Like its younger sibling, the Mustang, the Ford Thunderbird enjoys an impressive and loyal fan base whose adulation is a little out of proportion to the car's actual virtues. Admittedly, any model that survives for 50 years and 13 distinct generations has to have something going for it, but the T-Bird lacks many of the qualities that tend to make a car a classic. Particularly in their later, four-seat incarnations, Thunderbirds never had blazing performance, they're hardly rare, and as for their styling, let us just say that they often flirted with the ragged edges of good taste.

Still, people loved them, and they inspired a horde of imitators, so they definitely have a certain appeal. (Even your cynical author must confess a sheepish fondness for the glitzy mid-sixties "Flair Birds.")

Let's take a look at the tumultuous -- and often tacky -- history of the four-seater Thunderbird.

BYE, BYE BABY

There isn't much doubt about why people love the original, two-seat Thunderbird of 1955-57, known to its fans as the "Little Bird." Sure, it was essentially a chopped, channeled, and sectioned Ford convertible, but it looked like a sports car, it was far more civilized than a Corvette, and it managed a fair turn of speed. The original design, developed by Frank Hershey and Bill Boyer, was sporty enough to appeal to young people, but classy enough for a middle-aged banker to drive without shame. A lot of people made special trips to Ford show rooms just to see it up close.

The only ones who didn't love it were Ford's accountants. Ford sold around 53,000 Little Birds in three years, a highly respectable sum for a sports car, but barely break-even volume for a major automaker. Ford Division general manager Lew Crusoe had never expected the Thunderbird to be a high-volume car. As Crusoe saw it, it was basically a promotion, and as long as it didn't actually lose money, it had accomplished its goals.

In the fifties, though, Ford was a company increasingly dominated by financial analysts, including so-called "Whiz Kids" like Robert S. McNamara. The bean counters took a dim view of unprofitable products, no matter how much promotional value they might have. Even as the Thunderbird went on sale in December 1954, there was already talk of killing it.

There wasn't any particular mystery to the Little Bird's modest sales. Everyone loved the look, but it was pricey, and its lack of passenger space crossed it off the shopping lists of single-car families. As early as March 1955, Crusoe ordered the Thunderbird design team to start working on a bigger, four-seat version, code-named project 195H.

An early ad for the four-seat Ford Thunderbird. Advertisements for other '58 Fords name-dropped the Thunderbird incessantly, hoping its glamor would rub off on the lesser models.

HIP TO BE SQUARE

The four-seater project flew in the face of Ford's usual development procedures. Ordinarily, new models started with Product Planning, and then went to Engineering for validation before the stylists even saw it, to insure that the design stayed on package. Since Bill Boyer's Thunderbird team had cooked up the 195H design on their own (albeit at Crusoe's suggestion), there was no package. Naturally, Engineering didn't like that one bit, and they reacted to the four-seater with decided hostility.

Company controller Robert McNamara took over from Crusoe as general manager of Ford Division in early 1955. McNamara was no fan of the Little Bird -- the two-seater's allure was lost on him, and he disliked the idea of money-losing image-leaders -- but he took a shine to the 195H project. At that point, the four-seater had little political traction, and it looked like the Thunderbird would be dropped completely after 1957. McNamara thought the four-seat project was a unique concept with a strong profit potential, and he became an ardent supporter.

In a 1984 interview with Dave Crippen of the Benson Ford Research Center, Ford stylist Gene Bordinat recalled with some amusement that the taciturn, no-nonsense McNamara was actually quite enamored of the four-seater concept's styling, which Bordinat called "hokey," with "enough design on its side, back, and front for five automobiles." Still, however much McNamara liked the looks, he was probably more enticed by the numbers. Ford's market research suggested that the four-seater might sell up to 100,000 units a year, which would make it a far more lucrative proposition than the Little Bird had ever been. Furthermore, it could be built at Ford's new Wixom Assembly Plant, alongside the big Lincoln Continental, allowing Ford to better utilize the expensive new factory.

Like the '58 Lincoln, the four-seat Thunderbird had unibody construction, unusual for an American car of its era, but its main attraction was its styling. The two-seat Thunderbird had its share of gimmicks, including a false hood scoop and fake fender louvers, but overall, it was a fairly clean, crisp design. The four-seater, by contrast, was a busy-looking hardtop with an odd combination of space-age accoutrements and a rather rigid, upright, "formal" roofline.


This "Brandywine Red" '59 shows off the Square Bird's rather feverish detailing. Note the yellow Square Bird in the background, with its "formal" roof. (Photo © 2005 Morven; used under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license)

The new car, which quickly earned the nickname "Square Bird," was quite a bit bigger than the Little Bird. Its wheelbase was 11 inches (279 mm) longer, and it stretched more than 20 inches (510 mm) longer overall. The two-seaters were never particularly svelte, and the bulkier Square Bird added nearly 400 extra pounds (about 175 kg). Its unibody construction didn't make it any lighter, but it did allow the Square Bird to be lower: only 52.5 inches (1,334 mm) overall, almost 5 inches (127 mm) lower than a contemporary Ford sedan.

The unit body also contributed to the new car's other great stylistic claim to fame, its prominent center console and bucket seats. The new 'Bird had an obtrusive driveshaft tunnel, which also acted as a structural spine. Its low floor meant the tunnel intruded too far into the passenger compartment to allow a conventional bench seat. Instead, Boyer's styling team substituted individual front seats. They made the tunnel a decorative element, covering it with a console containing the heater and power window controls, the ashtray, and a radio speaker. It gave the Square Bird's interior a showy, airplane-cockpit feel that was widely imitated. (Indeed, center consoles are all but mandatory on modern cars.)

DEFINING A MARKET

Ford had always been cagey about calling the Little Bird a sports car, preferring the more ambiguous term "personal car." When the Square Bird appeared for the '58 model year, it put the kibosh on any sporting pretensions the Thunderbird might have had. The four-seater had more power than the two-seater, but the extra weight meant it wasn't any faster. Its suspension and steering were even soggier than before, and its brakes were frankly poor. The racing team of Holman & Moody did convert eight '59 Thunderbirds into NASCAR stockers, but the standard models didn't encourage vigorous driving.

Enthusiasts wailed in horror at the arrival of the Square Bird, but the buying public loved it. Everyone who had said they would buy a Thunderbird if only it had a back seat soon put their money where their mouths were; Ford sold almost 38,000 Thunderbirds in 1958, despite a nasty national recession, and they could have sold even more if the Wixom plant had been able to get production up to speed more quickly. More than 67,000 were sold in '59, and sales for 1960 were nearly 93,000. For once, the market research had been right on target. The Square Bird cost more to build than the two-seater had, but it was also more expensive, and it turned out to be a very profitable car.

Part of the reason the Thunderbird sold so well was that there wasn't anything else like it on the market. Its performance was nothing special, but it looked like a Motorama show car. There were cars with more prestige, but other than a handful of high-priced European exotics, few were more distinctive. The Thunderbird was also comfortable and reasonably practical, something that couldn't be said of a contemporary Corvette. By 1960, it had attained a level of brand awareness that any marketing executive in the world would kill to achieve. Everyone knew what a Thunderbird was, and, discounting the disgruntled sports car fans, almost everyone wanted one.


The nose of the 1961-63 "Bullet Bird." The Bullet Bird's sunken headlamps are its most awkward-looking aspect, and they weren't well received by the public. Neither were prices, which were up more than 10% from 1960 -- another reason for somewhat lower sales than the Square Bird.

Ford's rivals were perfectly aware of how much money Ford was raking in on the Thunderbird, but it took them an unaccountably long time to do anything about it. GM watched almost 200,000 Square Birds roll out the door before they offered anything similar. Their first riposte, the 1961 Oldsmobile Starfire, was a half-hearted gesture, and the T-Bird promptly beat it like a redheaded stepchild. The 1962 Pontiac Grand Prix and 1963 Buick Riviera did somewhat better, but neither did much to steal buyers from their Dearborn rival.

BULLET BIRD

Ford redesigned the Thunderbird for 1961, retaining its four-seat configuration and basic dimensions, but trading the Square Bird's angular lines for a streamlined, fighter-jet look, developed by stylist Alex Tremulis. (An alternative concept by Elwood Engel became the 1961 Lincoln Continental.) Mechanically, it was much the same as before, although it was somewhat heavier, with a larger engine and standard power steering. Early in its development, engineer Fred Hooven had pushed for it to have front-wheel drive, but that idea was vetoed on cost grounds.

Customers were not as enthusiastic about the "Bullet Bird" as they had been about its squared-off predecessor, perhaps because the public was becoming weary of the rocketship styling cues of the fifties. Even so, the Thunderbird remained the car to beat in the personal luxury market.


The Bullet Bird looks sleeker from the rear. Although it looked unique overall, it shared various visual elements with other Ford products of its time. The "dog dish" taillights, designed by Joe Oros, were found on most Ford cars through 1964. The sharp-edged chrome fender tips are similar to the contemporary Lincoln Continental, which was built on the same assembly line, and shared the T-Bird's cowl structure.

PAGING WALTER MITTY

By the time the fourth-generation car appeared for 1964, the Thunderbird design studio had a firm grasp of what their customers liked and didn't like. Since the "banana-nose" design of the Bullet Birds hadn't gone over well, Bill Boyer and his team revisited some earlier styling themes for its 1964 successor. The Bullet Bird's unpopular recessed headlights, tail fins, and dog-dish tail lights all got the ax. The new 'Bird -- known today as the "Flair Bird" -- was fractionally shorter than before, but it looked longer, thanks in part to sharp creases in the body sides and a pair of horizontal "skeg" lines extending through the doors into the rear fenders, reminiscent of the 1961-62 Cadillacs. The hood was lengthened and the greenhouse shortened to give more muscular proportions, but the now-expected fake hood scoop and formal roofline were still present and accounted for. In John Katz's 1989 book Soaring Spirit: Thirty-Five Years of the Ford Thunderbird, Boyer denied trying to rehash the Square Bird, but he admitted that his goal for the '64 was to synthesize the most successful elements of the previous generations.


This somewhat battered '65 Landau shows off some of the Flair Bird's major styling features: fake hood scoop, "skeg" fins, and formal roof. The chrome "waste gate" trim on the front fender was added for '65 and deleted the following year. The Flair Bird is an intermediate by sixties standards: 205.4 inches (5,217 mm) long on a 113.2-inch (2,875-mm) wheelbase, 77.1 inches (1,958 mm) wide and 52.5 inches (1,334 mm) high. A well-equipped Landau weighs around 4,600 pounds (2,087 kg); convertibles are about 110 pounds (50 kg) heavier. Rear fender skirts are very common on these cars, but they were technically optional, costing an extra $32.70.This car's ugly wheel covers are not original.


The Flair Bird returned the "eyebrows" over the headlamps that had been used on the 1958-60 Square Birds. The 1965 Thunderbird can be distinguished from the '64 by its slightly different grille texture (with vertical, as well as horizontal bars) and the chrome emblem on the nose; '64s have "T H U N D E R B I R D" lettering between the headlights instead.


Except for a few '62s and '63s with the very rare 340-hp M-code engine, all Thunderbirds from 1961 to 1965 used Ford's trusty 390 cu. in. (6.4 L) V8 and a single four-barrel carburetor, rated at 300 gross horsepower (224 kW) and 427 lb-ft  (576 N-m) of torque. The 390 provides adequate power for undemanding drivers: 0-60 mph (0-97 kph) takes around 11 seconds, with an absolute top speed of around 110 mph (176 kph). The tiny chrome bullets on the fender tips are turn signal repeaters, a feature cribbed from early-sixties Cadillacs.

Under the new skin, the new T-Bird was the same old wine in a different bottle. The Flair Bird still had unitary construction, which was somewhat less novel in 1965 than it had been in 1958.  It was otherwise a thoroughly conventional car, sharing its engine, transmission, suspension, and brakes with full-sized Ford sedans. Its main distinction was weight; the Thunderbird wasn't terribly large by contemporary American standards, but it weighed more than 500 pounds (227 kg) more than a Ford Galaxie sedan, which was a significantly larger car.


Thunderbird and Lincoln convertibles of the early sixties borrow their power top mechanism from the short-lived Ford Skyliner retractable hardtop of 1957-60, although both are soft tops. The entire deck flips up at the rear edge to stow the top beneath it. It's an impressive sight to see, although its bulk means there's no trunk space at all with the top down.

Inside, interior designer John Najjar pulled out all the stops, jazzing up the familiar buckets-and-console theme with an array of toggle switches and flashing lights worthy of a B-52 Stratofortress. There was nothing that you wouldn't find on a well-equipped family sedan today -- just controls for air conditioning, power windows, power locks, power seats, radio, and heater -- but it was a dazzling sight. Several contemporary reviewers noted that the controls required considerable study before they could be used with confidence.


This '65 convertible has nearly every available option. Although most T-Birds had air conditioning and full power equipment, everything except power steering, power brakes, and automatic transmission was technically optional, adding hundreds of dollars to the price. The only option that appears to be lacking on this car is the power vent windows; it has power windows, but manual cranks for the vents. Note that there is no glove compartment -- interior storage space is limited to a small compartment under the console armrest.


A full set of instruments was an increasingly rare sight on American cars of the mid-sixties, but the Thunderbird's "flight deck" dash wouldn't be complete without them. Four eyeball-shaped gauges monitor oil pressure, fuel, coolant temperature, and battery charge. The horizontal speedometer works like a thermometer; it looks neat, but it's difficult to read. The abundance of chrome is obnoxious on sunny days, particularly with the top down. Note the circular emblem on the brake pedal -- it proclaims that this car has disc brakes, which were standard equipment starting in 1965.


These elaborate read-outs and toggles control nothing more exotic than the wipers, map lights, and vents, but they look like they should operate the landing gear of a 707. The switches and lights under the read-outs are the $58 "Safety Convenience Control Panel," which includes four-way flashers, a vacuum control to lock or unlock all the doors, and low fuel and door-ajar warning lights.

Most of the Thunderbird's interior gadgets were pure hokum, but again, the public ate it up. Sales for '64 nearly matched the 1960 peak, despite increased competition, both from GM and from Ford's own Mustang, which bowed late in the model year.

As always, the Thunderbird's success confounded critics, because as an automobile, it was decidedly lackluster. It had adequate power, but it was definitely not a fast car, and fuel economy was predictably dire. Like its predecessors, the Flair Bird rode comfortably on smooth pavement, but rough surfaces destroyed its composure. Its handling was dire even by the grim standards of 1964, and its brakes were wretched. For all its bulk, the 'Bird still didn't offer an abundance of interior space, especially in back. It was certainly elaborate, but its complexity did not translate into performance or utility.


The show-stopping feature of mid-sixties Thunderbirds: sequential taillights. Each tail light segment has a separate bulb. Every time the turn signals blink, the lights illuminate in sequence, inside to outside. It's a silly gimmick, but it's very impressive, especially at dusk. It was originally intended for the '64 model, but problems with state lighting laws delayed it until 1965. The system was reused on the later Shelby Mustangs and the Mercury Cougar.


This is a '65 Thunderbird Landau. The Landau model, introduced in 1962, cost $103 more than the standard hardtop, and included a padded vinyl top, fake landau irons, and fake wood appliqué on the dash. Of course, since the roof doesn't move, landau irons are hardly necessary (and the convertible's power top mechanism would have made them superfluous, anyway), but T-Bird stylists never missed an opportunity for a little gratuitous brightwork. Note the outlets for the T-Bird's "Silent-Flo" system, one of the industry's first modern flow-through ventilation systems. High-pressure cabin air passes through the slots in the package shelf and exits through the slots hidden between the chrome gills at the base of the rear window. It works surprisingly well, allowing decent airflow even with the windows closed.


The Swing-Away steering column was a novel T-Bird feature, originally introduced on the Bullet Birds. With the shifter in Park, the entire steering column swung to the right, making it easier for tall (or very rotund) drivers to enter. This is a '65 Landau model, identifiable by the fake woodgrain trim on the dash.

However, utility was definitely not the point. People didn't lay out $6,000-odd for a T-Bird because they were worried about cornering grip or gas mileage. If buyers in this class had been interested in taste or performance, they could always have bought a Buick Riviera, which was classier, faster, and handled better. The Thunderbird's raison d'être was wowing the neighbors and letting middle-aged businessmen pretend every trip to the store was an interplanetary mission.


The Thunderbird's rear seat wasn't very big, but it was nicely trimmed, with a fold-down center armrest, map lights, and an optional rear radio speaker. The curved backrest was intended to give a chaise lounge effect, but it forces passengers into awkward positions on longer trips.

The 1965 and '66 Flair Birds were little changed in styling or features, but a useful addition was standard front disc brakes. The discs were enough to nearly double the Thunderbird's previously anemic stopping power, helpful for a car that so encouraged daydreaming. For 1966, there was also an optional 428 cu. in. (7.0 L) engine, essentially a stroked version of the standard 390 (6.4 L) V8.


1966 Flair Birds moved the Thunderbird crest from the nose to the grille. Most still had the 390 cu. in. engine, but buyers could now order Ford's 428 (7.0 L) V8, with a nominal 345 horsepower (257 kW). The T-Bird was still much too heavy to be competitive in the stoplight Grand Prix, but the 428 did give it more grunt for highway passing maneuvers.

SIDEBAR: Sport Roadsters and Tonneaus

Since the two-seat Little Bird died in 1957, the astute reader may be wondering why the red photo car appears to have only two seats. Therein hangs a tale.

The two-seater was so beloved that when the Square Bird emerged in 1958, some dealers and aftermarket companies started offering fiberglass tonneau covers that would clip in place over the rear seat. They were painted the same color as the body, and styled to look like an extension of the rear deck. Such accessories were popular enough that Ford itself eventually got into the act.

In 1962, Ford began offering a "Sport Roadster" model, based on the Bullet Bird convertible. Stylist Bud Kaufman designed a slick tonneau cover with integral headrests that would neatly made with the backs of the T-Bird's front seats. The Sport Roadster package also included sharp-looking wire wheels and a sporty grab handle for the front passenger. It was an expensive option, adding nearly 15% to the Thunderbird's already hefty bottom line, and it was thoroughly impractical. Not only did it make the rear seat useless, removing it was a chore, and it did not fit in the trunk. Fewer than 2,000 were sold. They're relatively easy to counterfeit, and there are probably more "Sport Roadsters" today than Ford ever sold in the first place.

Ford also adapted the tonneau for the '64 body. Although there wasn't a formal Sport Roadster model, both the cover and the wire wheels were stand-alone options for regular convertibles. They weren't offered by the factory in '65 or '66, but the tonneau would still fit the later convertibles, and some were sold by dealers or added later by collectors.



From four seats to two. The tonneau cover of this 1962 Sport Roadster completely covers the rear seat, blending smoothly into the line of the rear deck and making it look for all the world like a two-seater. The tonneau does not interfere with the operation of the convertible top, which is fortunate, because there isn't enough room in the Thunderbird's meager trunk to store the tonneau cover. The photos above are of an authentic 1962 Sport Roadster; the tonneau cover on our red photo subject is a similar but not identical aftermarket replica.


Genuine Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels were also optional on '62-'64 Thunderbirds. Although the wheels on this '65 convertible have the Thunderbird-badged spinners of those optional wheels, they are not the factory wheels. The genuine articles were 14 inches, and didn't have enough clearance for the '65's disc brakes. The knock-off spinner is just for show, concealing the lug nuts; real knock-off wheels have been illegal for road use in the U.S. since around the time this car was new.

A CHANGE OF FLIGHT PLAN

After the end of Flair Bird line in 1966, the Thunderbird hit the wall. Bill Boyer admitted to author John Katz that by '66, his team had taken the original styling themes about as far as they could go. The '67 Thunderbird was cleaner looking inside and out, if no less ostentatious Gone were the hood scoop, the fake louvers, the fender skirts, and the confounding array of lights and switches. It also reverted to body-on-frame construction, a cost-saving measure that made it even more like a regular Ford sedan under the skin. For the design's second year, the Thunderbird even lost its buckets and console, which moved to the options list in favor of a standard bench seat. It made sense from a practical standpoint, but it cost the T-Bird much of what had once made it special.

The big showpiece for 1967 was a new body style: a four-door, pillared sedan. Ford marketing made a big deal out of the new four-door Landau, but Car and Driver dismissed as little more than an overdecorated Ford Galaxie. The whole point of the Thunderbird and the personal luxury genre it spawned had been to offer an alternative to ordinary sedans; a four-door T-Bird was the answer to a question nobody had asked. (Its platform, however, was used very successfully to create the Lincoln Continental Mark III.)

The '67 sold well, thanks mostly to the continuing allure of the Thunderbird name, but by 1968, the competition was closing in. The only American marques that didn't offer a personal luxury car by 1968 were Chrysler and Chevrolet. Many of the new rivals had a technological or performance edge over the Thunderbird. All things considered, it was probably a bad time to tone down the ostentatious styling and Walter Mitty fantasy gadgets.


The 1967-69 "Glamour Birds" sported a massive "jet-intake" grille with concealed headlamps, designed by Dave Ash. From the front, a casual observer might mistake it for the contemporary Dodge Charger, were it not for the multitude of Thunderbird badges. The four-door Landau had a longer wheelbase than the two-door, with center roof pillars and rear-hinged back doors, like the contemporary Lincoln Continental. Four-doors sold better than the previous convertible, but they never accounted for a high percentage of Thunderbird sales, and they disappeared after 1971.

Lacking a coherent direction for the T-Bird, Ford settled for making it bigger, plusher, and more expensive. By 1977, Ford was forced to trim half a ton of bloat and nearly $3,000 from the price tag, putting the Thunderbird back in the hunt with the popular Chevy Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix. Although the 1977-79 'Birds lacked any redeeming characteristics, they sold like mad. A second wave of downsizing in 1980 sent sales and prestige tumbling, although the sleek 1983 models -- first wave of Ford's "aero" revolution of the eighties -- restored a certain measure of honor, and brought the T-Bird closer to its sporty roots. Still, none of the post-'66 cars will probably ever match the adoration that surrounds their fifties and sixties ancestors.


You're looking at the most popular Thunderbird of them all. Although it was basically a redecorated Ford Torino intermediate, the 1977-79 model was insanely popular, selling close to a million units in three model years. An aggressive price cut (the '77 was about 30% cheaper than the heftier '76) was the major reason, since the car itself is thoroughly undistinguished, not to say tasteless. This is a '79, identifiable by slight differences in its grille texture. If it was originally a California car, it has Ford's 351 cu. in. small-block V8, with a meager 149 hp (111 kW) to push its two-ton heft.

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU

What are we to make of those early four-seater 'Birds? What makes a Flair Bird charming where its bloated successors seem merely fat? The Thunderbird was never really a sports car, nor was it quite a luxury car. If it could be called glamorous, it was a tawdry and ostentatious sort of glamor, and it was about as sporty as Paris, Las Vegas is European. Its buyers and fans knew that, and they didn't care. They recognized that it was all about symbolism, and that symbolism was enough.

In 1995, Italian writer and semiotics professor Umberto Eco wrote that the enduring popularity of the movie Casablanca stems not from its modest virtues as a film, but from the way it shamelessly mixes  tropes and clichés from many different films and genres. "Two clichés make us laugh," he wrote. "A hundred clichés move us....If nothing else, it is a phenomenon worthy of awe."

We would say much the same of the Thunderbird. It was hardly a great car, but it remains a giddy précis of all the fetishes and fascinations of its era, rolled into a single, gaudy, crowd-pleasing amalgam. If it was absurd -- and it was -- it was a grand and joyous absurdity, and it's hard not to love it for that.

# # #

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NOTES ON SOURCES

Our sources for the development of the four-seat Thunderbird included John F. Katz, Soaring Spirit Thirty Five Years of the Ford Thunderbird (3820055) (Kutztown, PA: Automobile Quarterly, Inc., 1989); Dave Crippen's 1984 interview with Gene Bordinat, "The Reminiscences of Eugene [Gene] Bordinat, Jr." (David R. Crippen, 27 June 1984, Automotive Design Oral History Project, Benson Ford Research Center, http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Design/Bordinat_interview.htm, accessed 17 July 2008); "Little Bird Meets Big Bird" from Special Interest Autos #11 (June-July 1972); Tim Howley, "1958 Thunderbird: Flying Off in a New Direction," from Special Interest Autos #151 (January-February 1996); and Arch Brown, "1966 Thunderbird: 'Big Bird'" Special Interest Autos #106 (July-August 1988), all of which are reprinted in Terry Ehrich, ed., The Hemmings Motor News Book of Postwar Fords (Hemmings Motor News Collector-Car Books) (Bennington, VT: Hemmings Motor News, 2000), and Josiah Work and Vince Manocchi "SIA comparisonReport: Two Kinds of Personal Luxury: Riviera and Thunderbird for 1963," Special Interest Autos #94 (August 1986), pp. 34-41.

Information on the Sports Roadster came from the LoveFords.org site, which includes a PDF of Ford's original brochure (author and date unknown, LOVEfords.org, http://www.lovefords.org/archives/conv/1962-thunderbird-sportsroadster.htm, accessed 18 July 2008), and Michael Lamm, "1962 Thunderbird Sports Roadster," Special Interest Autos #44 (March-April 1978), pp. 12-17, 56-57.

We also consulted the following period road tests: "Technical Study of the All-New T-Birds" and Ken Fermoyle, "Thunderbird Road Test" (Motor Life, March 1958); "Road Test: Ford Thunderbird: Stop off here on your way from a U.S. sedan to a sports car" (Road & Track, June 1959); "Thunderbird 1961 Analysis" (Motor Life, November 1960); John Lawlor, "Special Report -- 1961 T-Bird" (Motor Trend, December 1960); "Car Life Road Test: Ford Thunderbird" (Car Life, July 1961); "New Look for the T-Bird" (Motor Trend, December 1961); "Thunderbird Sports Roadster: Chrome wheels and a tonneau cover add a bit of dash to Ford's prestige car" (Car Life, July 1962); and Jim Wright, "MT Road Test: Thunderbird" (Motor Trend, September 1962), all of which are reprinted in R.M. Clarke, ed., Thunderbird 1958-1963 Performance Portfolio (Cobham, Surrey: Brooklands Books Ltd., 2002); and "No Thundering Noise in this Lightning Swift Thunderbird" (Auto Sports, October 1963); "Thunderbird" (Motor Trend, November 1963); "The Thunderbird Grows New Feathers" (Car Life, October 1963); Martyn L. Schorr, "0-60 in 6 Sec., 135 mph Top Speed...This Is a T-Bird?" (Cars, October 1964); Bob McVay, "1964 Thunderbird Road Test" (Motor Trend, February 1964); "Thunderbird Convertible: Who wants a Thunderbird? Every last Walter Mitty in the entire United States, that's who wants a Thunderbird!" (Car and Driver, August 1964); "1965 Ford Thunderbird: At Last, Brakes to Match Those Fancy Feathers" (Car Life, November 1964); John Ethridge, "Thunderbird: More Fingertip Feathers for the Bird's Plush Nest!" (Motor Trend, March 1966); "Ford Thunderbird vs. Cadillac Eldorado" (Car and Driver, November 1966);  "Thunderbird 4-Door: Ford's Shapely Prestige-Maker Is also an Industry Pace-Setter" (Car Life, February 1967); Brock Yates, "Viewpoint: Thunderbird: The Pursuit of 'Luxury' Is a Game Played by Another Generation's Rules" (Car and Driver, February 1972); Rick Busenkell, "'76 Thunderbird Driver Report: They may have gone too far this time" (Complete Ford Book, 1976); and Tony Swan, "Farewell to the Big Bird" (Motor Trend, February 1976), all of which are reprinted in R.M. Clarke, ed., Thunderbird 1964-76 Performance Portfolio (Cobham, Surrey: Brooklands Books Ltd., 2000).

Umberto Eco's essay "Casablanca, or, The Clichés are Having a Ball" originally appeared in Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, eds., Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994, pp. 260-264). It is reprinted at TheModernWorld.com (Scott Atkins, October 1995, TheModernWorld.com, http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_casablanca.html, accessed 20 July 2008).

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Comments (2)

• 2009-02-10 22:53:47 | ......  - kelsey hayes wheels

  How much do 1962 thunderbird Kelsey Hayes wheels wieght?

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• 2009-02-11 02:20:17 | Administrator

  That's a good question. Wire wheels were fairly heavy, particularly ones approved for OEM use on American cars of that era (which were heavy; a '62 T-Bird roadster weighed close to 5,000 pounds). My guess would be in the neighborhood of 25 pounds each, maybe a little more.

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