Through natural predilection or mere opportunity (those movie marathons on TBS, perhaps?), I’ve been a fan of the James Bond series of movies (and books) my whole life. The reality, however, is that a lot of those films aren’t ever going to make anyone’s top-ten lists, and 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever could be ranked in that file. Most fans and critics consider it to be one of Sean Connery’s weakest entries in the canon, but I still watched it many, many times as a kid. Therefore, upon seeing this virtually pristine ’71 Thunderbird at Greenfield Village’s “Motor Muster” car show in Dearborn, Michigan, I thought of nothing but Diamonds.
Everyone knows that a suspension of disbelief can help any moviegoer (and their friends and family) enjoy a movie; after all, nobody likes a nitpicker (I’m guilty, especially when a car’s involved). In the case of Diamonds, you might as well accept that everyone drives a Ford in the 1971 world of cops and robbers, because manufacturers would make deals with producers and everyone would drive that brand in that film.
Fundamentally, the movie itself is about diamond smuggling, and the plot was borderline incomprehensible to me as a 13-year-old (especially the revenge angle, as I hadn’t watched On Her Majesty’s Secret Service yet, and the actor wasn’t even the same guy anyway). What I did know is that although the movie wasn’t great, it had moments of greatness. The assassins were a couple of menacing wisecrackers named Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint, and they drove this gleaming Thunderbird Landau to deposit an unconscious James Bond in a desert tunnel outside of Las Vegas. (Side note: Why just leave him for dead? He’s just going to escape and kill you later! More suspension of disbelief). Although the thugs were well-drawn in some cases, and their depiction is dated and borderline offensive in at least one scene, they and the Thunderbird were not the main reasons I watched the film so many times.
Maybe it was beautiful redhead Jill St. John as Tiffany Case, who just happened to drive one of my favorite Mustangs of all time, a Bright Red 1971 Mach 1. A redheaded Bond girl certainly didn’t hurt my enjoyment of this campy film, but in reality, Ms. Case was a very pleasant diversion from an OK car chase with a famous continuity error and a bunch of stunts involving the Mach 1. I was a car kid first and foremost.
The Thunderbird itself only showed up in a few scenes, but I knew that it wasn’t a Thunderbird I was accustomed to seeing. I was already in love with two-seat ‘Birds and early four-seaters, too, but this? I wasn’t alone; only 36,055 T-Birds were sold in 1971, the last year for this body style, and 20,356 were two-door Landaus like our feature car and the bad guys’ film T-Bird. As a matter of comparison, you could still buy a standard hardtop in 1971 with a completely different roofline (looks chopped, doesn’t it?). Only 9,146 were sold. The poor four-door Landau, in its final year? Only 6,553.
Like Diamonds Are Forever, I’m not here to argue that the ’71 Thunderbird was the best in that legendary canon; it’s probably not even in the top half. What I am here to do is argue that this particular ’71 Thunderbird is gorgeous. The paint color looks like “Green Fire,” a metallic color that was shared with Lincoln and Mercury as “Ivory Bronze Moondust.” Speaking of the moon, there was a goofball getaway scene in Diamonds involving a moon landing on a movie set that conspiracy theorists might be enthusiastic about.
The green interior is immaculate, and those fabrics, those door panels: It was a harbinger of 1970s extravagance, and anyone who can’t appreciate the sheer kitsch of this Fordiest of luxury Ford interiors needs to mine for their childish sense of levity. On the other hand, is this where the Thunderbird stopped really being special? The interior is very much in the Ford vein, unlike the fantastically styled passenger compartments of earlier T-Birds.
The wheel covers also reminded me of something, but it wasn’t a film.
Ah, yes, it was a Corvette. I’ve always liked the finned “turbine” wheel covers on early C3 Corvettes, and while I’m not generally a booster of the C3, I’d gladly drive this comparatively tasteful red roadster.
No, the 1971 Thunderbird is not one you’d call particularly tasteful, and it didn’t sell particularly well, and it didn’t age particularly well, sort of like Diamonds Are Forever. But like a suspension of disbelief at the movie theater, it’s helpful to have a sense of context when you’re looking at a particularly nice old car such as this T-Bird. It was so popular at the car show that I had a hard time taking pictures of it; it was that lovely. Because of that, and because the ’71 T-Bird is so uncommon in general, and because of its arresting “Green Fire” paint, people could accept that even though it wasn’t the best of the Thunderbirds, it was still a fun diversion from the dreary real world. And that’s what old cars and movies are all about.
Yes, the T-Bird was changing in 1971. The next year, it would grow even larger and would resemble the Lincoln Mark IV (for good reason – it was basically the same car). It would still have those same wall-to-wall taillights. But it wouldn’t remind me of those intimidating killers who drove that swanky Landau in a dark tunnel conveying James Bond once again to his doom. Or so they thought.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1971 Ford Thunderbird Four Door Landau – Yes, I Said Four Doors
I was more of a Plenty O’Toole kind of guy, she is Natalie Wood’s sister. Bond says “must have named you after your father” or something like that.
People flock to these superhero movies now, I could care less. All the Bond movies have some merit as entertainment.
Agree this T-Bird has some merit as well.
What a great example. I’d crowd around it, too.
Diamonds Are Forever is also the mental connection I have with these cars. They are not exactly popular judging from previous comment threads here. Funny how a few scenes from a movie made such an impression on me. I can’t logically defend them, I just like them.
I’ve mentioned it before here, but I’ve got no problem with the Bunkie Beak Birds.
A Bird with a Beak? Seems appropriate to me. And although that interior is not as cool as the generations before it, it looks like a nice place to spend time in on an open road somewhere.
When I was a kid, I had a model of one of these built with Peter Wilding like quality (I didn’t build it… I was never that good). I’m not even sure how I acquired the car, but it was also green, although painted in more of an emerald green. The car was gorgeous and I was smitten. I said to myself, “I’ll own a T-Bird someday.”
FFWD to February of 1984, and I bought my first one, a 1983 AeroBird with only 3,000 miles on it. There were a few more to come until my last, a 1997, in Pacific Green Clearcoat Metallic paint.
I have some mixed feelings about these. The four door? No thanks. The hardtop? Mostly meh but maybe ok if the colors and options are right. But the landau. Stunning! Something about the dress made fall in love.
Probably because I was never a big fan of films, and also because much of my early childhood English came of reading the National Geographic Magazine, as well as my Dad’s whole library which had only a small percentage of Spanish-language material, I hadn’t been aware of “Diamonds are Forever”. What I remember like if I’d seen it yesterday were the multiple ads of Cadillac all over the 50’s and part of the 60’s adorned with real jewels, emeralds, sapphires and the like, in gold chains. “Adorned” might be too much, in fact there were just photos of the jewels to associate them with the (admittedly beautiful) cars. In the same issues, a few pages later, you’d find the classic ad “A Diamond is forever” by DeBeers, headed by a guy proposing to his girl, or an older man giving an anniversary gift to his wife. It’s interesting to note how those magazines projected on young me an image of wealth that was clearly not necessarily precise….
There was an ad, probably around ´75, of a Lincoln Town Car with its middle-aged owner entering a “University Hospital”. I asked my dad, a successful MD, why did he have to drive a Nova and if we couldn’t go live to the US. He said, “it’s not so easy, buddy”.
I too grew up watching the Bond marathons on TBS, and I cannot explain why but I always tended to enjoy the movies Bond aficionados rank deep in the basement, be it Diamonds are Forever, Man with the Golden Gun, or Moonraker, and found myself mostly bored by earlier Connery movies like Dr. No or Thunderball, and I fully lost interest in the franchise in the dark and brooding Craig era. I think part of it was the lesser/campy Bonds tended to be more elusive in those TBS marathons, I’d keep catching Goldfinger et al and then I’d finally see the elusive Diamonds are Forever staying up extra late and it felt more special.
I guess much the same can be said about these 70s cars for me; 80s-present cars are all pretty familiar. I’m too young to have been around before that but 50s- 60s cars are also familiar because of the buff books and movies keeping them iconic, so 70s broughams, PLCs and other distinctly 70s stuff that was always kind of deliberately disposed of and put out of mind by the culture out of embarrassment made me appreciate them all the more.
Anyway on the subject of this Tbird and Diamonds are forever specifically, it is interesting to me in the film I don’t believe there is a single frame where the bunkie beak front end is visible, all scenes it’s in you can only see the rear of the sides. From those views in the landau bodystyle it may as well be a 68 to any given viewer. The other thing is though the Ford presence was ludicrously strong in this film, it’s not quite as laughable as it is in Live and Let Die where other than the pimpmobiles, every single other car was a 1973 Chevy Impala/Bel Air, or man with a golden gun where in Hong Kong the police drove Matadors, the villain owned a matador coupe that could turn into an airplane and Bond and the bumbling sheriff from the previous installment just so happened to find an AMC dealership to “test drive” a Hornet
I was going to bring up the product placement in Roger Moore’s first two outings, Matt, but I didn’t want to go too far off the rails. Your explanation of the bumbling sheriff just happening into an AMC dealer is spot on.
Man, those films didn’t age too well when it comes to stereotypes, did they?
I liked your line about “the Fordiest of luxury Ford interiors.” My dad drove a ’73 Ford LTD that had that same quilted-couch look to the bench seats. So much interior real estate, and so many Naugas killed off for their Hydes.
Quite a handsome bird. The huge glassless area behind each door would make the back seat a “cave”.
My mom’s cousins had a family reunion round “70”. ((could be summer “69”))
Their car was a triple green ‘4dor, Tbird”.
Darker green then this I believe.
Was quite impressive and quite new at the time.
Believe it was too long to put into their garage.
One of the houses on the street had a “61ish Rambler”, in the drive. Remember because by then so few were about.
A criminally under rated Bond film. Ok, it might be campy because it doesn`t take itself too seriously, but it is a fun film to watch, especially after the unwatchable ‘On Her Majesty` Secret Service’ with the one shot Bond George Lazenby. Car wise there isn`t anything too exciting here, but we didn`t go to Bond films to see cars ( except Goldfinger). There is no such thing as a bad Bond film with Sean Connery! Each actor who played him bought their own unique interpertation to the role, and to be quite frank about it, the series never fully recovered when Connery left. On a 1 to 4 star rating,I give ‘Diamonds’ a three and a half star rating out of four.
this was the last year for the so-called “Glamor Birds”, the fifth-generation cars that ran from 1967-71. I used to hate the “Bunkie Beak”, but with apologies to Curly Howard of the Three Stooges, it has grown on me! So do warts, Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk! I much prefer the first year (1967) cars of this generation, for three (3) reasons. First, after 1967, the Federally-mandated side marker lights look like giant zits on the car’s chin! They do nothing for the car’s looks. Second, the bucket seats became optional in 1968, so many later cars came with bench seats, which are not ideal if the driver and front-seat passenger are significantly different in height! The worst case is a short driver with a tall front passenger, for obvious reasons! Third, the 1969 version had a butt-ugly rear end, with a cheap pot-metal panel between the taillights that also saw the end of the sequential taillights and the loss of the small side window for rear-seat passengers in the coupe. Finally, The hide-away headlights went away and the full-width sequential turn signals came back in 1970, along with the appearance of the “Bunkie Beak”! I like the hide-away headlight look, despite its mechanical complexity and tendency to fail, leaving many cars looking like they are winking at you, with one (1) headlight door open and the other closed, LOL! Despite this, I much prefer the 1967-69 grille, styled to look like the jet intake on an F-100 Super-Sabre!
The sixth-generation models got even bigger, sharing a platform with the Lincoln Mark IV and Mark V, getting even softer and fatter in the process! Not my favorite driving T-Birds to be sure!
Loved this! Car, movie tie-in, franchise, everything. “Diamonds” was not the best Bond flick, but honestly, what does that have to do with it? Hugely enjoyable! Las Vegas, red Sportsroof Mustang, Jill St. John… what’s not to love? Oh, yeah – those tacky gay stereotypes and a few other things.
Much to your metaphor about these not being your favorite Tbirds, one must admire this one’s condition and options. Still a stunning car by any measure. Thanks for this, Aaron!
If loving glamor birds is wrong, indont wanna be right.
I will confess an affinity for the 70-71 Bird. But make mine the regular hardtop, that I think works so much better with the rest of the car’s styling. These made a case for the Thunderbird and its completely different vibe from the Mark III. In 1972, the Bird would transform into a budget Mark.
I have not seen Diamonds in a long time, and need to fix that.
Liked the “Diamonds are Forever”, tune, Was not a big “Bond”, movie fan.
My brothers were. One an avid fan. The other, a casual fan.
I take your point about how everyone drives a Ford in the 1971 world of cops and robbers. Usually the main automotive sponsor of a TV show or movie would provide the cars driven by the good guys, while somehow all of the baddies drove cars manufactured by the sponsor’s competitors.