Surprised by a ’Bird
Gene Hildebrand always considered a ’32 or ’34 Ford three-window coupe to be the car he really wanted, but then his mother called.
“It just wasn’t the type of car that I’m interested in,” he said of his 1956 Thunderbird. “ …That (Ford coupe) has always been my dream car, so basically, I would say I would’ve overlooked something like this.
“Now that I have it? Guess what. I won’t part with it.”
Hildebrand has it because his mother wanted him to have what had long been her dream car. Some two decades before she gave it to him in 2021, he said, she’d been speaking with a cousin who worked at a Thunderbird shop in Michigan and mentioned that a 1956 T-Bird with its continental kit, and in Peacock Blue, would be high on her list. If not specific enough already, it had to have a hardtop.
“He called her back within a month,” Hildebrand
