nifticus found, shot and posted one of the more controversial generations of the Thunderbird. Feelings about these tend to be a bit polarized. Where on the spectrum from hot to cold are you?
The rear end isn’t exactly much less polarizing either.
Plenty of rear overhang. The wheels on this are reminding me of something…
My younger brother had one just like this. Those swing axles with all that positive camber used to really get me. Couldn’t they have put in a solid axle in the back, at least?
Yes, it’s polarizing, but perhaps not as much as the four door version which was / is just bizarre.
IMHO the ’66 is much cleaner.
Love it. 1967 is probably the best year of the 67-71 “glamour birds” IMO.
The 67 front end looks more like a jet intake and less like an electric razor (as on the 68 and 69 models). And the less said about the “Bunkie beak” 1970 and 71 models, the better.
” And the less said about the “Bunkie beak” 1970 and 71 models, the better.
At one time my parents actually had (2) Bunkie Beak T-Birds, a white two-door with a similar shape to the post’s subject bird, and a brick-red four-suicide-door model which was a bit less swoopy but roomier. Both were bought used off a Dodge dealer’s lot.
Both were problematic, the white two-door so much so it was gone in a year.
The four-door soldiered on but not without a lot of time with my father and me bent over the fenders trying to squeeze hands and tools here and there to keep it running. It was a tight engine room.
The brick-red bird did nothing really well (even when running well) but its big broughaminess delighted my mother. My father’s philosophy was “happy wife = happy life” and when I (upon moving to Manhattan) gave them my year old 1982 Honda Accord they turned the tough old bird over to my son Chris.
Chris killed the big bird in short order, along with a few other cars and motorcycles, and maybe even a boat (or so I’ve been told). I never learned any of the gory details.
I am getting a heavy Floral Park/New Hyde Park/Garden City/Mineola vibe from this pic….
Pretty good FM … all nearby and similar neighborhoods on the same island.
Rockville Centre, (Long Island) NY
Know RVC real well, also Lynbrook and Malverne.
Cheers!
Ditto. I’ve explained why I like the ’67 best in a previous post in this thread, so I’ll skip the repetition. Scroll down to see it.
I agree about the “Bunkie Beak” worst element about those years of Thunderbird
I am a fan of all T-Birds and, while the 1983-1988 and 1989-1997 iterations are my favorites, these plush-Birds are right up there. To me they epitomize the grown-up Mustang concept that Ford would perfect with the Lincoln Mark VII.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, Thank You. But I tend to prefer the Mark VIII over the VII, simply because the VII retained the body-on-frame architecture and live axle rear end, while the VIII got the unibody and IRS from its corporate cousin, the T-Bird. Also, I worked for Osram Sylvania at the time the Mark VIII came out, and I was working for the group that developed the neon tail light for the center panel on the Lincoln, along with the HID headlights in the Mark VIII. We has a Mark VIII as a development mule the company allowed employees to borrow, to put hours on the ballast for the headlights. The only rule was that when you used the car, you had to turn the headlights on anytime the car was running, even in broad daylight, to build time on the ballast module, LOL!
simply because the VII retained the body-on-frame architecture
The Mk VII was Fox-(uni)body. It was just a somewhat elongated (Fox) aero-Thunderbird.
O.K., I stand corrected, but it still had the live axle. The Mark VIII was based on the T-Bird and Cougar’s FN-12 platform, which by this time has the Independent Rear Suspension (IRS) and the Modular 4.6L V8. The Mark VIII got the 32-valve version, the lesser T-Bird and Cougar got the 16-valve Modular motor.
I didn’t like it then, but now it makes a pretty nice full size hot rod. Of course it takes a big engine and plenty of gas, but it’s not like you will be driving it every day to work.
I like it. I prefer the 4 door which is weirder, if you’re going to be weird you may as well be really weird.
I don’t like it enough to want one, but it was a pretty gutsy move to make that car.
I don’t hate the four door version like so many do, but one unfortunate side effect of adding the suicide doors was that the curved back seat goes away in the four-door car. This was the beginning of a trend to move the T-Bird upmarket. While the ’67 was an all-new design, by 1972 the T-Bird was a virtual twin to the Lincoln Mark III-IV, sharing frames and most of the sheet metal. The differentiator was that the T-Bird had the 429 V8 available as the only engine choice, to get the 460 V8, you had to move up to the Lincoln, until 1973, when both cars got the 460 in the face of dropping power output due to ever more stringent emission controls. By 1969, the suicide door Lincoln Continental sedan was gone and the four-door Lincoln Continental Convertible disappeared one year earlier, in 1968.
The mag wheels on today’s car aren’t my thing, but I’m overall on the “love it” side (though not for the “beak” that showed up a few years later).
All this clouded by nostalgia, I admit. For a few years a suicide-door ’69 was my mother’s car (used mostly for shopping & errands) with the magnificent 4-barrel, premium-gas 429. I only rarely got to drive it, but it was shockingly fast and could chirp the tires with ease:
I More liked tan disliked them. Yes the immediately preceding “Flair birds” of 64 to 66 are my favorite. However, this was a response to market changes. The Thunderbird was a premium Personal luxury Coupe. The 4 dr essentially replaced the convertible in the line up. Being built on the Wixom line along with Lincolns made using the carriage doors a matter of simplifying costs. they sold in higher numbers than the convertible. (though a drop top version of the 67 to 69 versions would not have been a bad looking car.) The car pictured has been relieved of its rocker and lower fender moldings which tied the lines of the front and reat bumpers together. that trim was dropped in 68 in favor of a simple rocker strip and in 69 by wide fluted rocker trim. The single chrome Bird in the middle of the 67 was replaced by unfortunate twins, on on each headlight door and made the front look too busy, the 69 returned to a larger, again centrally mounted bird with heavy turquoise jewelry. What Bunkie Knudsen did to the 70 and 71 is best left for another day.
Why did it take a 1970 Chevy Monte Carlo to show Ford how to sell a personal luxury car? Ford invented the genre in 1958 but within a decade ends up with THIS? Talk about failing to catch a trend, right? WTH would have happened if those brougham styling touches showed up on a 1967 Thunderbird first?
What we seemed to have repeatedly saw from Detroit is an attempt to make a “sporty-luxury” coupe for a small market of toupe-wearing WWII veterans looking to swing with Ann Margaret. GM had the Eldorado, Riviera, Toronado. Ford sold the Thunderchicken. During the previous four years, no one could make enough Pony cars, so one would have thought that someone swilling a martini at a Detroit cocktail party could have gotten drunk enough to catch a trend regarding their luxury coupes? NOPE.
Detroit doubled down on stupid. As the trend lines kept dropping, Detroit kept upping the stupid with these “sporty-luxury” cars. Ford actually created a FOUR DOOR T-BIRD, instead of figuring out how to turn the Fairlane/Torino into a new Thunderbird and make a killing in profits. Ford didn’t figure this out until when – 1976? Nearly a decade later?
These Thunderbirds are just sad. They aren’t sporty. They aren’t luxurious. They are overweight, sloppy boulevard cruisers with maintenance issues, riding on an iconic name.
Talk about losing the thread – this represents Ford fumbling away the next big thing in motoring for the next twenty years.
The thing is, whatever one may say of sixties T-Birds, they dominated the segment, consistently outselling rivals like the Riviera and Toronado. Evey one sold was obviously a windfall for Ford dealers, and they kept the Wixom plant operating in the black, which kept the Continental alive.
I think the reason it took Ford until 1977 to really go for the Monte Carlo formula instead was that they didn’t want to kill the golden goose in process. Arguably, the Mark took over that high-end fat cat market, but the Mark was a Lincoln-Mercury product, and didn’t do anything for Ford dealers’ bottom line. The problem was that the Elite was hemmed in by needing to not obsolete the T-Bird, so it wasn’t flamboyant enough to really rival the Monte Carlo, and it wasn’t until the writing was clearly on the wall about the future of big luxury cars that Ford did what in retrospect seemed like the obvious thing. (When they did, the 1977–1979 T-Bird was an enormous success.)
I remember one of my Dad’s friends saying the ’77 T-B was “cheapened”. But, most buyers saw it as a bargain and snapped them up.
I like that the Hot Wheel T-Bird is shown, first thing I thought of when saw first picture. Due to the toy, I think of the 67-69 as ‘sporty’. Had a Mustang Hot Wheel then, and wanted all the stock bodied ‘custom’ cars. Only got a Cougar.
As Packard discovered earlier and Cadillac found later, cheapening a previously upscale brand can work very well at first, although it can make it hard to go back in the other direction.
While this generation is not my favorite, it is the Square Bird (’58 to ’60) that I like the least. Something about those was just off to me, although I did like their interiors.
I’ll be the contrarian here and say I actually like the Bunkie Beak Birds. A bird, with a beak. What’s not to love here?
Having said that, I never liked the suicide door version of this generation. A Thunderbird should have 2 doors. No more.
The “Bunkie Beak” morphed into the center grilles of later models. Mimicked on the Aero ’83-’88.
Maybe that’s why I like it. I had an ‘83, as well as a couple of ‘88(s)!
I’m red-hot for these, particularly the ’70-’71 semi-fastback hardtop coupes! Taillights are great pretty much every model year ’67-’71. Fantastic interiors, too.
I love these! My Mom inherited one in 1973, when her brother-in-law, my Uncle Francis passed away. Her sister, my Aunt Catharine, never learned how to drive, so she sold it to Mom for $800, with only 29k miles on it! My Dad was like “Why do you want an old car like that for?”, until Mom brought it home! It was like brand-new, and when my Dad saw it, he couldn’t pry the keys out of Mom’s hand fast enough, LOL! I liked the front end as well, with the hide-away headlights, and the homage to the F100 Super Sabre fighter jet in the grille shape.
I liked the ’67 the best, I thought the “Nader Eyes” side marker lights on the ’68 were ugly, and the front turn signals on the ’68 and 69 looked too much like the front turn signals on my brother’s ’69 Firebird. I also hated the taillight treatment on the ’69, that ugly chrome panel between the taillights was awful. The ’69 also dispensed with the rear seat side windows, which made a huge blind spot even worse!
Ours was missing the vinyl roof, Thank God, and was pretty basic. No air conditioning, no power windows or power locks, and only an AM radio, which was pretty common at the time. It had the base engine, the 390 “FE” big-block V8 (the 428 Thunderjet was optional until 1968, when the 429 “385” big-block replaced the Thunderjet as the optional engine, before becoming the sole engine choice in 1969).
Thankfully, the original taillight treatment came back in 1970. We also got the “Bunkie Beak” in 1970, unfortunately. When I first saw it at age eleven (11), I hated it, but lately, it has grown on me. Unfortunately, so do warts, Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk!
Here’s a link to a picture of the F100D Super Sabre, with the engine intake in the nose:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_American_F-100D_060922-F-1234S-002.jpg#/media/File:North_American_F-100D_060922-F-1234S-002.jpg
Do you see the resemblance?
I always liked ’em — particularly the 4-door morph. Yes, heresy I know! 😉
I think my appreciation of this era of T-bird was heavily informed by my age and, yes, my Hot Wheels collection! The Hot Wheels Thunderbird was (is) dark metallic geeen, with a flat black ‘vinyl’ roof. It was a treasured model in my collection (as was the ’57 — which was also green, albeit a different green). 🙂
ahh, memories…
By the time these came out, I was barely paying attention to TBirds after a brief childhood infatuation with the ‘55-57 and then the bullet Birds. And I may be in the minority here to have thought (and still do) that the 4 door was all wrong, or at least should have been branded a Lincoln. Of course, I’ve barely come to terms with the 4 door Charger … or GTI. But from my own 2023 perspective the subject car looks pretty nice, especially black on black, and I like the wheels.
Regarding the 4-door better off being a Lincoln, since the Mark III and T-Bird shared platforms, this was theoretically possible. At least one enterprising customer actually had a 4-door Mark III made (using some Thunderbird bits), at considerable expense, and the result (linked below) is definitely not to everyone’s taste.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/cc-custom-lehmann-peterson-four-door-lincoln-continental-mark-iii/
The reality is that the then-nascent PLC market was not interested in 4-door variants. PLC buyers generally weren’t interested 4-door Thunderbirds any more than they would have been interested in a four-door Mark, Grand Prix, Riviera, Toronado, or Monte Carlo. All would have flopped.
Years later we would eventually get a four-door Mark VI and Pontiac would make a 4-door Grand Prix, but only after the PLC had started getting stale and well past its peak.
I prefer them without the vinyl roof, etc, but otherwise, very cool.
Ditto. Some people remove the vinyl roof when restoring one of these, but it’s easy to tell if the car was born without vinyl. Painted roof cars got a stylized Thunderbird badge on the rear roof pillar, vinyl roof cars got the faux “Landau Bars” on the rear roof pillar instead. The insert for the badge was painted to match the car’s color. When people remove the vinyl roof, they sometimes try to find this badge, but often, the color of the badge doesn’t match the color of the rest of the car, either because the car was repainted a different color, or because the badge was salvaged from a different colored car. Only the two-door T-Birds could be ordered without the vinyl roof from the factory, all of the four-door T-Birds came with the vinyl roof as standard. I think it was because that the phony Landau Bars helped hide the cut line for the rear suicide doors in the roof, IMHO.
I prefer the 67 to the prior years. The Bunkie beak cars are just too large.
I am on record as not being a fan. I had thought I might like the 2 door better, but I do not. The view from the side is just awkward – too little wheelbase, too much car, and the passenger compartment is shoved forward, leaving a too-long deck. The proportions are just bad. I am probably in the minority, but I find the 70-71 far more attractive than these.
That Hot wheels car was my very first thought too. Mine was blue, just like the one in the photo. It was one of the very first Hot Wheels cars released, as I recall.
The camber on this Hot Wheels Thunderbird is worse than most, but the very thin axles were necessary to provide the low friction that gave these models their free running.
To their legions of fans, Hot Wheels cars are the greatest, but to me they are over-promoted (the first diecast models to employ TV advertising) unrealistic junk. They led the stampede to overseas production and caused Matchbox, Corgi, Dinky and other competitors to spoil their products with ugly plastic wheels.
True. But then Hot Wheels were something totally different. Previous models were for looking at, or puttering around in on the floor. With Hot Wheels, suddenly one could send them flying! My brother and I set up an ever taller “ski jump” to see how far across the living room we could make them fly. Try that with a Matchbox! 🙂
They came out in 1968. Weren’t you a bit old (or far too young) for playing with toy cars?
No. One should never be “too old” to play with toy cars. And learn a practical physics lesson.
The camber (bent axles) can easily be fixed with this simple tool, it also can remove the wheels for replacement
Even as a young kid I liked the four door version better because it was so unusual. I remember wondering how fast the car had to be going to have the back door ripped away from the body if when it was opened. Is the T-Bird the last regular production American car with suicide doors?
For the record, I like these. These were the last Thunderbirds with a hint of sporting pretense until the aero generation of the 1980s. I’ve warmed up to the “toaster slot” grille, and the four-door earns points for novelty value alone.
I can do without the hearse-style landau bars, though. I’d also prefer a ’68 or ’69 thanks to its modicum of safety features and equipment changes (shoulder belts, side marker lights, parallel wipers) over the ’67.
The four-door soldiered on until 1972, when it was discontinued due to low sales. The next year, 1973, was when the family resemblance between the T-Bird and the Lincoln Mark series really shows up, as both the Lincoln and the T-Bird got Opera windows and 5 mph bumpers in front, the 5-mph bumpers were courtesy of NHTSA regulations. The T-Bird got trapezoidally-shaped Opera Windows in the rear roof pillar, while the Lincoln got Oval Opera Windows instead, and of course the Lincoln kept its signature faux Rolls-Royce Chrome Grille in front. The Opera Windows killed the faux Landau Bars for good.
Distinctive looking car. We gripe about all the current cars looking the same, well, here you go. I wouldn’t own one, but I am glad Ford produced them and that they are still out there, occasionally roaming the roads.
Looking at the broadside view and the aftermarket wheels, I immediately thought of my old Hot Wheels T-Bird, before I scrolled down. It’s probably a very age-specific reaction (the age being young enough but old enough to be caught up in the roll-out of that first incarnation of Hot Wheels in 1968 or so).
BTW, the lack of side marker lights on the ‘67 versus the later iterations is very welcome. For this design, keeping the visual clutter to a minimum matters quite a bit.
I’d actually call this a harbinger of today’s blandness, where coupes aren’t synonymous with 2 doors(Charger, German “Gran coupes”), names don’t match the shape you used to associate them with(Mustang Mach E, Eclipse Cross) gigantic ugly grilles with oversized emblems and random bulges pressed into its otherwise slab sides.
Mind you I agree I’m glad to see one still on the roads, but I’m glad it’s not stock (hot wheels did a way better job on the details than Ford) and I’m glad it’s not a 4 door version.
Needs redline tires and I might love it. As delivered by Ford with the black and white choice of love or hate? I gotta go with hate.
I think when the convertible option was dropped the Thunderbird’s soul went with it, from 58-66 it was always designed to look like a convertible, you got the faux retractable roofline with hardtop, the 67s don’t have that at all, it’s seam is too smoothed over and have Landau bars ever actually fooled anybody into thinking the top articulates? With no Thunderbird to actually come as one it’s stupid to even emulate it, especially with the il conceived 4 door as the new alternative bodystyle.
Beyond that the style is just uninspired, before the Thunderbird was a style leader in the lineup but in 1967 the Mustang and Cougar clearly had the A team preoccupied. The front end is borderline ugly with its puckered ant eater look – and don’t anyone correct me and call it a jet intake, every single grille-hidden headlight car made between 1967 and 1969 did a way better job of it; Camaro RS, Charger, 69 Caprice to name a few, even the goofy Toronado and Riviera facelifts were better and I thought those facelifts ruined both cars! The rear end is actually the 67 Thunderbirds lone good asset to me, it’s got a sleek low profile and clever wide taillights that act as the lone evolutionary connection to previous Thunderbirds. And frankly Dodge straight up stole the taillight illumination from these for their “racetrack” lights on the Charger, Dart and Durango of the last decade. The 69 buttlift was the ugly look, looking like an uninspired preview of the 71 Custom 500
Wasn’t the 1967 Thunderbird the first body on frame? If so, that would mean it didn’t share the Lincoln Continental platform as did its predecessors. Hard to believe Ford would develop a unique platform for a relatively low volume car.
My only experience with this generation Thunderbird is that my parents built a new home in Chesapeake, VA in 1970 because they wanted me to attend first grade in the superior Chesapeake public schools instead of the Portsmouth public schools. The builder didn’t finish the house in time for the beginning of the school year, so the builder drove six year old me and his twelve year old son to Western Branch Elementary School in his 1970 red Thunderbird 4 door until he finished our house in December 1970. I remember how much plusher the car was than our 1970 Fairlane 500 wagon.
Technically speaking the second since the 55-57 was built on a separate frame. I think the Lincoln Mark III was closely related to these, though not to the extent of the generation to follow and the Mark IV
Yes, from 1967 until 1976, the T-Bird was body-on-frame. In 1977, the car reverted back to unibody construction when it was downsized in response to the Iranian Oil Crisis, a.k.a. Oil Crisis II. The 1967 T-Bird was always intended to be used as a Lincoln, which it became in 1972.
FYI, the Lincoln Continental was Ford’s first unibody car, which is one of the reasons that it weighed almost three (3) tons! When the Lincoln Continental went away, all of the Lincolns and the T-Bird went to back to traditional body-on-frame construction.
The 77-79 was full frame too, just downsized(slightly) It didnt go back to the unibody until the move to the Fox chassis in 1980
The Continental was not Ford’s first U.S. unitized car, unless you mean the 1958 Continental Mark III, which was contemporaneous with the 1958 Thunderbird, as was the 1958 Lincoln; they were built in the same plant in Wixom. None was Ford’s first unit model, since Ford’s European products had been using unitized construction for a while.
The Continental remained unitized through 1969, even though the Thunderbird adopted a perimeter frame for 1967. (The Continental went the same way for 1970.)
I think it still shared a fair amount of structure with the Continental, particularly the cowl structure (which is a complex structure involving many pieces welded together). Keep in mind that with a perimeter frame, the body structure is more or less unitized, with the frame serving as kind of a full-length rubber-isolated subframe. They were still built at the Wixom plant alongside the Continental and, subsequently, the Mark III.
Is this the year that Thunderbird sales started dropping due to the less attractive styling. I much prefer the 1960 to 1966 models.
Awful. My 14 year old self couldn’t believe it when these came out. My feelings haven’t changed.
Love it. The Thunderbird name was still magic and these cars had presence. Basically stayed that way until 1977, when the ‘bird was vastly decontented and moved downmarket. A sales success, but the Thunder was gone.
Besides the Hot Wheels T-Bird, Hong Kong-based Playart diecast toys, offered a less stylized Thunderbird in the 1970s. It was solidly built, however the castings were not especially polished.
As a kid, I became interested in cars around 1974. I found these T-Birds over-styled, and somewhat dumpy-looking. Weren’t many left by ’74. Those still on the road, appeared driven hard by lothario-types, without much bread.
Seventies Tbirds, in California, got smogged big time which meant detuned big block motors. Example: a ’69 390 was good for 335 HP. All of a sudden in 1971 the 390 goes to 265 HP and in 1972 to 160 HP. EEgads!
So, we have an almost 4500 lb bloat mobile not makin it too good with 265 HP and the next year’s buyers get 160 HP and 0-60 in half a day.
During the 70’s, especially the mid through the end years, European cars, with fuel injection were the way to go for power and fuel efficiency and that’s exactly when Detroit’s lunch was being eaten.
Too True. And the whole time the Big Three spent money on lawyers fighting the rules, instead of on Engineering to meet the rules! It wasn’t until the Big Three exhausted their appeals and the rules really began to bite that they finally threw in the towel and began investing in the technology they needed to compete with their foreign competition, but by that time, the competition had at least a ten year head start, if not longer. If you want proof, we now have engines that put out over 700 horsepower on stock pump unleaded gasoline with a full factory warranty, technology that was science fiction not that long ago.
The US was several years ahead of Japan for automobile emissions standards and a decade or two ahead of European countries. Japan’s emissions standards were based on the US Clean Air Act of 1970.
Didn’t the reporting change from gross hp to net hp in that timeframe? I.e. the same exact car/engine would show quite a different number without any actual difference whatsoever (not saying nothing changed, but a 1969 gross hp number is not comparable to a 1972 net hp number.)
True, but if you compare net numbers, power was down significantly by 1973, and by 1975, these engines were mere shells of their former selves, thanks to lower compression ratios to tolerate the then new unleaded gasoline, combined with Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) to quench the burn early and limit oxides of nitrogen, while simultaneously leaning the mixtures to reduce carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons. The problem was that reducing oxides of nitrogen increases carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons, while reducing CO and excess fuel increases nitrogen oxides. The lean mixtures also contributed to the poor drivability of those cars, with hesitation, stalling, and dieseling that was so common to that era. It wasn’t until the widespread adoption of Electronic Ignition and Electronic Fuel Injection in the 1980’s that both emissions and drivability saw significant improvements.
Yes, and as we’ve discussed before, this is clearly illustrated in the various 1971 literature that quotes both gross and net output. For instance, a 1971 Cadillac Eldorado claimed 365 gross horsepower, but its net rating was only 235 hp. As Robert notes, even the net ratings then began to drop as emissions standards tightened (a 1974 Eldorado was down to 210 net horsepower), and there were some losses before then due to declining compression ratios, but the point is that pre-1971 engines were generally not nearly as powerful as their gross ratings suggested. A 1969 Ford 390 did not have 335 net horsepower. (Actually, I’m not even sure it had 335 gross horsepower by that point; the Fairlane/Torino brochure lists the 4V version at 320 hp and the 2V version in the big cars had 265 gross horsepower.)
The 390 was available in several different versions. The 265 (gross) horsepower edition was a regular-fuel engine with a two-barrel carburetor; in 1969, there was also a premium-fuel four-barrel version with dual exhausts, rated at 315 (gross) hp in full-size cars or 320 hp in the Fairlane/Torino line (which had a slightly hotter cam). The difference there had nothing to with emissions or rating systems: They were two different versions of the engine, available at the same time.
(The hotter 390-4V was rated at 335 gross horsepower for 1966, but I think only for the Fairlane GT and GTA; it dropped to 320 hp for 1967.)
My boss had several 4dr and one 2 dr of this T-Bird generation. I tried to buy the 67 2 dr, baby blue, white vinyl top, white interior and a 428. He wouldn’t part with it. Ended up with my 68 Cougar with a 428, sort of a down sized T-Bird. I think I may have lucked out on this one by not buying that Bird.
I liked the 67’s, especially in a 2dr and no vinyl top. 4 doors were NOT of any interest.
Bullet Birds were my favorites, especially a Sport model.
One aspect of the four-door version is a bit of a footnote in that it may be the only car made where aesthetically, a vinyl roof is essential.
It’s not uninteresting. It really has kind of a movie-car vibe to it. Maybe something McQ would have driven before getting the Firebird a few years later. This seems to be for the single man that might prefer to remain that way, as opposed to the 1977 T-bird for example that just screams Key Party.
If my admittedly faulty memory serves me correctly, Paul Newman drove one of these at the end of “Winning” (1969). He does one lap of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a brand-new T-Bird before driving away, off into the sunset.
This coupe roof design is so much better than the horrid Landau. The small quarter window helps a lot, instead of the heavy looking roof pillar/panel with the over sized landau bar. As with most first year designs it’s the cleanest, I like the big jet intake grille. The Thunderbird name still carried a lot of cachet at this time. It’s image was much closer to Lincoln than Ford, and many high income buyers garages held both. I find the ’66-’69 Riviera to be more appealing and sportier, more of a big muscle car. I’ve had a 66, 67, and 71 Rivieras and I’d agree that the T Bird had a more upscale interior design. The final ’71 fastback T Birds look quite aggressive to me, that’s the one that I would get.
Chrome Cragar SS mags were the de rigueur aftermarket wheels in the early 70’s, and they improved the look of any car they graced, in my and my friends’ opinion.
I can’t tell whether these are Cragars, but they definitely improved the look of this car too.
The term in the hobby these days seems to be bent-axle rather than swing axles. Mattel advertised their Hot Wheels miniatures back then as having torsion-bar suspension, one wire connected the pair of wheels at each end as seen in this pic on Reddit. A straight axle wire that acted upon a plastic bar or a hook in the metal baseplate came later.
I’m with JPC and VanillaDude — As a teenager when the ’67 was new, I thought it was cool. But that was then and this is now: The T-Bird lost the plot with the ’67s and didn’t get it back until the ’83 model year.
I will admit though that this all-black example with the aftermarket mags and removed chrome does make me reconsider.
BTW, it appears the National Park Service still uses this generation T-Bird as the symbol for a generic car on their signs.
That National Park Service sign is really amusing! I’ll have to keep my eye out for them.
I always loved the four door Landau since it came out. Many have forgotten what an event new car intros were every September. I remember taking the full-page Ford Division ad from the daily newspaper to show-n-tell to school the Monday morning, along with the rest of the 1967 cars. I showed the class and said that ’67 T-bird was my favorite!
I hated them then and I still hate them now. We had one Thunderbird – a 1965 – and the design is so clean and integrated compared to the next gen. Can’t find a color picture (car was beige) but at least my teen-aged self had just waxed the Bird when I took this one. It had those redlined whitewalls that someone mentioned. I really didn’t care for Thunderbird styling again until the aero-Birds and their successors came along.
Mixed feelings about these. I think some of the pieces of it work — I like the jet intake nose and the taillight treatment — but they don’t form an aesthetically coherent whole, and the two-door hardtop has very odd proportions in profile.
I absolutely love em, one of my favourite American cars, and the only Thunderbird I would consider owning. 2 door only and without a vinyl roof naturally.
But alas alack, I will probably have to settle with just my Ebay Hot Wheels in a nice copper metallic.
The outer side shape of the tail lights on these reminds me of the 1967 Barracuda C shaped tail lights, one of my favorite rear end styles of all time.
I think car styling from this time period was at the absolute peak,
I used to hate them but they grew on me. If I were living in the US I wouldn’t have said “no” to a two door in black (well, even a 4 door). With some suspension firming and the 428 or 429 opened up somewhat it would make a perfect American grand routier. Bigger wheels and tires are a must on those though.
If you compare size and weight statistics, the ’67 4-door T-Bird matches the Cadillac Seville introduced in 1975. You could say it demonstrated there was a market for smaller 4-door luxury cars.
There was always tension between the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury divisions over the T-Birds in that LM belief it stole sales from them. With the introduction of the Cougar in ’67 as an upscale Mustang, the Cougar was approaching T-Bird territory particularly with the XR7 trim so the T-Bird was move into a different class in the product hierarchy.
The following is provided in the spirit of clarifying information I think to be incorrect and confusing in some of the previous posts. 1967 saw the T-Bird moved to the full-size Ford and Mercury platform introduced in MY65. The MY69 Mark III used the 4-door T-Bird platform i.e. same wheelbase. The ’70 Lincoln Continental abandoned the unitized body used since 1958 and moved to the body on perimeter frame common to the full-size Fords, Mercurys and the T-Birds.
For MY72, Ford developed a new body on perimeter frame platform for the intermediate-size Torino and Montego, The MY72 T-Bird and Mark IV moved to a longer wheelbase version of this platform. In my opinion, this pair suffered noticeable cost cutting from the previous models based on the full-size platform. For MY74 the Cougar would move to Torino/Montego platform. In MY77 the T-Bird moved to the Cougar platform and the Mark V continued with the longer wheelbase version until 1980 when it moved to the Panther platform.
With the introduction Fairmont and Zephyr on the new Fox body in MY78, another round of moving models onto this platform would take place.
Ford seemed to be losing the plot here.
While I admired the styling in an abstract sense it seemed to be becoming more Gadgetbird and less Thunderbird.
And a sedan version? Had to do one of those!
The interior was pretty nice, but that front clip with its ‘mouth organ’ grille is beyond hideous. They were not called ‘Blunderbirds’ for nothing!
My father had driven Mercurys beginning in the early 1950s until he purchased a 1965 Flair Bird in a Robin’s egg blue color. He purchased a 1966 ‘Bird for my mother the following year. With LBJ as president, he nicknamed the ’65 Lucie Bird and the ’66 was Lynda Bird.
When the ’67 T’bird was introduced, I remember it seemed weird, but looking at it today it brings back nostalgic memories of a very naive youth. Cars were always going to improve … not!
Three things stand out about the Flair Birds:
1. The power windows on both cars worked very erratically. If a window was lowered, we would have to wait 10-minutes or so before it could be closed.
2. Both cars had the standard 390 engine, and a small hose between the block and the water pump was prone to rupturing at the most inopportune time.
3. The A/C compressors on both cars were Tecumseh units, and they made quite a racket when stopped for a traffic light.
Between the window issues and the hoses bursting, dad decided he was finished with Ford products and purchased a ’68 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, which I was very unhappy about at the time – only funeral homes and morticians drove Cadillacs, but once it came home I loved it. I’m glad I got to experience driving a real Cadillac, for I feel their quality took a precipitous plunge with the 1971 model year.
The most immediate difference I remember was the smoothness of the Frigidaire A/C compressor, power windows that were dependable, and the disappointment I felt when he passed a vehicle on a 2-lane road, the loud sound I expected to hear from the 472 was just a quiet passing of the other car. Ironically, the radio was on and Peggy Lee was singing “Is that all there is” when this took place.
This website brings back so many good memories of simpler times before the trials and worries that come from maturing entered my life.