Oldsmobile Fournado

Story and photos by John Gunnell

Never heard of the Fournado? Then you probably never browsed through the March 1968 issue of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, which headlined this car with a cover blurb that read: “455-INCH FWD OLDS 442.” The story about the car inside that magazine was about an unusual Oldsmobile that had been built by Hurst Performance Research.

According to the magazine, the Fournado was put together as a plaything for George Hurst, who owned the muscle car making company. “This time Uncle George wanted his own toy, a fast, sure-footed road car,” wrote the author. “And (he) specified an Olds 442 with front-wheel drive.” Hurst had pull at GM and the car got the Toronado’s 455-cid V8 instead of the 442’s 400-cid job. It also had the Forced-Air induction system.

The stock Olds 442 was about 1,000 lbs. lighter in weight than a Toronado, so the 55 extra cubic inches had a big effect on the mid-sized Oldsmobile’s performance. That was despite the fact that the 455 engine’s exhaust manifolds couldn’t be used because of the smaller body. That held the maximum horsepower to a “mere” 390, which was more than enough to make the car fast. A torsion bar suspension aided its sure-footedness.

Modifications had to be carried out to fit the Toronado drive line and sub frame into the 442: Hurst sectioned the front fenders, moved the wheel openings toward the front and relocated the radiator further forward. The

Toronado frame and 442 frame where joined together about halfway down the car’s wheelbase. Hurst ditched the transmission hump and gave it a flat floor. At the rear end was a solid beam axle sitting on the stock 442 coil-spring-and-trailing-arm rear suspension. The Fournado was fitted with Goodyear’s famous Blue Streak racing tires and was finished in special Hurst Gold paint.

Although the Fournado retained much of the look of a stock 442, it had a 2-1/2-inch longer wheelbase than that model because the front wheels were moved forward. It also wore Toronado wheel covers. With the heavier engine, the weight distribution—on paper at least—was a big improvement over that of both the 442 and the Toronado.

This is how the car looked when Fred Mandrick took possession. The restoration was a true body-off-frame operation.

The 55 with tighter exhaust manifolds makes “only” 90 hp.

The 55 had to be shown off at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nats in Chicago.

The Fournado has Goodyear Blue Streak racing tires and special Hurst Gold paint. A man named David Landrith, who worked for Hurst in Detroit, took ownership of the Fournado project. He created the one-of-a-kind Oldsmobile on a frame that was mostly Toronado ahead of the rear wheels. The rest of the frame was pirated from the 442 parts bin. There were some teething problems with the car’s chassis and brakes, but the engineers and designers at Hurst Performance Research took care of them handily.

“The new Four Four Toronado (another nickname for the car) is superior to either a Toronado or a 442,” said the Super Stock & Drag Illustrated story. “More performance, more traction, improved cornering, better handling, added manoeuvrability, everything.”

Fred Mandrick came to own the car and restored it. It was a big hit one past year at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals (www.MCACN.com). Mandrick said that his understanding is that Oldsmobile kept ownership of the car and let Hurst drive it for around 2-1/2 years. In 1970, the Fournado was shipped to Guy Martin Oldsmobile in Woodland Hills, Calif. The dealership put the car on the cover of its April 1970 newsletter, calling it the “Baby Toronado” and used it to promote Guy Martin as the “dealer with a difference.”

On Sept. 10, 1970, the car was sold to a man named William Hesse of Chatsworth, Calif. The used car warranty that Hesse received when he took possession showed the license plate number 2LG696 and said that the Fournado had 39,000 miles on the clock at that time. An invoice says that Hesse paid just $4,575 for the car and he got a trade in allowance of $350 on a 1962 Chevy he owned. He also made a down payment of $800.

Hesse used the car as an everyday driver for about 16 years. He took very good care of it and kept it garaged. He lived in several different states, before moving to Oklahoma in 1976. When he stopped using the Fournado it had 116,000 miles on it.

It got attention while on display at the Stephens Center in Rosemont, Ill..

Eventually, the Fournado wound up being pictured and written about in a book co-authored by Mark Fletcher, who lived in Stevens Point, Wis., at that time. Fletcher had teamed up with another automotive writer named Richard Truesdell to author the book, which was entitled Hurst Equipped: More than 50 Years of High Performance.

Fred Mandrick bought a signed copy of the Hurst book at the 2012 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals show and saw the Mandrake Fournado pictured inside. He asked Fletcher what the owner planned to do with the unusual Oldsmobile. The answer was that the car’s owner wanted to sell it to the kind of person who would take good care of it the same way he had. Fred Mandrick asked Mark Fletcher how he could get in touch with the owner. Mandrick called the owner from the car show’s host hotel. He must have convinced the man that he’d be the perfect owner. He wound up getting the car along with every piece of paperwork related to it including the documents we mentioned, temporary registrations, original black California plates and two of Guy Martin Oldsmobile’s newsletters. Mandrick spent most of the next year restoring the car to perfect condition.

Mandrick lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. and collects high-performance Oldsmobiles of the General Motors A-body family. He has a bunch of

442s and Hurst/Olds models. His cars run the gamut from low-mileage Survivors to completely restored cars. He has a stash of NOS Oldsmobile parts and a garage with many neon dealership signs and a two-stall restoration shop. He even has an all-aluminum 455 topped by four Weber carburetors. JUNE/JULY 2022 MUSCLE CAR PLUS MAGAZINE