Most likely. I think it makes more sense to rent a container and load up 2 or 3 cars in it for the same price. I imagine these cars are cheap to buy in Europe, and since parts are nonexistent here, it might be a good idea to bring along 2 parts cars with a running example.
Well we know for sure $80 bucks went down the toilet for the "hydrogen generator".
What a bizarre expenditure of money on that Imperial wagon! No mention of any suspension or brake upgrades to handle all that power. it's like putting a big block Chevy in your mom's sofa.
on Arizona's "Historic Route 66", the section of of US 66 between Kingman and Seligman that still closely resembles the old road (complete with Burma Shave signs), a 1963 Corvette Stingray "split window coupe" parked next to a small ranch house near Hackberry with a few more ordinary old cars.
I'm not making that up, it's a great drive BTW.
Later the same day in picturesque downtown Prescott, I saw a decent looking red '67 or '68 Mustang coupe with a tacky white vinyl roof.
I don't get folks who are on ebay, or any site for that matter, and can't take basic walkaround and interior photos of the cars they're selling. I betcha they'd have more success and make more money if they improved that skill.
to my right, waiting to take a left is a gray dodge dynasty. don't see those too often. next thing i know, another one the same color, passes across us from my left! also, a customized 63 or so, 2 tone turquoise/white fairlane.
2024 Ford F-150 STX, 2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
I pulled into a store parking lot and saw this cute old Volkswagen Beetle park next to me. It was in beautiful shape with a nice turquoise paint job, good chrome and a period correct roof rack.
The guy got out and noting some of the subtle details I asked if it was a '62, he replied that it was a '63. I thought I did pretty well getting that close given that it was a point of pride with VW that they did very little in the way of yearly changes then.
Ah you missed the absent Wolfsburg crest. That's about the only change you'd be likely to spot unless you opened the door (folding sunroof handle and a few other things) or the engine compartment (changed fan housing) or crawled underneath.
Welcome to town fintail. I had a super good car day today. Droive two sorta exotics.
First I spotted a new MB CL63 AMG. Black on black. Very nice!
Secondly, I took my wife to our dealer today as we had a 99 Boxster on the lot that I could have for wife's 04 Civic coupe (25k miles) plus about $3k cash. Very tempting. The Boxster is a 99, ex-usa car, with 75k miles, base model, automatic, a bit ratty cosmetic condition with some interior plastic trim broken, but no rips in leather. It would not be very practical, and my wife loves her Civic too much. But it's tempting, except we didn't want to end up with a car like my 01 C240 that we'd have to pump money into all the time. So we took the Boxster out for a spin. I love the engine sound when it revs up, and my wife did too!!! Pleasure to drive but we will pass on it.
Back at the dealership, I mentioned before that a coworker has a 09 C63 AMG. I was bugging him before to take me for a ride in it, so he was working today and when we came back with the Boxster he gave me his keys and told me to go with my wife for a spin in his C63. Wife said no, it's not our car, I said YEAH we're going!!!!
Now %&*% that car is fast. I can't even find expletitives for it! You step on the gas and that thing moves like a bat outta hell while the mean sounding engine provides a soundtrack to die for. When I mashed the foot on the floor, I got pinned to the deep bolstered seats harded than in a jetliner at takeoff, and my pregnant wife nearly gave birth in the front seat cause she never felt this much torque and speed. All I can say is WOW, this car's a monster! My coworker says a tank fo gas lasts him about a 170 miles. That's about 10mpg. After driving it I can see how. All you want to do is hear the engine and feel the g forces. Crazy!
Send me a msg if you are going to the auto show. I'll have enough free time easily to go once or twice.
I could pass on a neglected Boxster, but the C63 is a very cool car. The exhaust note on those is pretty sick. Crazy bad mileage he's getting out of that thing too...in normal mature commuting my E55 gets about 18-20 or so, and on the highway 24-25 isn't difficult to attain. It's not as fast nor does it sound as good, I will admit.
What's a guy who works at a Mopar dealer doing driving something like that, anyway? Store owner, lucky casino player, or generous parents?
I actually saw a nice looking Corsica sedan. It was a reddish-orange color, and looked like it could have just rolled off the showroom floor. That, or been maintained its whole life by Lemko!
I think we still might have a Corsica or two in our government rental fleet, but if we do I haven't seen them in awhile. I remember years ago, we got a deal on 5 new Achievas for $65,000. At least, I thought it was a deal until I got stuck driving one of them! :P
The main weakness of these cars was the engines. While that's like saying that someone would be healthy if only they didn't have a weak heart, what I mean is that Chevy might still be featuring these cars in its lineup if the OHV I-4 didn't have head gasket problems and the V6 didn't have its intake manifold issue. These were problems that GM didn't have with most of its post WWII engine designs. That tells me they had the know-how to design and build durable engines, and they had ample time to fix these problems. The 1.8/2.0/2.2 OHV I-4 was introduced in the '82 Cavalier, and the Corsica/Beretta came out in '87. The 2.8/3.1 OHV V6 dates back to the X-cars, which were introduced in Spring '79.
I'm not suggesting that the engines were the points of weakness with these cars, but dealing with the biggest source of customer dissatisfaction would have gone a long way toward improving retention.
what happens is there is some engineer gets tasked to cut some cost or other. some bean counter committee sees this and it goes production. they get their bonus for cutting cost. the consequences don't usually show up right away. meanwhile, the engineer feels like they sold their soul.
2024 Ford F-150 STX, 2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
Back at the end of WWII Edsel Ford brought in McNamara and the other Whiz Kids to save Ford through rationalization of the production process and cost-cutting. Say there are 1,000 parts on a car. Save a penny on each part, and then sell 1,000,000 cars - and those saving add up. It was a good idea, of course, and it worked... but like all good ideas it got taken too far. At first there was plenty of fat to cut... but once you've cut to the bone, you can't keep cutting bone. However, they did.
Worse it influenced at least two generations of American Engineers. It shifted them from improvement to cost-cutting. To paraphrase Colin Chapman, they learned to "Add Cheapness".
It may not really be fair to blame McNamara himself, as the Fords of the late 50's and 60's weren't that bad in quality terms, but certainly his successors were shaving the bones.
Unfortunately, the Japanese, trained under the Demmings model showed up on the scene just as circumstances were forcing American Car Makers to innovate for the first time in two decades. They followed their engineering training and tried to do pollution controls and 5-mph bumpers on the cheap. The rest is history.
I always held the opinion that Fords of the late 50s to early 60s were rather substandard cars---GM products slapped them silly in terms of what you got for your money. No co-incidence that you see so few survivors of that era, whilst 59-64 Chevys abound. Can you name a cheesier American car than a 60 Falcon? It'd be tough.
I'm not sure Chapman is the man to be talking about "cutting corners". :P
I always held the opinion that Fords of the late 50s to early 60s were rather substandard cars---GM products slapped them silly in terms of what you got for your money. No co-incidence that you see so few survivors of that era, whilst 59-64 Chevys abound.
I used to be under the impression that the 1958 and the 1959-64 Chevies were poorly built cars because of those wasp-waisted X-frames they used. But it turns out, I guess, that they were actually pretty well-built cars. I've heard that the '65, which used a perimeter frame, wasn't built nearly as well.
In and of itself, I think that X-frame is twisty, and wouldn't provide much protection in a side impact. But as a result, the bodies themselves were beefed up with added protection. So as a whole, the body + frame, working together as a system, might have made for a fairly solid car.
I know the '57 Fords were pretty bad cars, and the '58's weren't much better, but I thought that by 1959, they were pretty solid cars? How were the 1960-64 Fords, for quality? I was always under the impression that they were solid, decent enough cars, but just lacked the performance of a Chevy or Plymouth, unless you went for the top engines. For instance, I think the 292 was a bit of a dog compared to a 283, and Mopar wasn't even putting V-8's that small in their 1960-64 big cars. I think the 352 was even weak compared to a Chevy 327 or Mopar 318. Once Ford started switching over to 289's in the big cars though, I'm sure things improved.
I always thought Ford's big cars from '60-64 were attractive enough, but were kind of conservative compared to the flashier Chevies. One thing that might have made them stodgy was that they were built to be very practical cars, and kind of boxy. Consumer Reports once quipped that a 1961 or 1962 Galaxie had more interior room than a same-year Cadillac!
I think my favorite of the bunch would be a '63 Galaxie. I like the concave grille and slight forward thrust of the front-end, and just the overall shape in general.
The '59 Merc my family was a POS, especially compared to the '64 Poncho that replaced it, a better car in every way.
It's no coincidence the same McNamara was one of the architects of the Vietnam War, his theories on waging war by numbers and body counts might have worked if there was a way of getting reliable numbers, there wasn't.
I've owned both Fords and Chevy from this era, and I don't think there is any comparison. The Ford styling is awkward and clumsy, the switchgear feels cheap and breaks easily, the trim is cheesy, the transmissions confused about what they are supposed to do, and the engines are rough, heavy, and rather gutless gas hogs given their size.
But OTHER THAN THAT.....
I did like the '65 Mustang though with the 260/289 block--that was a vast improvement. I guess that small block came out in 63?
We used to destroy Fords in street racing in the 60s. They didn't have a prayer.
Well, geez, I was trying to be nice about the late 50's and 60's Fords.... in comparison to the POS's that they built in the 70's.
One of the things I noticed on my return to the states in the mid 80's (after most of a decade away) was that I saw a LOT more 60's Galaxies and Mustangs around than I did 70's Fords. My theory was that the 70's Fords had all rusted away or broken into tiny worthless (more worthless) pieces.
I was never a Ford guy.... I was GM all the way, unless that guy showed up to date my sister in a Healy 3000 MKII.... THAT rocked my world!
Ford wasn't a serious player with young drivers until the mid 60s. It was really a product line for older conservative people. Aside from a few screwy ideas like a retractable hardtop on a huge car, and the Edsel, and the 4-seater Birds (goodbye to Ford's version of the Corvette!), there wasn't much in the Ford basket in those years to suggest the company was even still alive IMO.
A couple of weeks ago I went to The Good Guys custom car show at the Orange County Fairgrounds (Calif.). Saw lots of cool rides, but what I saw when I was almost home blew be away......
Had just got off the freeway, and was waiting for a red light in the left turn lane. On the cross street up ahead, a real, genuine Tucker passed by.I had seen them before in museums, but never driving on the street. Unfortunately, being stuck at a light, and in the wrong lane, I wasn't able to follow it. There are some reproductions of the Tucker being made, using a tube steel frames, fiberglas bodies and Caddy Northstar motors. This one looked possibly to be original, since it had 'period' wheels on it. If if see it again, I'll check it out for sure.
You can always peek inside and look for the Selector Gearshift (tiny little pre-select switches) on the steering stalk--Tucker used old rebuilt Cord electrically pre-shifted transmissions because they couldn't get their automatic to work. Another way to tell is that a Tucker owner will never romp on the gas from a standstill---the helicopter engine would break an axle in first gear just like THAT!
Sounds cool yeah, I should be free. I actually had a little time today and went, but didn't look at everything too in-depth. You can get a good deal on tickets for 2 days ($16), so I just did that. I can't seem to find a way to send you a msg, but if you have a way, send me one.
Maybe as a sign of the times or just because it was a weekday...I was surprised how un-crowded it was for opening day.
Today I saw an old man driving a Euro W126 280SE, a lower line model with hubcaps. He was the stereotypical type in a jacket and tweed cap.
I also saw a cool G-Wagen. It was a 280GE, a really old one. Ugly factory wheels, soft top, and it was kind of beat up. Now there's an SUV I wouldn't kick out of my garage.
I also saw an early 70s Torino like in the movie 'Gran Torino'.
I saw an 80-82 T-Bird today. I have to say, that car is the pinnacle of malaise and the bad effects of the 70s. That was just as bad as anything. The bloated early-mid 70s Birds, with their gigantic emasculated engines, at least had a little torque, and were big and comfortable and pimpy. The angular downsized ones that came next at least tried to have some style, in a late 70s way. Then the little Fairmont-ish Bird came...those must have been dark times, and I am somewhat glad I was just a tike then and can't remember any details of those days. Then the aero Bird came out, and it was a decent car again. I know lemko has mentioned his dad had one...anyone who bought an 82 Bird must have felt like they got ripped off when the 83s came out.
Yeah, I was just 9 years old when the 1980 T-bird first came out. I actually thought they were cool...but then, I was just 9 years old! I remember seeing commercials for one that showed a digital dash display, and thinking how cool that was. And I've always been fascinated by anything with hidden headlights.
I don't think I've ever seen one of these with the digital display though. In fact, most of the '80-82 T-birds I see these days seem to be the bottom trim levels. I guess those designer packages and upper trim levels weren't as popular on these cars as they were on the '77-79. Then again, there was a recession going on, and I imagine many people struggled just to get the base model.
Looking back, though, I think those T-birds are just awful. There was one for sale fairly recently at Carlisle, and I remember sitting in it. It was a base model, and it just seemed like a cheap compact trying to pose. I think part of the problem might have been its Fairmont underpinnings showing through all too well. While the Fairmont was a decent car for the time, it never let you forget that it was a compact.
By the same token, a Monte Carlo or Regal is really just a fluffed up Malibu, and a Cordoba/Mirada is just a fancy Volare, but I think those cars were just more substantial to begin with. Yes, even the Volare!
While I don't like the '80-82 T-bird, for some reason, I DO like the same vintage Cougar XR-7. And I also like the '81-82 Granada and the regular Cougars.
When the '83 T-bird and Cougar came out, I didn't like them. I think it was mainly because the style was kind of a shock, and took time to get used to. Also, my Dad, as well as my Granddad and one of my uncles always hated Fords, so I think some of that was still influencing me at the time! :P Looking back, though, it's amazing how well those designs have aged. Not only that, but they were much-improved in interiors and build quality. The 4-speed automatics were still troublesome, and the 232 V-6 engines tended to blow head gaskets around 90,000 miles. But back then, I think people still expected cars to break by 90K, so it wasn't the badge of shame it became in later years, when Tauruses and Windstalls were still doing it.
Personally, I still prefer the '80-83 Cordoba/Mirada and GM's downsized personal luxury coupes, but mainly because I find them to be much more roomy and comfortable inside. One thing that tends to bug me about Ford cars from that era is the huge driveshaft and transmission hump. It just eats up too much room, makes for narrower footwells, and makes the car feel tighter inside than competing Mopar or GM models.
I saw a first-gen MR2 in the parking lot at work. It was black...a little dirty and oxidized, but still kicking, evidently. I think this is the same one I saw a couple weeks ago that almost got creamed by a dumptruck backing up where it shouldn't have been.
Also, one day walking out to the parking lot after work, I saw this black and yellow kit-car looking thing that I didn't recognize. It had no identification on the front, other than a badge I didn't recognize. Sort of a green blobby diamond inserted in a circle. Then I walked around back and saw it was a Lotus Esprit! I was a bit embarrassed, thinking at first that it was just some Fiero-based kit-car!
Oh my God! My Dad had a 1981 Ford Thunderbird Town Landau and it was truly a DOG!!! It had a puny 255 V-8 and I had to floor that car just to get it up a modest hill! It had the super-stupid horn mounted on the turn signal stalk.
I was in Japan in 1981-82 and I remember seeing my first malaise T-Bird while visiting an American Military Base there... It was bright red with a white landau top. Apparently, you could only get them with six cylinder engines. The trim was misaligned on one side.
I was so angry and embarrassed! That car was the saddest excuse for a 'luxury' car that I had ever seen. It seemed so Soviet-Russian-quality-absolutely-cheapest-design-possible-slathered-in-cheap-br- ight-red-like-an-aging-whore-BAD!
This sorry excuse for an automobile-THIS- this THING was a THUNDERBIRD???!
Oh my wholely-gawd, NO!
I longed for 1967, when American cars ruled the highways, and a Thunderbird was a queen among cars.
I hated Ford Motor Company for embarrassing me in front of my Japanese friends and it took me years to forgive them.
Comments
I guess it was imported here as it meets the 15 years old or older requirment. Looked to be in beat up shape. Red color.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
Freakshow
Just be sure the doors don't fall off
Dapper
Odd box
GM's finest
Weird malaise
Subtle
Battleship resto-rod
Good bids on a clamshell
That Caddy is odddddd, never heard of it, but if you're curious, here's more:
page down for more info
Anyone want to guess how many $$ went into that 'Imperial' wagon?
What a bizarre expenditure of money on that Imperial wagon! No mention of any suspension or brake upgrades to handle all that power. it's like putting a big block Chevy in your mom's sofa.
I'd guess the guy is into it about $50,000.
a 1963 Corvette Stingray "split window coupe" parked next to a small ranch house near Hackberry with a few more ordinary old cars.
I'm not making that up, it's a great drive BTW.
Later the same day in picturesque downtown Prescott, I saw a decent looking red '67 or '68 Mustang coupe with a tacky white vinyl roof.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
The same ones who won't clean the car before taking photos. I know a clean car will bring more than a dirty one.
One of the chop top Eldos had a press release that read it's their "answer to the Rolls Royce convertible". I'd be embarassed to write that.
I never understodd what the point was of shortening these Cadillacs either. This one is apparently a "timeless classic creation". :surprise:
Look at this miserable thing. :sick: You couldn't pay me to drive it!
This one is horrible too!
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
battleship resto mod is also from an ex-hometown
don't see those too often.
next thing i know, another one the same color, passes across us from my left!
also, a customized 63 or so, 2 tone turquoise/white fairlane.
I also spotted a group of about 15 modern Lamborghinis...one was on a tow truck, maybe not a good sign.
The guy got out and noting some of the subtle details I asked if it was a '62, he replied that it was a '63. I thought I did pretty well getting that close given that it was a point of pride with VW that they did very little in the way of yearly changes then.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
First I spotted a new MB CL63 AMG. Black on black. Very nice!
Secondly, I took my wife to our dealer today as we had a 99 Boxster on the lot that I could have for wife's 04 Civic coupe (25k miles) plus about $3k cash. Very tempting. The Boxster is a 99, ex-usa car, with 75k miles, base model, automatic, a bit ratty cosmetic condition with some interior plastic trim broken, but no rips in leather. It would not be very practical, and my wife loves her Civic too much. But it's tempting, except we didn't want to end up with a car like my 01 C240 that we'd have to pump money into all the time. So we took the Boxster out for a spin. I love the engine sound when it revs up, and my wife did too!!! Pleasure to drive but we will pass on it.
Back at the dealership, I mentioned before that a coworker has a 09 C63 AMG. I was bugging him before to take me for a ride in it, so he was working today and when we came back with the Boxster he gave me his keys and told me to go with my wife for a spin in his C63. Wife said no, it's not our car, I said YEAH we're going!!!!
Now %&*% that car is fast. I can't even find expletitives for it! You step on the gas and that thing moves like a bat outta hell while the mean sounding engine provides a soundtrack to die for. When I mashed the foot on the floor, I got pinned to the deep bolstered seats harded than in a jetliner at takeoff, and my pregnant wife nearly gave birth in the front seat cause she never felt this much torque and speed. All I can say is WOW, this car's a monster! My coworker says a tank fo gas lasts him about a 170 miles. That's about 10mpg. After driving it I can see how. All you want to do is hear the engine and feel the g forces. Crazy!
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I could pass on a neglected Boxster, but the C63 is a very cool car. The exhaust note on those is pretty sick. Crazy bad mileage he's getting out of that thing too...in normal mature commuting my E55 gets about 18-20 or so, and on the highway 24-25 isn't difficult to attain. It's not as fast nor does it sound as good, I will admit.
What's a guy who works at a Mopar dealer doing driving something like that, anyway? Store owner, lucky casino player, or generous parents?
Yeah the C63 is crazy. It really blew me away. And generous parents is the answer.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I think we still might have a Corsica or two in our government rental fleet, but if we do I haven't seen them in awhile. I remember years ago, we got a deal on 5 new Achievas for $65,000. At least, I thought it was a deal until I got stuck driving one of them! :P
I remember an old couple my mother knew had a 5-door Corsica, it was an unusual car even then.
I'm not suggesting that the engines were the points of weakness with these cars, but dealing with the biggest source of customer dissatisfaction would have gone a long way toward improving retention.
some bean counter committee sees this and it goes production.
they get their bonus for cutting cost. the consequences don't usually show up right away. meanwhile, the engineer feels like they sold their soul.
30 in a 25, eh Fezo? :P
Worse it influenced at least two generations of American Engineers. It shifted them from improvement to cost-cutting. To paraphrase Colin Chapman, they learned to "Add Cheapness".
It may not really be fair to blame McNamara himself, as the Fords of the late 50's and 60's weren't that bad in quality terms, but certainly his successors were shaving the bones.
Unfortunately, the Japanese, trained under the Demmings model showed up on the scene just as circumstances were forcing American Car Makers to innovate for the first time in two decades. They followed their engineering training and tried to do pollution controls and 5-mph bumpers on the cheap. The rest is history.
I'm not sure Chapman is the man to be talking about "cutting corners". :P
I used to be under the impression that the 1958 and the 1959-64 Chevies were poorly built cars because of those wasp-waisted X-frames they used. But it turns out, I guess, that they were actually pretty well-built cars. I've heard that the '65, which used a perimeter frame, wasn't built nearly as well.
In and of itself, I think that X-frame is twisty, and wouldn't provide much protection in a side impact. But as a result, the bodies themselves were beefed up with added protection. So as a whole, the body + frame, working together as a system, might have made for a fairly solid car.
I know the '57 Fords were pretty bad cars, and the '58's weren't much better, but I thought that by 1959, they were pretty solid cars? How were the 1960-64 Fords, for quality? I was always under the impression that they were solid, decent enough cars, but just lacked the performance of a Chevy or Plymouth, unless you went for the top engines. For instance, I think the 292 was a bit of a dog compared to a 283, and Mopar wasn't even putting V-8's that small in their 1960-64 big cars. I think the 352 was even weak compared to a Chevy 327 or Mopar 318. Once Ford started switching over to 289's in the big cars though, I'm sure things improved.
I always thought Ford's big cars from '60-64 were attractive enough, but were kind of conservative compared to the flashier Chevies. One thing that might have made them stodgy was that they were built to be very practical cars, and kind of boxy. Consumer Reports once quipped that a 1961 or 1962 Galaxie had more interior room than a same-year Cadillac!
I think my favorite of the bunch would be a '63 Galaxie. I like the concave grille and slight forward thrust of the front-end, and just the overall shape in general.
It's no coincidence the same McNamara was one of the architects of the Vietnam War, his theories on waging war by numbers and body counts might have worked if there was a way of getting reliable numbers, there wasn't.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
But OTHER THAN THAT.....
I did like the '65 Mustang though with the 260/289 block--that was a vast improvement. I guess that small block came out in 63?
We used to destroy Fords in street racing in the 60s. They didn't have a prayer.
One of the things I noticed on my return to the states in the mid 80's (after most of a decade away) was that I saw a LOT more 60's Galaxies and Mustangs around than I did 70's Fords. My theory was that the 70's Fords had all rusted away or broken into tiny
worthless(more worthless) pieces.I was never a Ford guy.... I was GM all the way, unless that guy showed up to date my sister in a Healy 3000 MKII.... THAT rocked my world!
Mustang really saved their butt.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
Nah. I was on Route 98 and thought taht was the speed limit sign...
Had just got off the freeway, and was waiting for a red light in the left turn lane. On the cross street up ahead, a real, genuine Tucker passed by.I had seen them before in museums, but never driving on the street. Unfortunately, being stuck at a light, and in the wrong lane, I wasn't able to follow it. There are some reproductions of the Tucker being made, using a tube steel frames, fiberglas bodies and Caddy Northstar motors. This one looked possibly to be original, since it had 'period' wheels on it. If if see it again, I'll check it out for sure.
Maybe as a sign of the times or just because it was a weekday...I was surprised how un-crowded it was for opening day.
I also saw a cool G-Wagen. It was a 280GE, a really old one. Ugly factory wheels, soft top, and it was kind of beat up. Now there's an SUV I wouldn't kick out of my garage.
I also saw an early 70s Torino like in the movie 'Gran Torino'.
Edit: Email hidden.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I don't think I've ever seen one of these with the digital display though. In fact, most of the '80-82 T-birds I see these days seem to be the bottom trim levels. I guess those designer packages and upper trim levels weren't as popular on these cars as they were on the '77-79. Then again, there was a recession going on, and I imagine many people struggled just to get the base model.
Looking back, though, I think those T-birds are just awful. There was one for sale fairly recently at Carlisle, and I remember sitting in it. It was a base model, and it just seemed like a cheap compact trying to pose. I think part of the problem might have been its Fairmont underpinnings showing through all too well. While the Fairmont was a decent car for the time, it never let you forget that it was a compact.
By the same token, a Monte Carlo or Regal is really just a fluffed up Malibu, and a Cordoba/Mirada is just a fancy Volare, but I think those cars were just more substantial to begin with. Yes, even the Volare!
While I don't like the '80-82 T-bird, for some reason, I DO like the same vintage Cougar XR-7. And I also like the '81-82 Granada and the regular Cougars.
When the '83 T-bird and Cougar came out, I didn't like them. I think it was mainly because the style was kind of a shock, and took time to get used to. Also, my Dad, as well as my Granddad and one of my uncles always hated Fords, so I think some of that was still influencing me at the time! :P Looking back, though, it's amazing how well those designs have aged. Not only that, but they were much-improved in interiors and build quality. The 4-speed automatics were still troublesome, and the 232 V-6 engines tended to blow head gaskets around 90,000 miles. But back then, I think people still expected cars to break by 90K, so it wasn't the badge of shame it became in later years, when Tauruses and Windstalls were still doing it.
Personally, I still prefer the '80-83 Cordoba/Mirada and GM's downsized personal luxury coupes, but mainly because I find them to be much more roomy and comfortable inside. One thing that tends to bug me about Ford cars from that era is the huge driveshaft and transmission hump. It just eats up too much room, makes for narrower footwells, and makes the car feel tighter inside than competing Mopar or GM models.
Also, one day walking out to the parking lot after work, I saw this black and yellow kit-car looking thing that I didn't recognize. It had no identification on the front, other than a badge I didn't recognize. Sort of a green blobby diamond inserted in a circle. Then I walked around back and saw it was a Lotus Esprit! I was a bit embarrassed, thinking at first that it was just some Fiero-based kit-car!
I was in Japan in 1981-82 and I remember seeing my first malaise T-Bird while visiting an American Military Base there... It was bright red with a white landau top. Apparently, you could only get them with six cylinder engines. The trim was misaligned on one side.
I was so angry and embarrassed! That car was the saddest excuse for a 'luxury' car that I had ever seen. It seemed so Soviet-Russian-quality-absolutely-cheapest-design-possible-slathered-in-cheap-br- ight-red-like-an-aging-whore-BAD!
This sorry excuse for an automobile-THIS- this THING was a THUNDERBIRD???!
I longed for 1967, when American cars ruled the highways, and a Thunderbird was a queen among cars.
I hated Ford Motor Company for embarrassing me in front of my Japanese friends and it took me years to forgive them.