The Ford Thunderbird. The name has a music that is just so evocative of all that is good and pure about the golden era of the American automobile.
While for many people the name will conjure up images of the cars first, they were actually named after an ancient North American mythical creature that created both thunder with a clap of its wings, and indeed, most of the physical world. That soaring eagle imagery is surely another reason that the Thunderbird resonates so deeply with both American culture and the landscape.
Despite the legacy of freeway congestion and smog that was dawning in the ’60s, the dream of endless freedom of the highway still burned strong — and Ford created a car that remains today the best way to live that dream — in the expansive comfort of a convertible Thunderbird.
Looking back, it’s obvious that Ford was right to move away from the original T-Bird concept of an American sports car to add two more seats and luxury touches, like an electric folding hood, electric windows, door locks, seats, mirrors, and multiple ashtrays.
The long straight highways in both the mind’s eye and reality didn’t need European sports car handling. They needed a lazy V8, silky suspension, and a decent expanse of metal around the cockpit so that the occupants didn’t feel too insignificant in the vastness of the Midwestern deserts.
The car that we see here is the fourth generation of the T-Bird that so perfectly crystalises all the elements of the American road trip. It is no accident that the producers of the film Thelma & Louise settled on the ’66 T-Bird as both the symbolic and actual vehicle for the pair’s ultimate romantic escape into (spoiler alert) oblivion.
1966 FORD THUNDERBIRD 390 CONVERTIBLE
Engine Ford FE series 90-degree V8 390
Capacity 6.4-litre
Bore/Stroke 102.87mm/96.01mm
Valves Single overhead camshaft on 90-degree
Compression 10.5:1
315bhp (235kW) at 4600rpm
