Earlier this week, I posted some old photos from a trip to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg festival in Auburn, Indiana over labor day weekend of 1972 (here). Here is the last photo from that trip: A sixteen year old Thunderbird.
There are a few cars that never really join the ranks of ordinary used cars. The two-seat Thunderbird is one of them. Even at thirteen years old, I understood this. So when I walked past this car on a side street on the way back to our own car (my Mom’s 2 month old ’72 Cutlass Supreme) I knew that I had to snap this picture.
Of all of the little Birds, I think that the ’56 is my favorite. I think that it’s the Continental kit. It just looks right on this car.
There have been a couple of times in the thirty-nine years since I took this picture when I have seen a Gen1 T-Bird parked unattended out in the wild, but never one this nice. So, this car remains in my personal recordbook, and seemed worth sharing.
Now, I wonder if that International bucket truck in the background was one of Michael Freeman’s . . .
Cool photo, the two seat T-Birds were always special. It looks like there’s an early ’60s Comet and a ’72 LTD in the background too.
I was just going to comment about the “incidental cars” in the backgrounds of these photos. I enjoy those cars as much as the feature car in the photos. Sometimes I will even watch old movies (that otherwise don’t interest me) just to see the old cars…
I believe the one car is a 1962 Dodge…it looks as though it has headlights located in the grille (this is based on James’ enhanced photo).
The only reson I watched the British Hearbeat series was the old cars but for those it was rubbish.
so cool, these old photos! I liked them so much I took them into photoshop and cleaned them up a bit… it looks like this!
Thank you for digging these up, man. What a wonderful series of photos. I wish I was there in those days, when rock music was great in the way it never will be again, the blues were alive, the cult of personality involved more than cheap tabloids, and the cars, while primitive by today’s standards, were also great in the way they will never be again. Oh, and people had to meet in person to have a chat as opposed to settling all business on facebook or via phone. Jealous of all of you, lol.
“Oh, and people had to meet in person to have a chat as opposed to settling all business on facebook or via phone.”
Oh, we had phones and did lots of business on them even waaay back then. But dodging those velociraptors on the way to school was really tough…
Uphill all the way, at that.
In the snow. Barefoot. Both ways.
LMAO. You know what I meant. I think that was the point of Super 8, btw. That story line would have never worked if it were set in the 21st century, b/c of how different the world is.
We had cheap tabloids back then, too. My grandmother was an avid reader of The National Enquirer. Many singers and actors behaved in very tawdry ways, but they’ve since died, or simply dropped out of the limelight, so we now remember as them “legends” and focus on their work, not on their tacky behavior.
There was even Paris Hilton-type figure who was largely famous for being famous – Zsa Zsa Gabor. But, since she has lived a long life, we now remember her as somewhat of a “legend,” too, even though I doubt that 99 percent of the population could name anything she actually did. Hanging around longer than your contemporaries does have its advantages…
Wasnt Zsa Zsa on green acres?With Eddie Albert
It was Eva Gabor who was on Green Acres. She wasn’t nearly the diva Zsa Zsa was. I suspect that without her Hungarian accent and exotic name, Zsa Zsa wouldn’t have been nearly as famous as she was, either.
As far as celebrities who were famous just for being famous, Sammy Davis, Jr. comes to mind, too. Only a couple of second-rate hit singles to his credit, but for otherwise doing nothing more than just hanging around with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, he did pretty damn well for himself.
Hey your right wrong sister.
before you get your panties all in a wad over the ‘olden days’… consider that we’ve never had to deal w/ 8 Track tapes.
These and the Fox chassis Birds are my absolute favorites! Thanks for the pics!
Good point on the first gen T-Birds not having that used car lot aura. Very few cars have that kind of feel to them. Like an E Type or first gen Vette (or even an MG Midget but for other reasons).
Cool old TBird very rare here and most are recently imported. Was cool hand luke filmed there I see a headless parking meter?
This reminds me of an ex-neighbor when I lived in one of the little subdivisions of the fair city of Gallup, NM. (Living downtown now.) This neighbor was an retired machine shop owner (he was the guy with the Ranchero sitting in the front yard just off the driveway) and his personal fleet consisted of a 1st Gen Thunderbird (in the UGLIEST shade of tan-ish beige I’ve ever seen on a 50s car), a post 2003 Lincoln Town Car (in Arizona Desert Tan paint), the white Ranchero I’ve talked of before, and a mid 80s, rusty but trusty, Ford Bronco in black. The Thunderbird is the only car that got the privilege of being in the garage. I only saw it leave that garage twice in the 5 years I lived there.
Nice. A classic Bird for a toy, a new Panther for a DD, and a truck to haul stuff. In the sense of clearly assigned roles, pretty good!