(first posted 10/1/2014) Loyal CC follower Big Paws spotted this Thunderbird on holiday in Sonoma, and what a good reason this is for having gone there. He was only able to get one shot, but it’s enough to start some detective work. The Bullet ‘Bird (not just because of the superb name, but that certainly helps) is probably my favourite American car (though sometimes it’s the Corvette Sting Ray, or maybe the 1957 Corvette) and this example would catch anyone’s eye.
From my vantage point in England, this looks very much like a Ford Thunderbird Sportback or a Chevrolet Nomad-type derivative. Given just this photo, I was initially thinking “I’m not aware of it as a Thunderbird variant but maybe Ford built such a version”. After all, a Thunderbird in the UK is a bit of an event, and not seeing all the variants, especially low volume ones, the notion seems quite plausible.
In search of more knowledge, in the spirit of academic rigour and intellectual certainty that pervades CC, some research was necessary. The key point that was brought home to me by Jason Shafer was that this is not a Ford factory product but an aftermarket conversion.
He also flagged up that the roof panel came from an Oldsmobile Vista-Cruiser (another great name for a car), probably a 1964 or 1965. And Paul Niedermeyer told me the whole rear roof structure, including the rear side windows, came from the same car to, as this picture makes quite clear.
Normally, roof conversions like this, from the Vista-Cruiser (or Buick Sport Wagon) would be associated with maybe a van conversion or onto another older estate car, but to see something like this, using the windows and the roof of an estate car on a sports car, is almost certainly unique.
Having just written the last sentence, I then find this Dodge Challenger Vista-Cruiser mix on the web, which somehow doesn’t work as well.
Photo from Hooniverse
Further research showed that this car had been advertised for sale in 2012 and 2013 on Hooniverse and Hemmings, and may still be for sale, or for sale again, going by the notice in the rear window. The photos on the Hemmings and Hooniverse entries also show the rear of the car, with rear tailgate made of a flat piece of plexiglass above a rear panel with an attractive convex curve running across the back of the car, consistent with an adaptation of the standard car, and the regular Thunderbird rear lights, changing which is probably still a capital offence in Dearborn. The piece on Hemmings has links to an older article from Special Interest Autos in 1997.
So, a unique car, spotted in California by a tourist from Britain. And, externally at least, in my opinion, it’s a stunner. Why did Ford not do something like this? After all, Volvo did with the 1800ES. We might still have a Thunderbird if they had, and I might be able to have a Ford Vista-Bird Thunder Cruiser!
Exactly, what is not to like about this? Not much for me!
Thanks to Jason Shafer and Paul Niedermeyer for their help in the research for this piece.
*VERY* nice and looks well done too .
-Nate
From the photos it looks like top end work. A credit to the craftsman who built it.
As soon as I saw the first picture I knew I’d seen that car online before. An excellently done conversion. The Vista Cruiser roof matches the lines of the T-bird as well as the donor car it came from.
I think the end result may have looked even better if they just used the side windows and fabricated a non-Vista roof, i.e. without the raised section. It would look more sporty. It still looks cool, and unique, the way it is though.
+1
+ another.
I would never have thought of combining the two; probably because I regard that generation of T-bird as iconic. But this conversion is so well thought-out and executed, it looks like a factory show special!
What a fantastic vision and a build. It is remarkably well integrated and looks “right”.
A great looker,unlike the Challenger.Nobody makes wagons like the Americans.I don’t think Ford would have OK’d a Thunderwagon as it could have taken sales away from the LTDs and Mercury wagons.Ford took great care not to have similar cars slugging it out in the showrooms.(Unlike the competition in America and the UK).
The Thunderwagon would have worked well with the horrible 67 Thunderbird and would have significantly improved it’s appearance.
This must surely be one of one though I’m sure if there’s any more a CCer will find them.
I did several drawings for murals on custom cars,vans and bikes like the one in the scrap yard in the 70s
Custom 67 T-bird with Vista Cruiser roof.
http://www.theautolog.com/profile.php?member=kustomtbird&vehicle=6710
Thanks for the link.
Very cool! Looks like something the Jetsons would’ve driven.
Sonoma Valley is also a great place to visit if you like going to wineries. I visited several while I was out there last summer. Our guide had a funny line comparing Sonoma and the more publicized Napa Valley, “Sonoma is where you want to go for wine. Napa makes auto parts”.
Does look very Jetson-ish!
Given that the Nomad didn’t sell in huge numbers, I can’t see Ford actually thinking along these lines, but as a custom, this is brilliant.
Two cars that different should absolutely not work that well together.
+1
Very nice, it looks perfect. Reminds me of a scale model I made many years ago when I “grafted” a station wagon roof on an AMT `64 T Bird convertible model. I even painted it almost the same color like the green none.The coolest wagon ever, even nicer than the Nomad. I want one!
I’ve never been a big fan of the ’61-’63 Bullet-Bird and this is done so well (down to the whitewalls and wheelcovers), I actually like it better than the factory car. I much prefer the cleaned-up ’64-’66 Flair-Bird and this conversion probably wouldn’t come off as well with that car. But the Vista-Cruiser roof integrates perfectly with the busier lines and ornamentation of the earlier car and I’d love to see a picture of it with the quarter windows lowered.
The only thing that would make it better is, as someone else suggested, they’d have skipped the Vista-Cruiser roof and just went with a standard flat-top. There doesn’t appear to be any third row seating so the clear panel above the cargo area would be essentially pointless. In fact, worse than pointless as it would do a fine job of baking anything that was back there. Was there a Olds station wagon that didn’t have the Vista-Cruiser roof, or were they all so equipped?
Check out this website link for your “Flairbird”; this guy does awe inspiring photoshops of car that “never were”!! 🙂
http://artandcolour.blogspot.com/search?q=thunderbird+wagon
The Flairbird wagon from the linked website looks okay, but I’m not sure how good it would have been from the rear with the loop bumper (not to mention how practical it would have been for a tailgate). It’s not that swell as a four-door hardtop, either. But that wood paneling fits perfectly with the Flairbird’s side sculpturing.
A roof off an F-85 or Cutlass Cruiser would suffice. . .
Nice!
That rear hatch looks like it could have been cribbed from a Gremlin.
I was thinking Pinto Runabout. Either way, it looks very crude and IMO really detracts from the beauty and craftsmanship of this. Full disclosure, I am rather a stickler for the concept that if you are going to go thru all the trouble to do a wagon conversion, it seems dumb not to create a full working tailgate or lift gate, and if you can’t figure out the engineering to do it, then the car is not suitable for the conversion.
The rear hatch also looks like it came from a Pinto
The “Shooting brake” in all its glory. Delightful and unique! Only one matches it for me: the ’71 Pininfarina Peugeot 504. But this T-bird really is a stunner.
I’ve never seen that one before until now, neat! It reminds me of the latter Fiat 130 Marrema:
Oh my gosh, and I thought the regular 130 was a nice-looking car. Wow!
Hello Tatra87, you are right, the Peugeot 504 Riviera made by Pininfarina is THE shooting break, that’s why I made it as 1/43 modelcar one year ago. Only few samples are still available.
Can you please tell me where you found the picture ? I am looking for more pictures of the Rivera for adding to my collection …
Thanks !
Fred from Paris.
A buddy of mine from Basel Switzerland had a 1981 mid-sized Oldsmobile built and badged in Bienne Switzerland as Cutlass Cruiser…as it should be obvious. BUT…by the official registration permit IT WAS named as Vista Cruiser!
Damn! That’s one sweet looking Thunderbird custom wagon there. If Ford would have made them, I’m sure they would have sold like crazy.
I have to admit it – I like it! Ford should have built something similar, but even the Chevy Nomad’s sales numbers weren’t good enough to keep a stylish two-door wagon on the market in it’s original form.
The flat hatch glass is the only thing that keeps this from looking like something from Ford for the 1962 Auto Show circuit.
As much as I love wagons and bulletbirds, I can’t see that there would have been a market for these. “Sporty wagon” just wasn’t a category in the U.S. in those years. And really hasn’t been since then, either.
You would think a “Sport Utility Vehicle” would be just such a sporty wagon. Good for actual sports like surfing or cycling.
I agree this bird is a true beauty.
Just the thing for carrying a few sets of golf clubs and a week’s worth of luggage for you and a lady friend. 😉
To me it’s the Vista roof that sets it apart from what many might have been speculated in brain games about a T-Bird wagon.
What is remarkable is that it all goes together so well, though it must have caused some fits for those who put hundreds of hours into making it. Only by serendipity could the slant of the rear seat side window match that of the Oldsmobile Vista side panel and side window. The Dodge Challenger/Vista Cruiser does not match up, which is one reason why it looks cobbled-together.
The Vista-Bird’s flat plexiglass rear window doesn’t quite match up to the standard of the rest of the car, but I doubt there is a curved glass window that would have fit.
I agree, the vista roof fits in with the jet-age styling. Presumably the original wagon would have had a flat, retractable rear window so it is just the execution that needs to be improved. I’m a fan of the shooting brake, and this along with the Corvette/Camaro etc based ones illustrate exactly what they are. Not just any old 2-door wagon.
This car reminds me a lot of the Reliant Scimitar Triplex! I’m glad you found this and shared the picture Big Paws.
I have the brochure for the Triplex Austin Princess, but didn’t know there was a Triplexed Reliant too! Not sure the Scimitar styling suits that wagon rear though.
This car reminds me a lot of the Reliant Scimitar Triplex!
Gah! How could I forget the Scimitar GTE? Another excessively neat wagon.
Nice feedback for a quick phone shot while looking for coffee!
Beautiful. I can’t decide if it would be better without the Vista windows or not. Whoever did this conversion was really skilled and did a great job.
This wagon has been for sale for a long time. I’ve seen lots of photographs on it. While great in concept, it falls down in the details. That big plexiglas rear hatch is one. The interior is another. Somebody threw away the excellent ’62 Thunderbird bucket seats and substituted something that just doesn’t look right. Also, no power windows on this ‘Bird, so it’s a ‘no’ for me. The conversion was done quite some time ago, so perhaps it’s time for a re-do?
Nevermind the Thundercruisernomad, what about that EPIC custom van with the Conan paperback artwork and the ’65 galaxie front end molded into the front grill!!! Someone should have saved that for the eventual custom van art exhibit at the Smithsonian. Classic!
It’s obviously in a pick and pull yard, so it’s probably long ago crushed. It is safe to say that was one of a kind and never to be duplicated…for better or for worse.
I’ve seen some terribly awkward wagon conversions over the years, and this ain’t one of them. The whole car comes together as if it was meant to be.
Fabulous…but then, I love wagons. I could fill a garage with Jensen-Healey GTs, Corolla Liftbacks, Ford Corcels, Brazilian VW Fox wagons,….
…what’s a Corcel? It’s what you get when you cross late 70s EuroFord styling with a Renault R12 platform..complete with three lug wheel hubs, and build it in Brazil.
Is that what the Corcel was? I’d been wondering about that not a week ago when I was looking at the entries for it in the Italian Auto Club catalog. That’s fascinating.
Interestingly enough, even though the Corcel was developed along with the Renault 12, it actually predates it by over a year.
Is that what the Corcel was? … That’s fascinating.
The genealogy is even more twisted.
When Kaiser quit making normal passenger cars in the US, the Willys Aero tooling went to a new venture in Brazil.
By the late 60s, the early 50s Aero was getting obsolete, so the company partnered with Renault to produce a new model on an R12 platform
Then Ford bought the company, but kept the R12 based model.
In the late 70s, Ford updated to the then current European Ford styling for the Corcel II (gah, Ford and Roman numerals again), but kept the R12 platform, including the wheezy little Renault engine.
Sweet looking wagon though.
Wiki has a nice writeup on the Corcel, DelRey and the Pampa, a small pickup based on the same front drive platform.
I have a bunch of Corcel brochures – picked them up off eBay last year to find out more about the car. The nose is too long, but other than that it has interesting MkV Cortinaesque styling. Actually, given it was Brazilian, that’d be Taunusesque styling. I’d bet the front indicators, headlights and grille were actually purloined from the Taunus parts bin. Three-stud wheels too, which look totally wrong to my eyes!
I have a bunch of Corcel brochures
The company I worked for in the late 70s has a branch office in Brazil, so I asked the guys down there to mail some up. Got one on their ethanol fueled cars, one on the DelRey and on on their vans. No specific Corcel brochures though.
The nose is too long,
The R12 has a longitudinal drivetrain, so you’re going to get a long nose, just like an Audi.
it has interesting MkV Cortinaesque styling.
Agreed. Ford Europe had some very nice looking models in the late 70s. There is a sequence in the old “Sleepers” miniseries where the guys are on the lam and the driver is flogging their tired, but sweet looking, late 70s English Ford wagon like a Ferrari.
OMG! Someone uploaded the sequence to youtube
The R12 derivative sedan certainly answers that long-mooted question; what does it look like without the slanted rear bootline?
I wonder if this roof treatment would fit the same year Lincoln? The internet only yielded this.
Your photo reminded me of a model kit I put together when I was a youngster. It came with the parts to build your own Continental wagon.
Wait, is that real?
It certainly looks real – I can’t imagine anyone going to the hassle of photo-shopping the vent-windows behind the rear doors. I want to know more about it now!
It actually ‘looks’ right not all one off conversions do, I like it.
One of the first areas of a Vista to rust is the roof glass, sad that a solid Vista met its demise to create this.
Overall, I like it, including the Vista roof.
In the first photo, is the stance off? It looks like a boat with the front so high in the air (or was that intentional)?
Nope. The ‘bullet birds’ were known for their nose-high appearing stance. It’s mostly an optical illusion, as the body tapers from front to back. Easy enough to drop the front end an inch or two, which is what I would do.
I didn’t think GM steel could be welded to Ford steel. Very clever.
I love vehicular mashups, even more so when the end result looks as natural as the Vista-Bird Thunder-Cruiser. The level of thought, creativity and craftmanship that goes into such conversions is really rather awesome.
There was a Ford Aurora show car in the mid 1960s that had the general flavour of this as well. Very stylish!
I’ve never been a fan of the Bullet Birds, but I like this conversion. I just hope the rest of the donor Vista Cruiser was beyond saving.
The problem with the Bullet Birds was that formal roofline on a swoopy main body, but – in a similar vain to the wagon – someone took care of that to create what the Bullet Bird should have had in the 1st place… The 60 Galaxy hardtop’s roof.
Good idea, but the roof is too long for the body.
That looks more like a 1962 Galaxie “Starlift” roof to me.
Could be right on that…
See also here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/62-t-bird-info-search-easy-to-customize.297139/
I posted this on some other CC article once, but here’s a van with a double dose of Vista-Cruiser.
A 1955 Buick Roadmaster ambulance from the Netherlands. Vista-/Scenicruiser for sure.
(Source: Bozo, AmerikaanseAutoPagina.com)
Howdy y’all. I realise that this post comes a bit late in the day but I just ran into something that might be of interest vis a vis this post. I was doing some research into Ford’s Advanced Styling Studio under Alex Tremulis in the mid-’50s (source of all their weird and wonderful futuristic dream cars of the 1955-1962 era) and happened across an obituary on Car & Driver’s website of William Clay Ford Sr., youngest of the three Ford brothers who took over post-war Ford. (http://blog.caranddriver.com/william-clay-ford-1925-2014/)
The article contains a photo that is very interesting for many reasons. Taken in 1957 it shows the newly-appointed boss of Ford Styling Bill Ford leaning against a green Di-Noc’d full-size clay model and, going from right to left in the foreground, George Walker, VP of Styling, and Elwood Engel, designer of the 1961 Lincoln Continental who later succeeded Virgil Exner as head of styling at Chrysler. In the background can be seen half a dozen other Ford stylists of the time and two more full-sized clays — one green and one red — as well as a 1/4 scale model of the XP2000 (one of Tremulis’ Jetsons-style creations) front and center.
Judging from the two green clay models, the location is probably the Lincoln studio as they appear to be styling proposals for the soon to be released 1958 Lincoln Continental Mk III. The 1958-1960 Contis were all-new with unit-body construction (as opposed to the traditional body on frame) and Ford built a brand-new factory to produce them (Wixom) for that very reason. In between, though largely obscured behind George Walker and a couple of the stylists, is what appears to be a design proposal for the also soon to be introduced 1958 Ford Thunderbird, that is to say the 4-seat Square Bird, resplendent in red. Although not a lot of people are aware of this, despite being badged as a Ford, the T-Bird was built by Lincoln. The all-new 1958 Thunderbird, like the Lincolns, was also unibody and designed from the ground up to be assembled at Wixom on the same production line as its bigger siblings.
A closer look at that model reveals the distinctive lines of a station wagon, a 4-door station wagon at that. Obviously no such thing ever saw the light of day but the story it tells is that a range of body styles was taken into consideration in the studio. Anyone familiar with the development of the Mustang five years later will know that there were a variety of proposals including a 4-door sedan so a station wagon T-Bird full-sized clay model should come as no great shock. There may well have been a 2-door station wagon proposal too, who knows?
You’d wonder how guys in such drab outfits could possibly design anything!
The Thunderbird Vista Wagon Conversion1962 was available in 1/43 scale fore a short time on German ebay. . Only 400 pcs made, so sold out sonn.
Would this be a shooting brake?
Just in case anyone’s looking for more info, I stopped myself from falling completely down a rabbit hole by just perusing the following:
https://barnfinds.com/the-vista-bird-1962-ford-thunderbird-wagon/
Thank you for pulling this up, MTN. In comments at that sight, someone took the time to ‘shop out the Vista-roof (see below) for comparison. I guess, given the choice, I’d prefer this flat-top, but I’d happily be the next owner if someone “gifted” me with either version:
For another nice same period revision of the same package there’s the Ford Thunderbird Italien
I think it looks incredible, and legit, except for the hatch which comes right out of the 1980s.