It’s one thing to build a car. It’s another thing to sell a car. A manufacturer can send a car to a dealership and leave it in the showroom, but that alone may not lead to a sale. What do manufacturers do to move product? That’s where marketing comes into play.
Marketing departments in Detroit have created many obscure editions of vehicles that generally won’t appear in your average brochure. Here is one courtesy of Ford friend Adrian Clements—he found it in the Flickr account of literature collector Alden Jewell.
This 1969 Oldsmobile Toronado is a promotional model called Toronado Jade. I’ve dug into newspaper sites and could not find anything on it other than what you can see here, a Toronado painted in Metallic Jade Green (a color not normally available for the Toronado at the time). The late, lamented website Automotive Mileposts said it was a spring promotion introduced in April 1969. “You’d expect to pay more for the special color alone,” says this neat item. “Instead, you get the most distinctive Toronado ever built at special savings.” Another special feature appears to be “GT striping” on the hood, something not normally available on regular Toronados. In fact, it resembles the standard striping for the 4-4-2.
Clearly, automakers did anything to move iron. Have you ever seen one of these?
