![]() Maybe because I was a foreigner, and had natural immunity? It still doesn’t, but then I hadn’t yet come down with Brougham fever. The huge C Pillar and that curve in the trailing upper edge of the door glass just didn’t work for me. I found the new roof style jarring and inharmonious in the fall of 1965 when I first saw it. It sold in very modest numbers then, but there’s more than ever nowadays.įor 1966, Ford offered the new “Town” hardtop as an alternative to the traditional hardtop, which didn’t exactly have much of a rear side window to start with. The previous effort was the Sports Roadster, essentially a fiberglass tonneau cover over the rear seats with built in headrests, available on the previous generation Bullet Bird. So Ford kept placating them in ways to make the Flair Bird look more like a two passenger car, like this 1966 Town Landau. Who needs rear side windows anyway? Despite the fact that switching to a four passenger format in 1958 was the key breakthrough for T Bird sales, Ford knew that many lovers of the ’55-’57 T Birds were never quite resigned to that fact. All-new Thunderbirds would arrive for 1967, but a convertible wouldn’t be among them.(first posted ) Brougham fever was virulent in 1966 at Ford, and the results speak for themselves. But sales retreated, too, by almost eight percent. Our restored featured car is powered by a 390 dressed up with a chromed air cleaner and valve covers.Įven with these changes, base prices declined a bit from 1965-by $74 in the case of the convertible, to $4879. The standard powertrain remained Ford’s trusty 390-cube V-8 and the Cruise-O-Matic three-speed automatic transmission, but thanks to a half-point compression boost, the base mill gained 15 horsepower to 315 bhp. A full-width taillight ensemble (with a central back-up lamp) replaced a twin-lamp design, but turn signals still blinked sequentially from the middle out, an attention-grabbing gimmick first seen in 1965.ġ0 Most-Expensive American Coupes of 1976 1966 Ford ThunderbirdĪ 428-cid V-8 good for 345 bhp joined the options list, providing T-Bird buyers with their first choice of engines since ’63. The blunt, slightly raised faux hood scoop of prior years became a subtler bulge with a vee’d front.īodysides were cleaned up with the deletion of the simulated scoops seen on the front fenders of the ’65s. A big Thunder–bird emblem spread its wings across the center of the grille. In its place were a larger eggcrate grille above a simpler blade-style bumper and body-color val- ance panel. David Ash, did away with the bumper/grille look of 1964-65. The frontal facelift, carried out under the direction of L. Nineteen sixty-six was the final year for the fourth-generation Thunderbird, so changes were few. Sports Roadsters also came with genuine wire wheels a set was ordered for this car to complete the look.įeline Madness! A Gallery of Mercury Cougar Ads 1966 Ford Thunderbird Just a handful are thought to have been ordered for the roughly 21,000 Thunderbird ragtops made from 1964 to ’66. Waning sales doomed the Sports Roadster before the fourth-generation ’Bird made its debut in 1964, but a restyled tonneau popped up as a $269 item on the accessory list. The concept first appeared on the Thunderbird Sports Roadster, which had been a full-fledged model in 1962 and ’63. Sloping headrest fairings trailed back from the front seats over the removable tonneau, which, when in place, covered the curved, loungelike back seat. With a nod to the T-Bird’s roots as a two-seater, the car was equipped with a very rare accessory fiberglass tonneau. More classic Thunderbird fun 1966 Ford Thunderbird ![]() Ford made 5049 Thunderbird convertibles for 1966, but precious few were like this. The car’s current owner, John Petras, of Lincolnshire, Illinois, purchased it from a Ford dealership in Columbia, South Carolina, where the dealer had bought the ’Bird new for his wife. More Collectible Automobile Photo Features 1966 Ford Thunderbird Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the 1966 T-Bird convertible featured on these pages was intended to please a lady. In the decade or so since its 1955 introduction, the Ford Thunderbird came to attract a solid following from female motorists. Note: The following story was excerpted from the December 2005 issue of Collectible Automobile magazine.
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