the names of our cars, is a question I do a bit of time.

olds67

As an example
Why the name "Toronado"
Why the name "Delmont"
and other models

Bluevista

The text in your PC grew since your first post old67?
What are you feeding that thing?

Vista Cruiser is a no-brainer, and no smart-aleck references to any owners.
I would never ever say who would do that but her name rhymes with Candy and starts with an "S".

Delmonts were named after a fifties rock group.
Toronados were named after Zorro's horse.

Would Toronado mean swimming bull or bullswim in Spanish??
I guess the way a bull is built it would do most of the swimming with it's front legs, much like the FWD Toronado, maybe that's why the name?

The Oldsmobile Bullpaddler would have been a cooler name?

olds67

it is great to know these names

calligraphy is wrong because I have increased the size of the letters

Thanks for the explanation of names, I thought Toronado was the power and then and that is named after the tornado

again, again
I like to know and understand information
Cutlass ........
Delta .......

Jamesbo

I don't believe they came from anywhere but the brains of marketing people

olds67

would be called marketing.
in Italy they use names without a clear provenance only as marketing.

Starfire name?

cutlassgal

....I would never ever say who would do that but her name rhymes with Candy and starts with an "S".


Boy... I'm sure glad you're not talkin about me!!!!! *innocent face* - I am as sweet as candy, though!

Red Delta

Achieva. Marketing head sneezed while figuring out a name.

hialeah56

I guess since oldsmobiles had rockets for hood ornaments and the engine as called the rocket engine they followed the theme over to starfire as in fire in the stars coming from a rocket

btw cutlass= knife, I guess cause it looked sharp

olds67

I see that many names were for marketing
but let's see who guesses the most names

Delta....
Starfire...

olds67

oldsmobiles had rockets for hood ornaments?
there are photo of tihs?

thanks for this information

don71

I've allways liked the name cutlass....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutlass

A weapon that is stored easily and used quickly with force. Much easier to use than a sword. A favorite among Sailers....

If you think of some of the car names, they were born during the cold war....aka the "Space Race". So, names like star fire, jet fire just fit the times they were born in.

Would'nt want to own a "chebby dot com" or a "Ford junk bond" Nope, no way.

As you can see, I'm not a marketer.

olds67

woooow!!
nice!
I like to read this information, is history

w-30dreamin

Thanks for the link,I found that to be interesting reading

Four Four Tony

I thought Delta and Starfire were derived from aircraft? I'm just about positive there was a Lockheed Starfire aircraft and Delta is at least a type of wing design. It was the late 40's early 50's and everyone was caught up in rockets and jets and moon travel so they tried to play off that with names where they could. And yeah Olds had the Rocket V8 and the logo so they tried to tie into that. The original Cutlass was a 1954 showcar but I'm not sure what the inspiration was for the name.

toro68

lol

olds67

is fantastic !!!!!!
I like to read what you are writing

olds67

your very bad Toronado is magnificent, congratulations

jaunty75

Yes, you are correct. Many of the Olds names of the '50s and '60s were meant to play off the "Rocket" Oldsmobile engines of the early 50s and the growing interest by the country in the space age. After all, what do you think was the motivation for all the fins on cars in the late '50s? Remember also what the Oldsmobile logo was during all of this period until finally replaced with the "ovoid" thing in the 1990s. It was a stylized rocket.

Names like Dynamic, Starfire, Jetfire, Jetstar, Skyrocket, Delta, Superrocket (are you detecting a pattern here?), etc., which all appeared on either cars or engines, were obviously meant to invoke the notion of rocketry, speed, and the space age. The first Delta 88s were introduced in 1965, and as Four Four Tony said, the name came directly from the Delta rockets of the day. The advertising that went with those first Delta 88s featured John "Shorty" Powers, whose voice was instantly identifiable at the "voice of mission control" at NASA.

The names of the number series cars, like 88 and 98, date back to the late 30s and 40s, when Olds had several "Series," like Series 66, Series 68, Series 76, Series 78, Series 88, and Series 98. In all of these, the general rule was the first digit was the series, and the second specified the engine. So a Series 66 Oldsmobile was a Series 60 Oldsmobile with a 6-cylinder engine. An 88 was an 80 Series Oldsmobile with an 8-cylinder engine. Eventually Olds went away from all of this and stayed only with the 88s and 98s, eventually using only Delta for the 88s from 1969 through 1988. From 1989 until the end of the 88s, they were referred to simply as "Eighty-Eight," and they, of course, had long since ceased to have V-8 engines. The 98s last had a V-8 in 1984.

As far as F-85, I'm not sure whether the numbers ever meant anything specifically, as certainly there was never an 80 Series Olds with a 5-cylinder engine, but Olds had used the "F-" designation in its model names back as far as 1928 with the Model F-28. Through the 1930s and 40s, these evolved though the F-29 in 1929, F-30 in 1930, and onward with the "F" number equaling the last two digits of the model year. This continued through 1940, when the last "F" model, the "Series 60 F-40" models were offered. There were also "L" and "G" models, such as the L-38 in 1938 and G-39 in 1939.

So the F-85 was kind of a later descendant of these earlier letter series cars, and the '61 F-85 was the first "F" model since 1940. But, of course, the number no longer referred to the year. If Olds had stuck with that, these would have been F-61s.

As Jamesbo said, the later names like Delmont, Firenza, Omega, Achieva, Bravada, etc. were undoubtedly the inventions of marketing people. As far as the name "Toronado", there is no mention of the origin of the name in "Setting the Pace," but I would guess it was invented to sound like "tornado" and invoke in your mind a sense of wild, unrestrained energy.

olds67

Thanks!!!!!!!!!
i have no words..
explanation magnificent..

i'm proud to have an Oldsmobile

olds67

Futuramic??

72 cutlass455

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Delmont_88 Marketing was to sell a name folks could visualize or a well known series. Car makers have used fish, animals, storms and planets to sell there cars. and yes they used weapons also Javalin and Cutlass and others hehe. 88 and 98 olds sounds better than a series 88 or a series 98.

olds67

easier to sell a car with a name with a number, is another effect, but I think that the years the numbers were much more beautiful, I speak of the fifties in general, other times when you might appreciate more the value of things , I stopped at the first 70 years after the car does not drive me crazy with a few model