The 1977 Thunderbird listed at $5,063 and demand exploded. How much less expensive? The base MSRP of the 1976 Thunderbird was $7,790. 1977 was the year that Ford did the same thing by exiting the “near luxury” market and repurposing the great Thunderbird name on a far less expensive personal coupe. In the 1930’s, Packard put its prestigious name on some less expensive cars – and sold a bunch of them. Fords of that era also tended to have fairly decent levels of fit and finish and involved far less drama in the service department than some competitive cars. There were better-than-average interior materials and a freeway ride that took a backseat to nobody in isolating the driver from the cruel world. There was also the good stuff, with bodies that no longer suffered from the really bad rust problems and had some of the most substantial-sounding door slams in the industry. Floaty suspensions, dead, unresponsive steering and pack-trailing engineering were part of the Ford Package of the mid 1970’s. Everyone knows the worse part – the emission-strangled engines that were better at drinking fuel than turning it into power and the horridly ungainly 5 mph bumpers that were all function and not at all about form. Under the skin it was a more-or-less average product of the Ford Motor Company of its time, for better or worse. Nor has anyone ever argued that this was a great car. The basket-handle roof was a hat-tip to the 1955 Fairlane Crown Victoria, and rooflines had been creeping in this direction for several years. Nobody has ever argued that the 1977-79 Thunderbird was a breakthrough design. The personal luxury derivative, however, became the recipient of the great Thunderbird name. The regular Gran Torino, in a kind of truth-in-advertising moment, became the LTD II. In 1977, Ford gave the Gran Torino/Elite a much-needed makeover. Whether the car or the name (and probably both) it just never caught on the way cars like the Cutlass Supreme, the Monte Carlo, the Grand Prix or even the upstart Chrysler Cordoba managed to do. One class down, the Ford Elite suffered the same kind of problem. The Thunderbird retained a certain cache’, but the cars themselves became less and less special, until it had more-or-less become a budget Continental Mark IV with dumbed-down styling and less standard equipment.įord’s personal coupe wilderness was not just about the Thunderbird of the mid-1970s. This became a tougher market once the Continental Mark III came along midway through the 1968 model year, and lots of those upper-income buyers chose the Lincoln-branded personal coupe over the one sold at Ford dealers. Part of the secret was that Thunderbirds had always been fairly expensive cars. The Thunderbird name always punched above its weight, and was responsible for more than a few Ford-branded automobiles sharing garage space with much more expensive and exclusive vehicles. The Thunderbird name was affixed to cars that were “Unique in all the world”, cars that were almost universally desired. But Ford had ownersip of one name that was head and shoulders above the rest – Thunderbird. And as popular as the Chevelle and Malibu might have been, it was the Monte Carlo that hit the big time when it came time to sell a “personal coupe” in the 1970’s.įord had done pretty well naming cars, with Mustangs, Mavericks, LTDs and even Torinos. The F-85 was never anywhere near as popular as the Cutlass. We DO know how it worked out after those guys changed their names to Cary Grant and John Wayne. People all over the world might have grown up loving movies made by guys named Archibald Leach or Marion Morrison, but we will never know. What’s in a name? A lot – which is something that everyone knows. So let’s do something about that, shall we? But enthusiasm to write about it? That was kind of an unusual thing too, and I just never got there. I stopped to shoot this one because even in 2011 it was becoming unusual to see these cars in this kind of condition. I am nearing the end of photos from 2011 that I have never written about. Other times there were constraints on my enthusiasm. Sometimes there were constraints on my time. My ability to find cars outstripped my ability to write about them. It seemed that every day I stopped to shoot photos of cars and trucks that were potential subjects to grace these pages, which were the the joy and delight of millions. I was in the thrall of my new avocation, which was that thing called (then, as now) Curbside Classic.
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