posted at the Cohort by SoCalMetro
Cohort Wordless Outtake: Maybe a Country Squire Would Have Been a Better Choice
– Posted on June 16, 2018
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Curbside Classics Archives
posted at the Cohort by SoCalMetro
Thunderbus.
“Gain perspective”. Hmmmm ….
I don’t remember the bus having that livery when I rode it on the factory tour to and from Greenfield Village but the tour was interesting. The lack of a reasonably professional dress code surprised me. I would think Ford would want to project a consistent well put together image. Living near the SC BMW plant, I see a lot of folks from there every day. Dark blue twill pants and polo shirt with a small corporate symbol that actually fit seems to be the minimum standard. Nice looking, comfortable, and not class/trade demeaning at all. Appropriate for a gainfully employed grown a$$ adult. . . Maybe I’m just grumpy, get off my lawn kids!
At the CC Meetup last year, we rode these buses. It seems one was a Mustang and the other we saw was a ????.
Having been to a few factories previously (Ford’s St. Thomas, Ontario, plant, the John Deere factory in Davenport, Iowa, the Knapheide bed factory in Quincy, Illinois, and the Harley plant in Kansas City) the manner of dress has been fairly consistent. The one from The Rouge that sticks with me is the t-shirt that said in huge font “I Love My Wife”.
The attire I’ve seen hasn’t bothered me but I do see where there are some distinct advantages in having the uniformity (no pun intended) you have seen at the BMW factory.
The graphics on the Rouge tour buses are first gen Thunderbird, first gen Mustang and current gen F-150. Why? Those iconic models were all built at the Rouge.
Don’t think know if it was built at the Rouge, but that bus wheelbase is better suited to the Continental MkII.
Well bugger me, Bernadette, so that’s where Priscilla ended up.
Priscilla Queen of The Desert is an odd and really rather funny Australian movie from ’94, with Terence Stamp and Guy Pearce, about a trio of drag queens who end up travelling across the outback in an big old bus (a Hino) which ends up painted pink – exactly this pink, it so happens – to cover up homophobic vandalism. They then name the bus Priscilla, so the movie is actually named after the bus. Despite my precis description, it’s far from a stupid movie. I’d recommend it.
(Should also explain that “bugger me” is not considered rude in Aus, has same meaning as “well, I’ll be darned”).
Speaking of pink. The co-founder of the Kalamazoo aviation museum Sue Parish, a WWII WASP, liked to fly warbirds, but she also liked pink. Research revealed that a “desert sand” color that P-40s had been painted in the North Africa campaign had a tendency to fade to pink under the desert sun, so she promptly bought a P-40 and had it painted that shade of pink.
Her P-40 now hangs in the lobby of the museum. Rumor has it Sue’s ashes, she died in 2010, are inside the plane.
No a Country Squire wouldn’t have been better, there’d only be space for 8 passengers…
I’ll see myself out
The world’s only Thunderbird diesel.