![]() One of the major factors persuading John to settle for this particular car was the extensive history file that came as part of the package. Here was a car that featured Lincoln-type luxury and styling in a (relatively!) small, sporty 300bhp V8 coupe that wouldn’t break the bank. Despite a meagre $50 million budget set aside for the development and tooling of the all-new ‘bird, the design team headed by William P Boyer managed to pull it off and by 1960 Ford proclaimed this to be the world’s most wanted car, selling an astonishing 90,000 units in that year alone. Too big for the sports car title and too small to be considered a family car, it was subsequently branded as a ‘personal luxury’ vehicle. ![]() The 1958-60 T-bird − often unflatteringly referred to as the ‘Square-bird’ – was in essence a slight compromise. ”I left a deposit, the dealer agreed to fix a few minor issues and I collected the car the following week.” John has never once regretted making that split-second decision six years ago and this car has fitted the bill in all respects. ![]() “After so many previous wasted trips, I was praying this one would be worthwhile.” Fortunately, John wasn’t to be disappointed and knew at first glance this car ticked all the boxes: “I’m not normally an impulsive fool and usually take time to think things over, but not on this occasion,” he laughs. “They specialised in older and rarer cars, but not specifically from America,” John recalls. “I looked at quite a few on the market, but they were all in a poor condition requiring work.” We should point out John is the first to confess he’s no professional mechanic or painter by any stretch of the imagination, which explains why he was searching for such a good, original example requiring minimal work.įinally, in 2017, John spotted an ad for this 1960 second-gen hardtop in Adriatic Green, offered for sale by a vendor in Lincoln. “It just had to be an early Thunderbird,” John recalls. While John’s stock car racing ambition never came to fruition, his desire to own one of the American cars he’d first seen as a youngster seemed a more realistic possibility. “I liked what I saw!” Of the countless American cars John would read about, it was the earlier generations of Ford’s Thunderbird that seemed to pull at his heartstrings the most: “I was impressed how Ford had radically altered the design of each of the first four generations of the T-bird,” John continues, ”yet they managed to ensure the stance and style remained consistent and instantly recognisable as a Thunderbird.” “The styling and contours were on another level compared to what we had in the UK at the time,” John laughs. Although I knew I was unlikely to see these cars in action, I took a great deal of interest in their technical details and how they achieved so much power.” Alongside the motorsport-related content of these publications, the relatively standard Buicks, Chevrolets and other Detroit metal of the era featured elsewhere had begun to catch John’s eye too. “This would have been back in the Sixties, making the speeds they’d achieve seem even more impressive. “The magazines I’d buy often covered drag racing and American stock car racing,” John explains. ![]() ![]() Predictably, John soon had ambitions to race those same stock cars once he was old enough and although work and family commitments sadly never allowed for this to come to fruition, his fascination with V8s remained ever strong. “Once they’d begun racing, you could feel the vibrations of the engines going right through your body,” he recalls. “I’ll never forget running up the embankment to witness my first sight of the F1 stock cars on their parade lap, snarling and roaring with long blue flames shooting from their unsilenced headers in the fading daylight.” This almost surreal spectacle certainly sent John’s senses into overdrive. “I would have been around 10 or 11 years old when my parents first took me to watch stock car racing at Long Eaton stadium where most of the cars ran GM, Chrysler or Ford V8s,” 70- year-old John recalls. Unusually, John’s fascination with American automobiles began not with the cars themselves instead it was their legendary V8 powerplants which initially sparked his interest. But once he’d clapped eyes on this stunning unrestored 1960 example in Adriatic Green, he knew impulsively it was the right car for him… John Thorpe spent years searching for a second-generation Ford Thunderbird without success. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |