Big bird

Just imagine how cool Tony Mitchell, the owner of this 1972 Ford Thunderbird Landau coupe, must have looked back in 1964. Aged just 20, he was already driving his first American car - a 1957 Chevrolet. “Until then, I’d had Ford V8 Pilots,” remembers Tony, “but a mate had this ’57 Chevy sedan I fancied, so we just did a swap. Another mate had a Buick, we all lived in Maidstone and the cars came from the local American airbase at West Malling.

“After that, I had a Bonneville, but I don’t remember what year that Pontiac was. The gearbox went on it. In 1965 I got married and was driving a two-year-old Ford Zodiac.”

The years went by and around 1983 the Mitchells bought a 1979 Cadillac Seville. “That was my wife Sue’s car,” admits Tony. “She loved it – it was her baby – and she drove it a lot more than I did.”