![]() The ’80s also found me with a starter wife and mortgage, so car activities were curtailed. I also put a porthole kit in and continued to use it as my daily driver. “In the ’80s, I went to a GM light yellow paint color. It has been painted four different colors. He did about 10 transmission jobs before learning of a defect in the bell housing. The self-taught mechanic did most of the work himself. The owner had his share of mechanical challenges. It had the model’s standard 292-cubic-inch V8 engine with a three-speed floor-manual transmission plus overdrive. It had a dull red paint job, the driver’s door was stuck, but heck, I could call the car mine, so I slid in through the passenger door and drove it home.” “I bought the first early ‘Bird that I saw. While in high school in 1967, Wacek borrowed $1,200 from his stepmother. I just said, ‘Wow’ to myself and thought that one day maybe I could have a car like that with a phone in it.” It had no back seat, and it had a big black phone in it! It must have been for military communications. “One day a cool car drove in, and a Navy officer got out and went in for a bite to eat,” Wacek said. ![]() It wasn’t like a Corvette at all but was more of a personal luxury car that created a new marketing segment separate from Corvette. 20, 1954, at the first postwar auto show in Detroit. ![]() Thunderbird made its first public appearance on Feb. Ford stylist Alden Giberson won with “Thunderbird” and probably became one of the best dressed men at Ford. Louis Crusoe proposed a contest for the name and promised a $250 suit ($2,882in 2023 dollars) to the winner. Some of the thousands of rightly rejected names were Beaver, Detroiter, Runabout and Tropicale. It wasn’t to be a radically styled car but one that would have the Ford look so car people would immediately recognize it as a Ford product.Ī normal challenge when a new model comes out is what to call it. Their concept was a two-passenger car with a convertible top using as many off-the-shelf parts as possible. The idea for the Thunderbird came from George Walker and Louis Crusoe. Ford set a goal for a true sports car for the 1955 model year. It created a lot of excitement and interest around the world, and I suspect it also created some panic at the Ford Motor Co. Then General Motors upset the apple cart when in January 1953 the first Chevrolet Corvette was introduced at GM’s Motorama Show in New York. All three companies built nice family cars - sedans and wagons, with the most glamorous always being a convertible. General Motors was clearly the leader, selling approximately twice as many vehicles as Ford, and Ford was selling approximately twice as many vehicles as Chrysler. Looking back, I think it’s fair to say that up until 1953-1955, the American auto industry was pretty bland.
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