Before I got married, and for awhile after that milestone event, my “gotta get another car” pangs continued to strike every spring and every fall. In the fall of 1986 I bought the F-100. The next spring I took my mind off cars by buying an old garage (which came with an old house), and the following fall I salved that urge with the ’66 Fury III. Thus came the spring of 1988, when I suddenly realized that I had one car, a two-car garage, and therefore room in both my garage and my life for another car. After all, I had owned two-at-a-time before the big white Plymouth, so why not now? But this time, I wasn’t looking for a practical daily driver. I was ready to tackle a project! After all, I was single, owned a house with a garage, had my tools and plenty of spare time on my hands.
I am generally an introvert. I am fine interacting with others – I have no problem doing so in my professional life, and if a friend would call and suggest a fun activity, I would be all-in. But for the most part, I was happy to leave work on a Friday evening and have a minimum of human interaction for the next couple of days. So a car project was something that would fit right in with that kind of life. But with a project, my choice of cars would have to be different, with no big, low value sedans. If I were to get something that needed much work and investment, it would have to be something worth some money in the end. Muscle cars were just starting to get big, but I wasn’t really into those. The cars that interested both me and collectors in general tended to be stuff that had been some combination of sporty and expensive when new, so that was where I started looking.
One day I saw an ad for a 1961 Thunderbird. I had always loved those Thunderbirds – there was always something special about them. The couple selling it had bought it to drive a few years earlier. They were people who did not do things in a normal way – they lived in a restored Victorian home deep within the city limits and were far more artsy than I had ever been. They had started with a decent car, but didn’t like the white color and painted it red to match the interior. They had gotten the transmission rebuilt, but told me that the shop could not get the park mechanism right, which led to binding and a cracked shift collar. The fix had been to disable the transmission’s park function. The car had the famous Swing-Away steering wheel, the 4 bbl 390 V8 (in its first year) and, well, it was a Thunderbird!
Although I was thrilled that I could finally have the 390 with the 4 bbl carb that had been denied me in my ’67 Galaxie convertible, this one didn’t run that well – it was hard to start and wasn’t terribly smooth after it started. The transmission shifted right though, and it seemed to drive OK around the block – other than the way the power steering seemed to want to turn left more than it wanted to turn right. The interior was so-so. The seat upholstery was decent (though not decent enough to avoid new upholstery if this car went the way I imagined), the driver’s door panel was shot and the dash pad was a mess. The windshield had a couple of big cracks and the fender skirts were missing. The biggest problem was how the car had been parked under a pine tree and needles had filled the concealed cavity under the rear glass, causing rust holes that kept the inside of the trunk wet and caused havoc with the interior chrome. “I’ll think about it” I said.
The other car on my short list was a ’71 Continental Mark III. It was everything the Thundering Bird was not. It was a gorgeous, turn-key proposition (and air conditioned besides). The old guy who owned it had a fascinating history with cars. He had owned a small company of some kind and had owned at least one Duesenberg in the 60’s, along with a series of new Imperials. He reminisced about buying one of the first Mark IIIs in 1969, and how the Lincoln salesman refused to take his ’66 Imperial in trade. The only things I didn’t like were the ivy green color inside and out and that there had been some evidence of rust repair (though a very nice job of it). “I’ll think about it” I said.
I should have bought that Lincoln. I could have enjoyed it for awhile, driven it more often in hot weather, and it would have been an easy sale when I got tired of it. But I could not get that stupid Thunderbird out of my mind. Had they been in equal condition, I would have taken the Bird all day long. The Ford Motor Company’s advertising people had spent much effort burning into my mind what kind of man drove each of those two cars. I was clearly Thunderbird Guy and not Mark III Guy. Besides, wasn’t the whole idea here to find a project?
I went back and bought the Thunderbird. Actually, I bought two of them: the one I saw in my imagination . . .
. . . and the one that I actually drove home. I got it home and parked it in the garage so that it could dry out. And I really did start out well. A front end shop gave it an alignment and pronounced the suspension to be sound, other than some sagging front springs. I got down under the rear and spent several weeks cleaning/de-rusting/painting the underbody. I got the gas tank boiled out and a small leak fixed. I removed and ordered new rear springs and rebuilt the rear suspension with new rubber bushings to go with the springs.
This included stripping and painting the 1961-only multi-piece front spring hangers that allowed the springs to move around up front as well as in back, and fortunately the rubber cushion blocks were still available. What a fascinating, complex design that must have played havoc with high-speed stability. I also did the full 4 wheel brake job, including new steel lines in the rear half of the system. I intended to start underneath at the back and work forward, making a good strong runner first before tackling the more fun cosmetic stuff. What a great outlet for a guy who could spend a quiet weekend in a garage to recharge for a work week of dealing with often-difficult people and their problems.
Early on in my enthusiasm arc I was reading the Sunday paper (remember those?) and saw that a local Ford club was having an “All Ford Day” event downtown. Well, I thought, I have a Ford, I think I’ll go. I drove there, and was waived in way at the end of the field. My car was easily the rattiest car there, and not by a little. But hey, I owned a Thunderbird. I also decided to show some real (and totally unwarranted) faith in the car and take it out for a two hour drive north to visit my sister and her family for the day. Amazingly, everything held together and I arrived safely there and safely back, thus encouraging my over-active optimism.
The little jobs continued, like when the starter gave up the day I decided to drive the car to a lunch meeting and the day the generator quit while I was out running some errands. At least this second one did not require a tow truck. Unfortunately this Thunderbird would soon reveal its darker side.
Problem 1: I found a big rust hole in I would call a rear frame rail for the unibody, ahead of the rear axle on the passenger side. It appeared fixable – for someone who could weld. I had no experience at welding and owned no welding equipment. Hmm, let’s think about that and move on. Problem 2: Well, this one wasn’t really a problem at all – but I began dating the future Mrs. JPC around this point in the process. The result was that my free time had a way of getting spent with her and not so much under the Thundering Bird. Which spent all its time in the garage moldering instead of Thundering.
At some point I decided to move to the front part of the car and take out one of the inner front fenders. This revealed some badly rusted structural members that were far worse than the frame-hole in the rear. It was at this point that my waning enthusiasm more or less evaporated. I was married by this time and had added another couple of cars to my fleet (stories to come), and finally faced a hard fact: I did not have the time or the skills or the inclination to give this car what it needed (if that was even a good idea to start with) and was certainly not prepared to pay someone else to do it. Had I been able to find that much spare change rolling around, I had a house, a wife and a new baby, any of which was a far better place to put those funds than what I now viewed as not so much a car, but a very expensive Thunderbird kit.
I would love to say that the car was as nice as it appeared in most of these photos, but it was not at all. Car pictures are like the photos we share of ourselves on social media – photos of us having fun in interesting places with interesting people. But real life is sitting around in gym shorts or loading a dishwasher. Car pictures are the same way – I tend to take them after a good, deep clean and wax when they are looking their best. And where the camera is said to add 20 pounds to we humans, it also takes about 20 years off an old, not very good car. Where most of these pictures show a car that appeared ready to hop in and head for the drive-in movie, it actually spent about 98.5% of its 5 years in my possession taking up too much of the garage and looking like this.
I learned one other interesting thing with that car. By this time I had one car-crazy little boy. One Sunday I went to run an errand and he went with me. The original purchaser of this car had failed to pop for the optional seat belts, and nobody had installed them in the decades since. Which was another reason I didn’t drive it more frequently than I did. But this one day the toddler begged to ride with me in the Thunderbird. Well, I thought, it’s a short trip, and I spent my first 12 or 13 years riding in a back seat with no seat belts, so I’ll just be careful. Here is what I learned: while I had grown up sitting still while unbelted in the back seat, this is not the case for a kid who has spent life being tightly strapped into a child safety seat every time he got into a car. I didn’t make it to the end of my street before I had to turn around because the kid was climbing every which direction from the start. I could drive carefully, and I could keep an eye on him as he explored, but I could not do both at the same time. We took another car and I made a mental note about loose toddlers in old, beltless cars.
As I was trying to figure out how to get rid of a Thunderbird (something I had been trying with no success), a client mentioned to me that her son was attending an auto body program at a local high school and was looking for a project that he could do for a grade. A light bulb went on inside my head – For the cost of materials, I could get someone to do some surface body work, pull some dents, fix a couple of rusty places, and paint the car. I drove the car to the shop and the teacher rubbed his chin as he walked around it. “This isn’t really what our program is about, but I have been concerned about this kid’s motivation, so if it is something he is enthusiastic about I’ll approve it.”
My big decision was to have the car resprayed in its original Corinthian White. Why white? By this time, I was getting a little tired of white cars, what with the two Plymouth Furys. But I have just never been a red car guy, and never thought this car looked particularly great in red. I also had zero knowledge of this kid’s skills, and white paint can hide a multitude of incompetence. Besides, I thought the original white with red interior was a classic combination, a look completed when I bought a pair of fender skirts to be painted along with the car.
By this time we had moved and had two little boys. I was delighted to free up half of the garage because winter was coming and I could park my daily driver indoors. As I was enjoying a Thunderbird-free lifestyle, I got a call in mid January – “I have some bad news. I was almost done but we had a problem. I was spraying the roof and some of the old cracked sealant around the roof gutters popped out and dirt got blown all over the wet paint. I’m going to need to keep the car for another month or two.”
Actually, this was the best news imaginable because I wasn’t ready to give up that garage space just yet. It was also vindication for my choice of white paint. I finally got the car back, and it actually looked pretty good. White is very good at disguising iffy body work, but the work was pretty straight and the paint job nicely done. My only “WTF” moment was when I saw that the kid had not fixed the rust holes concealed below the surface panel under the rear window. Great – all this body and paint work and the car was still not water-tight. Oh well. I had turned the Thundering Bird into a 20 footer, which is a lot better than the 20 yarder it had been.
With the car back home, I cleaned up the inside a bit (not that it helped much) and advertised it for sale. The guy who bought it ran a small dealership about 50 miles to the west of me. The stars aligned when he came and looked at the car at night instead of in daylight, and agreed to buy it. When I am selling a car, I have some rules. One of them is this: If I am selling to an ordinary guy, I tell him the car’s problems. But when I am selling to a dealer or someone in the car business, I let the buyer look, I answer any questions I am asked, but otherwise I keep my mouth shut. Money changed hands, and then I started to worry when the buyer asked if it would make it back to his place. I told him that my main worry would be the tires, which were old. Fortunately, the taillights had decided to stop working, so the buyer elected to come back later with a flatbed. If I remember, I bought the Blunderbird for $1200 and had certainly doubled my investment, at a minimum. I sold it (freshly painted) for $2,000. I did not break even on it, but it could have been a lot worse. Like if I had stuck to my original plan to restore it.
I have always wondered what happened to that car. Did someone fix the structural rust? Rebuild the engine? Replace the windshield and re-do the interior? Or did my student paint job only slow the Bird’s final descent into a subject for one of Jim Kline’s junkyard features? Every one of my cars had taught me lessons, but this one taught me a BIG one: Body, interior and chassis/mechanicals are each a thing. If a car has all three things in great shape, buy it! If one of those things needs significant work, maybe buy it. If two of those things need significant work, think really, really hard and if you are really aching for a project, then buy it. With your eyes wide open. But if, as with this Thunderbird, all three of those things need major work, run away like you are in an old Quinn Martin television show and the car you have ridden down the steep embankment is about to explode. Because buying one of Quinn Martin’s old cars couldn’t possibly be a worse idea.
“run away like you are in an old Quinn Martin television show”
QOTD
I think the same when selling a car. A private buyer gets full disclosure. I’m certain the dealers 150-point safety inspection, will get them up to speed.
It’s a shame about the frame rot. Switching it back to the white exterior to go with the red interior makes it right. My grandmothers 65 Stang was that color combo. Hopefully it got a good home that had a welding setup in a pole barn.
Yes, someone with some welding skills could have moved this one a little closer to keeper status.
You have described my car life, except for the part where you sold it, which makes you are a smarter man than I. Sadly or happily, T-Birds still aren’t worth an awful lot of money, but they still have the same problems. Fortunately, mine doesn’t have the structural rust, but the body rust has definitely been covered by filler, and not well in some areas.
Good call on painting it white; only the Sports Roadster really looks good in red (in my opinion).
I know that the heating system was kind of complex and I had a heater control valve that was stuck in “on” position. But that wasn’t so bad on short trips because I don’t think it had a working thermostat. I recall that people were using a version made for certain Ford trucks as less expensive workaround.
At least your cars give you some driving pleasure.
I was vaguely aware of the 2 seater T-Birds when they were being sold, but they didn’t interest me in most ways except for the impression they were designed as squashed regular Fords of the same year.
When the 4 seater Square Bird came out it hit me as a great classic design, perfect in every way. The TV show 77 Sunset Street just added to the T-Bird’s attractiveness. I thought nothing could be more beautiful.
Wrong. The Bullet T-Bird (liked yours) glided past the Square Bird; the Bullet’s beauty was sublime.
Of course I never drove any of these big T-Birds; there were no Fords in my childhood family (long story). I just assumed the mechanicals were as perfect as the design was beautiful.
When my new wife’s mother gave us her 1959 Galaxy I discovered that Fords were totally different drivers than the Chrysler and GM products I had driven. Not better, not worse, but quite different.
One of life’s hard earned lessons is to beware of intoxicating beauty. But boy, these 4 seater T-Birds sure were beautiful.
No wonder you kept yours so long.
Yes, these things really had a unique aura about them. The one in my imagination was really fabulous.
I’ve been waiting for this installment and it did not disappoint! Say what you will about the old girl, but she sure cleaned up nice. Pity about the tinworm lurking underneath.
Your photos have me thinking more favorably on the “Bullet Birds.” Previously, I was a fan of the “Flair Bird” 1964-66 generation, especially the ‘66 models. In grade school, one of my friends’s dads had a beautiful ‘66 Thunderbird that was dark blue with an aqua interior. It was a used car and he got several good years of use out of it. Sadly, though the day came when he took it in for an oil change or some other routine maintenance and the mechanics at the garage asked him to not bring it back again. The frame rot was extensive enough that they didn’t feel safe working under it (or that it was safe for him to drive. Much like your ‘Bird, a casual observer could walk by and think it was a pretty nice car.
I really appreciate all 3 of those classic generations from 1958-66. Yes, I learned an ugly lesson that when there is little bit of rust perforation in the fender aprons under the hood that it gets really ugly on the underside.
“often-difficult people and their problems” Tell me about it. I recently took a part time job at a major chain auto parts store, simply because It’s on my bucket list and I don’t need the money. The stupid questions I get asked is astounding, and 99% of people don’t even know what the hell they are driving. Then they have the nerve to post on social media that we are idiots. No, Mr/Ms Consumer, YOU are the idiot!
I was also tempted by this generation Thunderbird in the 1980’s; but chose a first gen Riviera to feed my Big Block Brougham urges.
Perhaps a good call.
“I wasn’t looking for a practical daily driver. I was ready to tackle a project! After all, I was single, owned a house with a garage, had my tools and plenty of spare time on my hands.”
This absolutely set the stage for everything else. Plus, it is so relatable.
Like PRNDL, I have been looking forward to this chapter. There is a certain hard to quantify allure about nearly any Thunderbird (I say nearly as the 1980 to 1982 models don’t qualify) and if one sticks its claws in you, well, you’re done. I, too, was once there with a 20 year old Thunderbird but that one treated me quite well.
You deserve props for giving this one a go the way you did.
Of all the attributes these Birds have, the one that I am most infatuated with is the silly door handles. Weird, I know, but there is something so novel about them. The interior is outstanding and it is obvious to me Ford channeled it when updating the Thunderbird interior for the ’94 to ’97 models.
Great installment and thanks for the sneak peeks!!!
I know, those door handles that were integral with the chrome strip were fabulous. The only really visible rust on the exterior was coming from under that chrome strip on the driver’s door. The body kid fixed that part nicely. I think I had removed that piece in advance and had not yet reattached it in the “white phase” pictures.
I fully agree with your car grading criteria. When I started flipping cars, I’d buy the really cheap ones that ultimately needed the most work. Then I realized, with advice from another car guy friend, that was a losing proposition. Too many hours, too little (or negative) financial return. Once I upgraded my grading criteria, things got a lot better. I would still buy some “threefers” on occasion, but only to harvest certain parts and then dispose of the residual.
I still occasionally see straight but needy cats, that look pretty drivable. Then I remember this one and click on the “back” arrow.
JP…Yes, so very relatable. Like so many other things in life, sometimes the stars just align, and sometimes they don’t. This is probably truer for our relationships with inanimate objects (cars and houses to name two big ones) than most anything else, IMO. Although I’m guessing that in your profession, you probably have more examples of mis-alignment – and the skills as to how to fix those things – than many of us do.
My first BMW COAL – the Bavaria – was oh so very much like your Thunderbird. It was a car that I really wanted to align with. But your advice about how to assess a deal based on the three factors is advice that I really should have had. That car needed bodywork (that was well beyond my means both technically and financially), mechanical systems work, and the interior was “ok”. I spent 3 or 4 years struggling with all 3 while trying to make the car work for daily use. Eventually (as the story goes), I gave up and had something that sat in half of my garage (I even moved it half way across the country to different houses, so in fact it sat in 3 of my houses’ garages) and looked a lot like the car in your picture. So yeah, been there done that.
I do like those early 60s Thunderbirds (I think I have professed a “like” of nearly every Thunderbird written about lately in CC). NO. I don’t need one.) And it is a much sharper car in white. Love that front end and the high trim line that runs the length of the car. I also like their Lincoln kin from around that same time. Something I also don’t need as I have no where near enough space or a deep enough wallet to keep a beast like that.
Finally, your observation about how modern toddlers have not been taught – and never have had to learn (I’m not really bemoaning that fact) how to sit still in a car unrestrained is insightful. I can’t believe that I never tried that, but then I guess I’m glad I didn’t.
Part of it is growing older, adding spouse, house or kids (in some combination or all 3) along with the need to make a living. Had I remained single I might have been able to power through my disappointments, but that wasn’t how my life went. And I like the way things actually turned out rather than the alternate “what if” with a restored T-Bird in the garage.
I’ve read that the early-to-mid sixties Thunderbirds are one of the worst classics to own, mainly due to all the luxury feature sub-systems that are prone to failure. I doubt equivalent GM products (i.e., Riviera, Toronado, Eldorado) are all that much better, but because they built and sold so many more of them than the Ford, replacements are easier to locate, and cheaper.
A pity, because Bullet and Flair Birds are very attractively styled.
They are indeed a specialty item.
Ok I’d say optimism was displaced by realism. You weren’t crushed, you had the car on the road and actually got to drive it! It left in better condition than it arrived! That’s two wins right there.
Perhaps your Thunderbird got the roof cut off and competed slowly, majestically in the 24 Hours of Lemons:
The one thing I got from the experience was the ability to ID the year of any 61-63 Thunderbird at 50 yards. The video is a 63. I saw one at a local show several years ago, but finally determined that it was not my car.
Having owned way to many vintage vehicles in the past, I too have been there. Simplicity of systems and parts availability are key for a useable classic, at least with minimal fiddling
With something all the time. Repairing structural rust never makes sense on a normal vehicle, and usually is not done correctly unless you do it yourself.
These Thunderbirds rather scared me in terms of servicing already as a kid, when I hung around the Ford garage in Iowa City and saw how tight everything was in the engine compartment. And how low to the ground they sat. I made a mental note back then. But of course I didn’t yet fathom the other issues, most of all rust.
I just naturally gravitated to simple cars back then. But that’s not to say cars like this didn’t have an allure; always loved these bullet birds. But from a distance.
I had thought that with the more or less standard Ford running gear and avoiding an a/c car I WAS keeping it simple. And I knew at the time I should have crawled under it, but before I redid the rear suspension it was too low to get under. Lots of mistakes here.
Reading CC has convinced me ’60s Thunderbirds and Lincolns are beautiful mistresses that are not to be trifled with.
In the mid-late ’80s, when I was also buying interesting ’60s cars, I probably came to a harder lesson than you regarding body, interior and chassis/mechanicals. If all three weren’t in turnkey condition, maybe less some minor cosmetics and maintenance, you were very quickly facing issues that made it more economical to go on a quest for a better car.
My ’67 Galaxie 500 390 coupe appeared turnkey, with working factory air, and it was reliable enough that it made a 400 mile road trip with me, as well as serving daily driver duty. But, when it became apparent it had bad frame rot, I suddenly came to the realization that body and mechanical repair shops mostly revolve around unbolting parts and bolting readily available parts on.
I followed a few leads on shops that might help me, and mostly got advice to buy a different car. Finding a shop interested in restoration proved to be a challenge that I wasn’t up to, and my wallet was not likely qualified.
My Galaxie may not have had beautiful mistress status, but she was a summer fling with a major compatibility issue, and went away with a father / son team that knew what made her a challenge, and seemed convinced they knew how to handle her better than I.
Yes, there is no better buzzkill than structural rust. I still kind of want to learn to weld. If I ever do, I hope it doesn’t make me do something stupid.
This was great. I really like these cars and always wanted one. Now I longer want one, so thank you for that. I’ll live vicariously through Aaron65’s blue one, that’s close enough for me. It’s almost as if Ford built a southern European car. Great to look at, wonderful to drive when all is good, and otherwise perhaps not so much…
The weird thing is that other than the structural unibody rust, it was mostly just “Ford stuff” I was dealing with. But I guess structurally compromising rust is kind of a Southern European thing in my climate.
Excellent advice, JP. I have been known to jump into things with a ton of optimism and zero practicality, so it’s good to get regular reminders about what’s realistic and what’s ridiculous. And, I love the Quinn Martin reference.
Am I the only one who thinks the Bullet Bird looks better without the rear skirts?
“Am I the only one who thinks the Bullet Bird looks better without the rear skirts?”
Yes. 🙂
As a kid I had an unreasonable passion for all Thunderbirds – up until the 1967 model when the car began to lose its uniqueness. I had a full set of the Post Cereal F&F Dieworks plastic toy T-Birds for 1955, 1959, and 1961 and AMT models to match. One of my favorites is the 1961-63. Our neighbors got a new light blue 1961 and I thought it was the greatest thing on the road, fast (for the time), quiet, solid, elegant yet sporty. Sadly my practical Dad bought two new Falcons that year.
I was looking for my first car in winter of 1966 and my Dad and I test drove three used Thunderbirds in the Fort Wayne area – a 1960, 1961, and 1962. The 60 might have come closer to my budget but it was really clapped out and when the brake pedal went to the floor and the car would not track straight Dad nixed it. The 61 was a really nice car in Corinthian White with beige vinyl seats. The swing-away steering column had a broken part, and there might have been a couple other things needing attention but very fixable. The price was out of my league. Then there was the gorgeous 62 in turquoise with black interior. Stunning car, very high mileage but seemed to be well-maintained and hence also too expensive. Never got my Bird.
All that car shopping did spur Dad on though: he bought a lightly used 1965 in 1967 – it was a dream car and much improved over your model, with flow-through ventilation, front disc brakes, and the cool sequential taillights. It was a good car too, with great rustproofing and a reliable drivetrain. I got to drive it whenever I could afford the gas and over time my Thunderbird lust was thoroughly sated.
Thanks for the memories. And for installing the fender skirts and making the car look right. And finally for driving right back home with your son to get a safer car. You did the right thing. A friend of mine inherited her Dad’s 61 T-Bird many years ago and I she had seatbelts installed before I was willing to ride in it. How we survived our childhoods back in the day is something of a miracle.
The 62 would probably have been the best of the ones you looked at. The 61 had that oddly flexible rear suspension and a front end that was hard to keep in alignment. Which is too bad because the 61s styling details best.
You are probably familiar with these sales training films; the one for 1962 I’m including here but all three years are on this YouTube channel. If you can believe all items included, the 1962 appears to be vastly improved over the 1961, something we would not have known when car shopping. I think Aaron’s 1963 has even more improvements, including an alternator. As to styling, I’ve never settled on one year as I like all three, though the 1963’s new side creases and trim seem a little less pure to some.
I can dig the lack of visible rust thing as I grew up in New England, home of dangerously rusty 4 year old cars .
-Nate
Yes, ’63 was the first year for the alternator, although it was a one-year-only part. I changed mine to a 1965 alternator because it was easier to find and much, much cheaper. They also made some changes to the front suspension in ’63, although I’m not sure off the top of my head what is different from the earlier cars.
I love the film! I am now reminded that I had to get a radiator leak soldered in mine too. The shop tried to talk me into a new radiator, but I wasn’t up to that place yet and am glad I didn’t spend the money on it.
I wonder if anyone has ever researched the very first boast by an auto manufacturer that their fabulous new paint results in a finish “that never needs waxing!”
Sounds like a good learning experience, in which you didn’t get in too deep, and got out without losing your shirt. Through CC, I have gained respect for early ’60s Thunderbirds, so I understand the appeal. Thank you too for restoring the car to its original color and adding back the missing fender skirts.
What I find most interesting about this story, though, is the choice you made between this T-bird and the Continental Mark III. At the time, I’ll bet the Mark III felt more like an old car and not even a distinguished one at that, especially with its oh-so-early ’70s green on green color scheme. On the other hand, the 10-year older T-Bird must have felt like something special and lay outside your driving experience. Given the propensity of early ’70s Fords to rust prematurely, you may in fact have reached the same point going down that alternate path as well.
The funny thing was that I had really loved Mark IIIs. But you are right that it was old, but not really old enough to be interesting to me. But it would have made a great summer driver, given the working a/c.
Another great story well told .
I understand 100 % about the big three things to look out for .
Here in the desert we have scads of older cars like this that have almost no rust but are quite often bent beyond reason then someone did a cheapo resurrection to make it look okay but they’ll never drive right or in a straight line again, been there, did that, cried into my Wheaties .
-Nate
Living in the midwest, the lack of visible rust will blind me to a lot of other faults.
Very enjoyable COAL. The siren song of the Thunderbird is a tough one to ignore. Even though I have always tended to favor simple cars, there is just something about a Thunderbird that draws me in. I always and still do really like the Bullet Birds. Even my mother, who was not a car enthusiast at all, loved T-Birds. In the late 60s she was part of a band whose band cars were a couple of Flare Birds, a Riviera and a 58 Cadillac hearse. She got to drive a T-Bird and talked about how much she like it decades later. For me as much as I have been tempted by Thunderbirds over the years, I think the closest I will get is the diecast 63 Sports Roadster I have sitting on my shelf.
Your Thunderbird reminds me of my 72 Chevelle. Being young I thought that project was feasible and I too brought home two visions of that car. Reality set in with time and like your T-Bird it needed interior, body and mechanical. In the end the frame rust was what caused me to throw in the towel and sell it, when it ended up as a parts car. At least part of it lived on in other Chevelles.
I am looking forward to more installments. I have read your series from beginning to end and throughly enjoyed it even if I haven’t always commented.
Thanks Vince. I am sorry that you and others here have had to learn the same hard lessons. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to have some pretty distinguished company in being mugged by reality in a car project that went sideways.
I’m just more stubborn, or not as bright, possibly both. 😉
When I got my ’65 Chrysler the mechanical was surprisingly good, the interior was pretty awful, but it didn’t take too much to get to something I could live with, and now finally it is pretty nice. The body looked iffy, and was actually worse.
The current issue is that after 20 years, the mechanical stuff is gradually all needing attention, which is slowing the progress I’ve made on the body.
I also should probably learn to weld.
Wow, it’s hard to believe you’ve had that Chrysler so long! I keep threatening to learn to weld if I ever get some spare time. If I ever find that Studebaker I keep wanting, the ability to weld patch panels will be almost mandatory.
Welding is fun and useful. Small MIG welders can be had quite cheaply (although I paid over $700 for a Hobart in 1990 when they first came out!). I have gas welding equipment too but getting the tanks refilled may be impossible in 2022 Ontario without a contract.
JP a man of your stature in life should have a Studebaker without rust. I’m sure between all of us here we could find you a good one.
A sad story of what could have been. So many of us of a certain age have been lured by the mystique of the Thunderbird. I still have AMT models of a ’57 and ’64 from my teen years.
Rust is one of the two main reasons (electrical issues being the other) that I let go of my Volvo 240 that I had owned for 21 years.
I will agree that even in its sorry shape, there was still a certain splash of magic to being behind the wheel and looking at what could have been the best dashboard to ever come out of the Ford Motor Company (that seemed to generally lag GM and Chrysler in that metric).