THUNDERBIRD MANIA

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32221, 13 February 1970, Page 11

THUNDERBIRD MANIA

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JOHN L DOTSON)

When some United States car enthusiasts talk adoringly of birds, it is not the feathered kind they mean, or even the long-haired variety. These hird fanciers have in mind what one man describes as “merely the most beautiful automobile ever built.”

He might encounter some arguments about that superlative, but there is no disputing the fact that the car he refers to has become the object of a widespread and worshipful cult. The focus of their admiration is known affectionately as the Bird. T-Bird, or to the uninitiated, the original Ford Thunderbird of the years 1955 to 1957. In the last few years, 27 T-Bird clubs have sprung up around the country. Their combined membership is already 2330 and their ranks are multiplying all the time. The Earlybirds, a Southern California sub-sect of the cult, has jumped a third in membership (to 100) in the last year alone.

J. Mason, the retiring president of the Earlybirds, explains: “You wear a Bird when you drive it. It becomes part of you." Bird owners wave at one another on the highways, strike up conversations with perfect strangers who are driving T-Birds, and stick up their noses at lesser vehicles. Thus, Mr Mason’s two-car garage in Tustin, California, is, quite typically, reserved for his two Birds while he parks his late-model Cadillac in the street.

The original Thunderbird was Detroit’s mid-1950s precursor of the sportier “continental” style of car of the 19605. The name was later carried over and attached to a family-sized fourseater.

But to Bird enthusiasts it is only the squat, twoseater original that counts. As they see it, the original Thunderbird is the only classic car to be produced in the United States since the Lincoln Continental of 1940 LIMITED SUPPLY

To those who already own one, the Thunderbird also has the desirable attribute of being in very limited supply. Only 53,166 of them were made, and by expert estimates, there are just 35,000 to 40,000 of them still on the road or in potentially driveable condition.

In face of the growing demand and short supply, the price of the Thunderbirds is soaring. Mr G. Sellers, a 34-year-old public relations executive who lives in Beverly Hills, recently picked up a battered 1955 Bird in such bad shape he could hardly drive it home. He paid $7OO for it and considers himself lucky. “It was a steal," he said. “Any time you can get one for less than $lOOO, you’ve got a bargain.” Those who sell them generally do so with the greatest reluctance. One New Yorker recently surrendered his only after his wife practically threatened him with divorce over the car. “She kept complaining,” he said, “that there really wasn’t enough room for both of us and our two children in the Bird's two seats." And he concedes, with a trace of bitterness, “1 guess she had a point.” PARTS EXPENSIVE Owners’ lives are complicated by the fact that the price of parts keeps soaring. especially the original parts that T-Bird purists insist upon. This means vinyl seats, even though much better materials are available today, and an ill-fitting rug in the trunk, because Ford delivered them that way.

Ford dealers have long since run out of many of the parts, so in many cases T-Bird owners are obliged to turn to used parts. But even these can be fiercely expensive. The little portholes that sat in the sides of the 1956 Bird’s plastic roof sold for $52 new. Now, if you can find one, a used porthole costs about $175. The detachable plastic roof itself sells for upward of $5OO, used, a price that makes it attractive quarry of a growing band of TBird part thieves. J. Baum, of Los Angeles, one of the country’s largest dealers in original Thunderbirds and

parts, recently delivered the third top in eight months to the same man in West Los Angeles, all to replace stolen tops. Cultists are constantly on the prowl, of course, for bargain models. Bui the biggest coup of all was scored four years ago by Mr G. Watts, of Santa Ana, California, who discovered the battered hulk of a Thunderbird rusting away outside a bodyshop in Southern California. He checked its body number with Ford and then offered $5OO to the shop's owner. The owner gladly ac-

cepted, and Mr Watts towed the ragged Bird home. Today, hundreds of hours of work and some $4OOO later, Mr Watts’s car is worth an estimated $25,000. The body number PSFHIOOOOS— it as the very first Thunderbird off Ford's production line. "1 really think it should be in a museum or somewhere where it can be preserved,” said Mr Watts. “It will be a collector's item, some day.” To a growing number of Thunderbird lovers, it obviously is already.—Newsweek Feature Service.