With European style and American comfort, convenience, and go, the Thunderbird proved well-nigh irresistible at just under $3000 without options.
Styling, conceived by Walker lieutenant Hershey and executed by a young Bill Boyer, couldn't have been better: simple and smooth yet clearly Ford, with rakish long-hood/short-deck proportions recalling the classic early-'40s Lincoln Continental.
And there was no plodding six-cylinder engine but a burly 292-cubic-inch Mercury V-8 delivering 193 bhp with stickshift or 198 bhp with optional self-shift Ford-O-Matic.īill Burnett supervised the engineering, which relied heavily on passenger-Ford components. Instead of an ill-fitting soft top was a snug convertible top, a detachable hardtop, or both. In place of creaking fiberglass and clumsy side curtains was a sturdy steel body with convenient roll-up windows. It rode the same wheelbase as the first-generation Corvette - 102 inches - but was far more luxurious and practical. Barely a month later, Ford was hard at work on the car that would ultimately be named for the god worshiped by America's Southwest Native Americans as the bringer of rain and prosperity.First displayed as a wood mock-up at the Detroit show in early 1954, the Thunderbird was a "personal" car, not a pure sports car. But in January 1953, GM threw down a gauntlet Ford couldn't ignore: the Chevrolet Corvette.
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