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The Ford Thunderbird



The Thunderbird was Ford’s reply to the Chevy Corvette. It was simple and elegant, an attractive two-seater American sports car with V-8 power and real appeal. The Ford Thunderbird wasn’t marketed as a sports car, it was called a “personal car”, but it was the sportiest Ford for a long time, and it looked the part.

American cars of the fifties tended to be wallowing barges with styling to match. The Thunderbird, on the other hand, was quite restrained in its styling without too much chrome and with nice lines. Its no great handler as it had soft springs and low geared steering, but it was better than the average American barge of that period.

Thunderbird Versus Corvette

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1957 Ford Thunderbird 2-door Coupe
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The Ford Thunderbird had a few advantages over the Chevrolet Corvette. They both had great bodies, with the Corvette looking more like a classic sports car with real muscle.  However, the fiberglass bodied Corvette only had a six cylinder engine until 1955, it only had a two speed automatic until 1956, and it didn’t have winding windows until 1956.

Every Ford Thunderbird had a V-8, there was a three speed manual transmission with optional overdrive available as well as an auto, it had a steel body, a soft-top or a bolt on hardtop and it had winding windows. It outsold the Corvette by twenty-four to one.

Style and Power

Power was quite adequate if not exciting. The first Ford Thunderbirds had a 292 cu in (4.8 liter) Mercury V-8 giving 200 bhp. It pushed the car to 114 mph and 0 – 60 mph took just 10 seconds. Not muscle car territory but not bad. The engines got a bit bigger in 1956, up to 312 cu in (5.1 liters) and 225 bhp. 1956 also brought the round porthole windows in the sides of the hardtop to improve visibility, and the “Continental” spare wheel mounted vertically at the back of the car to give more space in the boot.

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Dashboard of 1956 Ford Thunderbird
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1957 had more design changes. The Thunderbird grew tail fins and the trunk was lengthened to get the spare back in it. The fifteen-inch wheels of the 55 and 56 models were changed to 14 inch.

The rarest T-Bird was the 1957 F-Bird, powered by a 312 cu in (5.1 liters) V-8 with a Paxton-McCulloch supercharger rated at 325 bhp.

Bigger and Fatter

1957 was the last year of the classic and desirable two-seater T-birds. Every Porsche sports car became better handling, more powerful and sportier as time went on. Sadly, Ford went the opposite way and in 1958 the Ford Thunderbird become a larger four-seater car. It lost its good looks, its sportiness and its virility. For sports car lovers, it was a real shame that Ford wasn’t to rectify until the Mustang appeared six years later.

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