(originally posted 05/06/2014) You are totally forgiven if at first glance you think this is a 1968 Pontiac Grand Prix. Or worse, a 1967 Catalina. Thanks to a certain former General Motors executive, this Tin Indian doppelganger is actually the 1970 Ford Thunderbird.
The 1967-69 Ford Thunderbirds had decidedly left their youthful flair days behind, ditching the convertible and unibody construction for tomb-like isolation aided by separate body and frame construction. Although slathered with the latest in accessories, like the reintroduced sunroof that attempted to let the sunshine in, your typical sophisticated thirtysomethings of the Age of Aquarius were choosing their personal luxury elsewhere in more daring packaging.
That biggest challenge came in the form of Pontiac’s last Greatest Hit of the 1960s, the Great Grand Prix re-think (CC here). The grandiose G-Body, with its spectacularly long hood, was a runaway success and shifted the game of Personal Luxury away from big bruisers like the Toronado, Riviera and Thunderbird and down a size (and price bracket) to just above the mundane mid-sized sedan and coupe.
But true to Ford’s misstep patterns, it found itself stumbling upon a segment (Personal Luxury was accidentally a Studebaker Hawk creation, Pony Cars an outgrowth of sporty compacts like the Corvair Monza), and capitalizing on great initial success, only to allow product development to languish, and overdoing their entries in a given market to the point they’d wind up the complete opposites of what made them unique or desirable. After the Falcon and Fairlane got lost in the woods, it was the Thunderbird’s turn.
The four-door “Personal Luxury Sedan” was a bad enough misstep; adopting a series of Pontiac cues, brought to Ford courtesy of Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen, was an almost fatal blow. The “Bunkie Beak” was a watered down cue that looked straight out of the Pontiac studio. Although in hindsight, that “bird beak” truly captured the mythical bird aura of the Thunderbird, it couldn’t have come at a worse time to seem in any way unique.
In fact, the whole 1970 reskinning of the Thunderbird comes across as a proposal to keep the 1969 Grand Prix on the larger, swoopier B-Body shell, right down to the semi-fastback roofline that got progressively faster on GM B-Body coupes between 1965 and 1968. It is completely incongruous to the Broughamification of the T-bird that happened in 1967, and would return out of nowhere in 1972.
The second biggest nod to Bunkie’s old stomping grounds would be these delightful hockey stick tail lamps borrowed from contemporary Pontiacs. Which, well, in some ways could be interpreted as reversals of the original Edsel non wagon lenses, but we won’t get into a more complex game of “who’s cribbing who.”
At least underneath all of this brand identity confusion, the Thunderbird was a fine hustler once again. In a straight line. Not only was the 429 the standard engine by this point, the Thunderbird 429 used wedge heads, making these Thunderbirds perhaps the liveliest since the Lincoln 430 was stuffed under their hoods 10 years earlier.
Was it a complete failure? In some ways it put one of the biggest nails in the Thunderbird coffin, showing how much a fully unique product had lost its way in fifteen years. Then again, that’s a lifetime in the American Auto Industry. In an even shorter time window the Impala name went from show car, to special coupe and convertible to the sedan your dad regularly traded in.
As we know the ultimate bloat would set in with the cut-rate Mark IV edition Thunderbird, followed by the best-selling mass market Thunderbird. But what to make of these two forgotten years in the Bird Kingdom? For a car that rose like the Phoenix more times than a cat has lives, we can consider this one of those periods of Ash.
Related reading: 1971 Thunderbird Four-Door Landau, 1975 Thunderbird, 1976 Lincoln Continental Mark IV
Hi everybody,
Glad to see so many T-Bird fanboys.
I live in Germany and bought my 1970 T-Bird with bucket seats and a hard top a few months ago.
Everything is original, but the car got a repaint 12 years ago (same color repaint).
Hello Sindou,
I live in Germany, too. According to the numberplate, you live in Mönchengladbach, right?
I wonder what’s it like to drive a Yankee Tank on the streets in Germany. Do people beam up and give you the thumbs up or glare at you and tap their index fingers on the temples (especially Die Grüne members)?
(For the uninitiated in German gestures, tapping index finger on temple means ‘you’re nuts! Are you crazy!’)
I understand that this Thunderbird is roughly same in length and width as some delivery vans so if they can squeeze through the streets, you can do likewise.
However, I recalled a 1984 film, Oxford Blue, about an American student enrolling in the exchange programme at Oxford University. He brought a 1955 Thunderbird with him to England. His biggest blunder was asking for directions and accepting the offer to follow the the local Englishman in his Mini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1MSZGgwFkY&t=8m5s
He managed to extract his car from the narrow street but not without resorting to the destructive method.
I owned a 1970 ‘Bird sportback for for 15 years and about 70k miles. The car was metallic blue with a dark blue vinyl top. Beautiful cloth embroidered bucket seats in dark blue. The car was quite powerful when compared with most cars available in the 1970’s. I can remember racing my brother-in-law on I-95 in Miami. His SS 454 El Camino was no match for the ‘Bird from a 40mph roll-on. From a dead stop, the ‘Bird would just go up in smoke. Another friend had a SS 350 Camaro. Same deal from 40. The old girl would really go on top. But she felt like a fat lady in spike heels on an icy sidewalk over 100. Great old car, traded her for a Honda Goldwing in ’92. She still looked like new. Ran like it too. Wish I had her back.
I would have to say my favourite TBirds were the 64-66s, and the 74s. I built an AMT model of the 66 in a convertible model, I think I still have it downstairs somewhere. To me the 74s had an otherworldly presence, likely due to their largesse. I did like the shape of them. My buddy’s gramma had a 68 Bird that was nice also. I did NOT like the 70 models at all. Proportionally they seemed misshapen somehow.
My 2 cents.
My favorite T-Birds- 1955, 1961, 1964, 1967-1970-4 door, 1974-1976 big bird, 1984-1988. I especially like the suicide door cars. they are a really cool attempt at offering something different to the personal luxo market. yes the T-Birds in this article could easily pass for a GM product. Thats not a bad thing. In a world of look a like cars……………..A nice 4 door T-Bird is a breath of fresh air.
I have a 1/25 AMT scale model of a ’70 T-Bird, and at first painted it lime green and added all the ‘psychedelic’ period decals from the kit. Then painted over it plain blue later. Now wished I’d left it alone!
The “Bunkie Beak” morphed into a wider, centered, grille that stayed with the T-Birds into the Aero generation. So, in a way, ended up sort of successful. The MN12 Birds went back to full width grilles.
Beak and all , it looks cool. IMO
I’d love to see these pics unfiltered. The ’67-’72 or so Thunderbirds are my favorite gen. I guess that’s partly because Junkie XL used it on their cover for “Billy Club”. Not everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to music but still should give it props for giving me another reason to love the classics 🙂
I have recently bought an -71, 2-door landau from US and imported to Sweden.
I must say that she is like a dream.
i don´t know why but I have always liked the -70 and -71 years models.
The interior is awesome, and the front is divine.
I guess that my first plastic model i get as an christmas gift was an -70 ore -71, so maybe that have affected me.
Back in the day, I saw quite a few with the nose grill crunched in from cars backing into them while street parked. The Mercury Cougar also had a protruding nose.
1970 ford Thunderbird two door fastback 466 7.6 liter big block yes new engine put in built by me
Well I only love this 1970 bird original hardtop. Bagged, fully customized. Meet Lucille!
Anymore pic of this amazing ride
License plate is “TBYRD 70”; I take it someone beat him to “TBIRD 70″…
Or he is both a T-Bird aficionado, and a fan of ’60’s folk rock. 🙂
While I was never that attracted to these, I did find them a refreshingly stylish effort, for a company known for so many conservative upper tier products. Through the ’50’s, and ’60’s.
Maybe it’s me but imo it looks nothing like a ’67/68 Catalina!
” the Thunderbird 429 used wedge heads”
No, not exactly. The combustion chamber is more like the Big Block Chevy, having canted valves–the valve angles are tipped side-to-side, but also front-to-rear.
Going way back to 1963, Chevy went to Daytona with Dick Keinath’s brainchild, the canted-valve 427 “Mystery Motor”, setting records in qualifying. Chevy was forced to sell two Mystery Motors to Ford prior to the racing, due to NASCAR politics, to “prove” it was available and therefore legal to race.
The ’63 Mystery Motor evolved into the ’65 Mark IV 396 big-block; it took Ford several additional years to put their canted-valve engines under hoods of cars in the showroom. Ford’s canted-valve Boss 302, 351C/351M/400, and the 370/429/460 had their genesis in those two canted-valve Mystery Motors.
From a certain perspective, Ford’s Better Ideas often were invented by engineers cashing GM paychecks.