Yet for all its Feel-good Qualities
The biggest gripe was lack of sports-car-level handling. Indeed, Road & Track reported a respectable 0.83g on the skidpad and only moderate understeer in corners. Viewed in that light, it was excellent, with more than enough performance to make a fun drive. But as Ford repeatedly emphasized, the ’02 T-Bird was never intended to be a pure sports car. Rather, it was built for “relaxed sportiness” just like the “personal” ’55: two-seat jaunty, but also comfortable and well-appointed.
Frank Hershey, who headed the team that styled the original ’55 T-Bird, said Ford had been conjuring two-seaters well before this, but never felt rushed to build one because sports-car sales only amounted to a minuscule 0.27 percent of the total U.S. Barely a month later, Ford was hard at work on the car that would ultimately be named for the god worshiped by America’s Southwest Native Americans as the bringer of rain and prosperity.First displayed as a wood mock-up at the Detroit show in early 1954, the Thunderbird was a “personal” car, not a pure sports car. But in January 1953, GM threw down a gauntlet Ford couldn’t ignore: the Chevrolet Corvette.
A power moonroof was newly optional. Judicious use of the options sheet made it possible to order the V-8 with most Turbo Coupe features. Many buyers did just that, enjoying more-relaxed performance and far greater refinement. Gas was again cheap, so the V-8 was ordered in the bulk of that year’s nearly 164,000 Thunderbirds in spite of its so-so 20-mpg thirst. Even in the late ’80s, there was still no substitute for cubic inches.
Sales fell to 18,100 for ’03, to just under 12,000 the year after, and finally to 9548. One problem was a growing band of like-priced import-brand droptops, some of which had more speed and/or greater cachet. Higher compression and variable intake-valve timing added 28 bhp, trimming 0-60-mph runs to 6.5 seconds. A few useful changes did occur for 2003, Ford Motor Company’s centennial year. Upward price creep did nothing to help, especially as there was little to justify it.
Joining the familiar convertible was a fixed-roof hardtop that popularized the square “formal-look” wide-quarter roofline that would soon spread throughout the Ford line — and to other automakers. Nearly 38,000 were built for the model year, about twice as many as any of the previous two-seaters. In case you loved this short article in addition to you would like to get guidance concerning How much to rent a condo in Bangkok kindly pay a visit to our web page. The ’59s changed only in detail: a honeycomb, instead of horizontal-bar, motif for grille; nonfunctional hood air-scoop and taillight appliqué; “bullet” moldings on the sculptured lower-body “bombs”; reworked Thunderbird script; a bird emblem instead of a round emblem on hardtop C-pillars. With all this, the 1958 Thunderbird was a solid hit despite higher base prices of $3600-$3900. A rumored retractable hardtop like the 1957-59 Ford Skyliner was canceled in the design stage. A new interior feature — a central control console atop the transmission tunnel — would also be widely imitated.
