Ford Thunderbird

The conventional wisdom says that the original Ford Thunderbird was a direct response to Chevrolet’s launch of the Corvette. The Corvette was displayed  at the 1953 Motorama, and immediately Ford designers pulled out their drafting pencils and went to work. But the real story is that the Ford Thunderbird was just the kind of car that many designers dream about, so when the formal call to work on a 2-seater came from management,  Ford designers just reached into their desk drawers.

Sports cars appearing everywhere

The fact is, if you were an automobile designer in the early Fifties and you didn’t learn about the sports car craze, you had to have been spending too many nights in the styling dome. It was a time when exciting 2-seaters were appearing everywhere.

The British led the parade with the  Jaguar XK-120 and the MG-TC. Ferry Porsche was fighting against incredible odds to create  his new sports car in war-ravaged Germany. Enzo Ferrari had finally started  to build sports cars bearing his name in Italy, and in America,  Powell Crosley and Frank Kurtis each contributed their own unique sports cars to the mix. Every one of these cars was being sold in America by 1951, when  Ford Division general manager, Lewis Crusoe, inquired about starting a two-seater program of his own.

Frank Hershey was the designer at the other end of that call, and he and one of his assistants, William P. “Bill” Boyer, were ready, willing and able to comply. Hershey was a Detroit native, who had worked at the popular  Walter Murphy coachbuilding firm, at General Motors under the legendary  Harley Earl, and at Packard before finally joining Ford Motor Company. While at GM,  he put the well known  “Silver Streaks” on the hoods of the 1935 Pontiacs. He’d also served at Opel immediately prior to World War II and at GM’s advanced design unit after the war, so he was well-acquainted with the European  styles and leading edge design.

Clay version mockup already existed

According to Hershey, when the summons came from Crusoe,  he and his team even had a back room clay version nearing completion, but the Ford division 2-seater program didn’t get an official okay until the Motorama Corvette concept car emerged. After that, the designers really were off and running.

By June 1952,  Boyer had submitted an outline that bore uncanny similarity to the final version of the 1955 Thunderbird. Virtually,  all the distinguishing features were in place in Boyer’s sketch, as well as  the fender louvers, broad egg-crate grille,  and hood scoop. Stretching from the fender louvers was the distinct “character line” that ran back to the tail to help define tastefully modest fins. The only key  difference between the sketch and the eventual production car came in the windshield treatment. The sketch shows two small, competition-type windscreens, but the car that was eventually built provided the de rigeur Fifties wrap-around windshield.

Though the Boyer sketch labeled the vehicle the Ford sports car, Ford’s version of what constituted a sports car was definitely different from that of Ferry Porsche or Enzo Ferrari. Hershey knew that the two-seater would be relatively costly, at least,  by Ford standards, so he knew he had to cater to the tastes of well-to-do Americans. Because of that, he made certain that the car had a more sophisticated, tasteful look than the run-of-the-mill Fords of the era, which were be-decked with substantial amounts of chrome. Hershey told one interviewer that he desired  the Thunderbird to be a car a banker could drive with dignity.

Production of a new class of cars

What Hershey was doing without knowing it was inventing an entirely new class of cars–the “personal luxury” class. Such cars have a sportier touch  than sedans, but they are not all-out sports cars.

While the 1954-55 Corvette chased after the sports car ethos circa 1953 with its lack of exterior door handles and side curtains, the Ford Thunderbird offered standard American car amenities like roll-up windows and a reliable, fold-down convertible top. And the Thunderbird was made of stamped steel, not fiberglass like the Corvette. When one got up close and personal, the Thunderbird was much less  similar to a sports car, and much more like a mid-Fifties American convertible that happened to have one row of seats instead of two. For that reason alone, some would despise the car while  still others would love it.

One thing Ford partisans didn’t have to be concerned about was adequate power. While GM engineers working on the early Corvettes struggled to make the stovebolt six  offer sports car performance, Ford engineers simply dropped in their big V-8. In Thunderbird trim the engine  produced  about 195 horsepower, and it could be backed up by either a three-speed manual or Ford-O-Matic transmission.

Swift car thanks to big V8

With a  huge, easily hot-rodded V-8 under the hood,   Thunderbird drivers ,  were able to outdo Blue Flame Six Corvettes, at least in a straight line, and give the early small-block V-8 ‘Vettes a run for their money.  Maximum speed in stock trim was around 115 miles per hour, and the car could  zoom  through the quarter mile in about 17 seconds.

However, the Thunderbird’s handling  wasn’t nearly as good as the Corvettes. Of course, that’s not surprising when one considers that the Ford car weighed about 800 pounds more than the Corvette and that many of its  major suspension components came from the Ford station wagon.

On a fast track, at least in terms of  improvement, the Thunderbird debuted in wood mock-up form at the February 1954 Detroit Auto Show, just a year after the program had received the formal go-ahead. On September 9 that year,  the first  built Thunderbird rolled of the Dearborn assembly line.

Right price, well equipped–strong sales

If the Thunderbird was no match for its Chevrolet rival as an all-around sports car, it was more than a match for it in the showroom sales race. Priced $500 less than its rival and equipped with more luxuries, the 1955 Thunderbird out-sold the Corvette by nearly four-to-one. It became a solid success in its maiden year, while the Corvette struggled on the verge of cancellation until V-8 power and the 1956 restyle put it on solid ground.

As to the Thunderbird, it would enjoy two more solid years–1956 and 1957–as a two-seater before Ford  built  the four-seat “Squarebird” version for 1958. Though an artistic dud compared with its successors, the ’58 Thunderbird really set the sales pace afire. Close to  50,000 were sold in 1958 alone, dwarfing the sales of the two-seat versions.

However, it was the 1955-57 Thunderbirds,  that have won the hearts of the world’s car collectors and it was those models that set the stage for the growth of the personal luxury car.

—© Studio One Networks—

Tagged with: Ford • sports car • top down • V8 • vintage automobile

Filed under: Top Classic Cars