The new ’58 “Squarebird” was revolutionary in its development and production too. Even if nobody ever sat in the back of the T-Bird, it spoke of the possibility of being invited in and sharing the dream. Two seaters are intrinsically anti-social the province of sports car fanatics, boors, or the snooty upper crust. Or the kids to the game while Mommy was shopping in her Country Squire. The T Bird was there to take your impressed friends for steaks at the supper club after mai tais in the Polynesian-themed rec room of your new rancher. Its first taste of the personal-luxury market was juicy, and Ford was hooked.īut if the Thunderbird was to really fly, to truly be the winged aspiration of late-fifties suburban optimism, it needed to be a four-seater: a social vehicle. Lesson learned: Ford would forever leave Chevy to fight for a share of the marginal sports car market. It handily outsold the ‘Vette, by a huge margin too. Its ’55-‘57 incarnation as a two-seater may have had a sporty air but it was all pretense it was the antecedent to the long line of Mercedes SL soft-roadsters. The Thunderbird was born as a response to the ’53 Corvette and other sports cars. The industry has never been the same since. They foreshadowed the complete fragmentation of the modern marketplace, which previously had been dominated by full-sized cars. And like their respective buyers, they are each other’s polar opposites ying/yang, right brain/left brain, thrifty/exuberant, grounded/aspiring. They each carved out major new segments of the popular-priced market, on the opposite ends of the spectrum.
#1958 thunderbird series#
If this series of revolutionary vehicles had been of just two cars, the T-Bird and the VW would be it.
And after it crashed, and had its wings tacked onto a blinged-out Torino, a piece of the American dream died with it.
Perhaps it tried to fly too high, or the dream changed, because it soon fell back to earth. And for a dozen years or so, the Thunderbird soared, and revolutionized the industry by creating the attainable personal luxury genre. If Ol’ Henry could fulfill the once unthinkable dream of putting every American on wheels, then surely Hank II and his Whiz Kids could do the same with wings. Once the realm of the privileged few, luxury and exclusivity was now in the grasp of every hard working dreamer after all, the T Bird was still a Ford. The 1958 Thunderbird was the embodiment of the dream where everyday folks would fly above the humdrum of dull workaday existence and dowdy sedans. I could never tell them apart as a kid anyway.īehold the mythical winged dream machine. I hope the dissonance won’t upset the purists here. NB: The car pictured here is a 1959 Thunderbird, but my article is about its near identical 1958 predecessor, because of its historical significance.
0 kommentar(er)
