It’s no secret that by the mid-1960s, most car magazines had long since decided that the Ford Thunderbird wasn’t their kind of car. In February 1969, however, Car Life test a two-door Thunderbird Landau with the newly standard 429 and — wonder of wonders — a handling package. Did this give the “Glamour Bird” back the sporty-car credentials shed by previous generations of four-seater Thunderbirds? Not exactly. Read on …
As the title suggests, this test was one of three personal luxury car road tests in the February 1969 Car Life, bannered as “3 Personal/Luxury Cars That Handle.” (The other two were the 1969 Buick Riviera and the Pontiac Grand Prix.) For the Thunderbird to be included at all in such a comparison was quite an achievement: While the ‘Bird was always a front-runner in the personal luxury league, “handling” had really only been part of its repertoire in the “Shipping & …” sense.
Since 1967, however, there had been a heavy-duty suspension on the options list, for $27.99, and sometime in 1968, the two-door ‘Bird had been lowered a half-inch and gotten somewhat firmer underpinnings even in standard form. For 1969, it also got more rubber: 8.55-15 tires were now standard, with 215R-15 radials (also introduced sometime in 1968) optional at extra cost. These were at least promising signs from an enthusiast perspective.
For 1969, the Thunderbird still had its signature sequential taillights, but the previous full-width taillights were replaced with separate units / Mecum Auctions
Regarding the CL headline, mechanically speaking, the 1969 Thunderbird WAS a smaller Mark III (or the Mark III was a bigger Thunderbird, if you want to look at it that way), although their identities hadn’t yet converged the way they would in the ’70s. But what was the Glamour Bird’s identity in 1969?
Car Life began:
A SPORTS CAR DRIVER took the test Thunderbird home one night, and returned with a reaction neither he nor we expected: As a car, the Thunderbird wasn’t his cup of tea.
As a home away from home . . . “It’s an extension of my living room. No, it’s better than my living room. The chairs are more comfortable, the air conditioning is quieter, even the stereo is better than mine.”
Ford doesn’t come right out and say so, but that may be what the Thunderbird designers had in mind. The car competes in the personal car field, which means styling and convenience options are more important than performance. Ford carries the idea to a logical conclusion: Enough performance to keep the Thunderbird owner ahead of his neighbor in the Fairlane, and every piece of convenience that occurs to an army of inventive designers.
As a five-passenger living room, the Thunderbird has several impressive features. The seats are close to the best offered in a domestic car. They’re firmer than most, a good point; they are shaped to fit the human body, which doesn’t always happen, and the adjustment range, up and down, back and forth, and seatback angle, is nearly infinite.
The rugs and upholstery are elegant. The interior decorators have done their work well, and with restraint. Storage space is more than adequate. The trunk (attic?) is vast, and there are three, yes three, little closets in the living room. Sort of a hand locker atop the console, and a wall safe between the console and the dashboard, and the usual glove box in front of the hand chair.
A front bench seat had become available on the Thunderbird in 1968, and it was standard for 1969, with Flight Bucket seats and console now a $64.77 option. There’s a school of thought that a Thunderbird without buckets and center console (which had been an essential part of the interior concept since 1958) just wasn’t a Thunderbird, but the bench was now more popular, even on two-door models.
Full instrumentation was still standard, bucket seats and console were optional — as were this car’s SelectAire conditioner with automatic climate control / Bring a Trailer
This car doesn’t have the optional Brougham Interior, which included plusher trim and more woodgrain accents / Bring a Trailer
CL‘s test car was a two-door Landau, which was by far the bestselling variant for 1969, accounting for about 56 percent of production. The 1969 Thunderbird brochure extolled the Landau’s “elegant vinyl roof and brilliant ‘S’ bars” as well as its trendy wide sail panels.
The two-door Thunderbird was roughly intermediate size: 206.9 inches long on a 114.7-inch wheelbase; 1969 two-doors were only 52.3 inches high / Mecum Auctions
Simulated landau irons (which Ford called “‘S’ bars”) and a vinyl top were standard on the Thunderbird Landau; this color was called Ivy Gold / Mecum Auctions
Although the brochure claimed this roof treatment “preserves the traditional privacy of rear seat passengers,” it contributed to the Landau’s terrible visibility, creating rear blind spots big enough to hide one of the Navy’s new Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Car Life editors complained:
The view isn’t just miserable, it’s nonexistent. The Thunderbird is rounded off at the corners. The right front fender slopes away behind the bulge in the hood, and the rear fenders and trunk are below the line of sight out the rear window. The car’s formal roofline has eliminated the rear quarter windows. At home, having the neighbors hidden from sight is fine. On the freeway, it’s not.
Not mentioned in the text is my least-favorite feature of ’60s Thunderbirds: the curved, lounge-type wraparound rear seat This left rear passengers with essentially no comfortable seating position, and if you intended to use the newly standard rear seat belts, sprawling sideways wasn’t a great option either.
1969 Ford Thunderbird Landau with Ivy Gold vinyl trim / Bring a Trailer
Outward visibility wasn’t the CL editors’ only complaint about the practical drawbacks of the styling:
The roof is narrower than the body, and the windows slant in. (Designers call this “tumble home.”) The driver who climbs into the car in the rain will find that the windows fog over. If he opens the window a bit, the window opening is directly above his shoulder, and the rain ruins the press of his suit.
The editors had some complaints about the minor controls as well, and they weren’t thrilled about the automatic parking brake release or the array of warning lights and buzzers, many of which (like the low fuel light and the buzzer that sounds if the driver’s door opens with the headlights on) have since become universal, but which Car Life resented as an implied insult to the driver’s intelligence.
The 1969 grille was simplified from the fussier-looking ’68, still with concealed headlamps / Mecum Auctions
Ford’s new 429 cu. in. (7,027 cc) V-8 had become optional for 1968, replacing the earlier FE-series 428, offering a respectable 360 gross horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque. The 429, which became standard midway through the 1968 model year, didn’t make the Thunderbird significantly faster than the 428, but it was better for emissions, able to get by — for now — without the earlier Thermactor air injection system. The 429 provided respectable snap even with the standard 2.80 axle: 0 to 60 mph in under 10 seconds, with a best quarter mile time of 16.75 seconds at 85.66 mph. It only got 10.1 mpg, however, on premium fuel.
The 429-4V engine became standard on the Thunderbird in January 1968 / Bring a Trailer
Power front disc brakes had been standard on the Thunderbird since 1965, providing very respectable stopping power for a car this size. Despite the proportioning valve, which limited line pressure to the rear drums, rear lockup was still a problem, which Car Life felt was a product of excessive brake boost. (The Kelsey-Hayes Sure-Track rear anti-lock braking system would become optional on the Thunderbird and Mark III later in the model year, priced at $194.31 on the Thunderbird.) However, the brakes faded only a little in repeated hard stops, a real achievement for a car of this weight.
Although the color photos are from two different auction listings, they’re of the same Light Gold two-door Landau / Bring a Trailer
Incidentally, the weights in the spec panel above can’t be right: I think the 4,543 lb figure was the manufacturer’s base curb weight without options, and if it were correct, the test weight (with crew and equipment) couldn’t be 4,600 lb. I unfortunately don’t have the 1968 or 1969 AMA specifications, but it’s unlikely that the car’s actual curb weight was less than about 4,700 lb.
There’s some disagreement about exactly when the two-door Thunderbird’s suspension was revised. The 1969 brochure refers to the two-door’s “new lowered suspension that increases stability, improves handling,” but according to John Katz, Ford parts lists indicate that the new setup was adopted in 1968. I wonder if it was a mid-year ’68 change, like the standardization of the 429 engine. The heavy-duty suspension fitted to the test car had been on the options list since 1967.
This Thunderbird has the $57.08 deluxe wheel covers rather than the styled steel wheels of the Car Life test car — I think the latter’s Mustang vibe seemed a bit incongruous on the Landau / Bring a Trailer
These changes didn’t make the Thunderbird into a Barracuda Formula S, but handling was nonetheless competent for a car like this:
At speed in a fast, sweeping turn, our two-door Thunderbird leaned, and more and more steering lock was needed to keep the front end on the road. In a tighter turn, there wasn’t enough lock to do this, and the car wouldn’t make it unless the driver eased off on the gas.
Thunderbird buyers aren’t ever likely to notice. The car feels secure during all normal driving, with warning squeals coming from the tires long before they lose their grip on the road. On a comparison basis, we’d say the Riviera has the edge in stability, and in parking, but that the two-door Thunderbird has a trace more adhesion during fast cornering.
This was followed by a rather defensive remark that “The suspension changes for both cars this year are supposed to do exactly what they’ve done, so neither factory should take offense at this judgment.” Did someone scold the editorial staff about the dangers of alienating advertisers in the wake of the Car and Driver Opel Kadett hatchet job, which was published some months before this article was written?
Glamour Bird rear suspension had three links and a Panhard rod, much like contemporary full-size Ford sedans / Bring a Trailer
The editors had a more serious complaint about the Thunderbird’s cruise control, the $97.21 “Highway-Pilot speed control” option, whose throttle control chain had a tendency to snag on a hose bracket when accelerating, preventing the throttle from closing. “This happened twice during acceleration tests,” CL said. “No harm done either time, but somebody—the factory, the owner or dealers—should move the bracket, change the chain, or something.”
Car Life wrapped up their review on an equivocal note:
The Thunderbird gets faint praise for its comfort, quietness and easy gait. Faint praise not because these virtues won’t be welcomed by Thunderbird buyers, but because the Thunderbird, even with the firmer suspension, isn’t an enthusiast’s car. Even if we wouldn’t want to live there, the Thunderbird is a nice place to visit.
My feelings about this car are more mixed. In some respects, it was a useful step forward from its predecessors: It still wasn’t an enthusiast’s car, true, but with the 429 and heavy-duty suspension, it was significantly more competent than the wallowing Flair Bird, and it had better seats and more legible instruments. On the other hand, the Thunderbird was always about style first and foremost, and the 1969 changes did nothing to improve the Glamour Bird’s weird jumble of conflicting design themes. This ’69 was better to drive than the Flair Bird or Bullet Bird, but it’s definitely not the one I’d rather look at.
The ’69 taillight treatment evokes the Flair Bird, but the ribbed center panel feels like an afterthought, and a step down from the previous full-width design / Bring a Trailer
Buyers also seemed ambivalent: The Glamour Bird had sold well at first, but by 1969, sales had slipped below 50,000 units for the first time since 1958, a little behind the Buick Riviera. The T-Bird outsold its new Mark III sibling, which was substantially more expensive, but the neoclassical Mark had a clearer idea of what it wanted to be, and it would soon be setting the pace for this duo and this class.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1967 Ford Thunderbird Landau – Am I Mellowing With Age? (by Aaron65)
Curbside Classic: 1967 Ford Thunderbird Landau Sedan – Are Four Doors Really Better Than Two? (by Brendan Saur)
Curbside Musings: 1967 Ford Thunderbird Landau Sedan – Dressed Like A Grownup (by Joseph Dennis)
Vintage Car And Driver Comparison: 1967 Ford Thunderbird And Cadillac Eldorado – A New Contender Enters The Personal Luxury Car Wars (by Rich Baron)
Curbside Classic: 1968 Thunderbird – Who Am I? Why Am I Here? (by J P Cavanaugh)
Vintage Comparison Test: 1969 Buick Riviera, Ford Thunderbird, Mercury Marauder X-100, Oldsmobile Toronado, Pontiac Grand Prix – The Personal Luxury Wars Heat Up (by GN)
Curbside Capsule: 1969 Ford Thunderbird (by Ed Stembridge)
Another excellent car review analysis Aaron. Thank you. Partially due to lower sales, and less visibility on the street, but this is the last Bird I genuinely considered distinctive. Along with the 1970 edition. They still had a unique image, and presence. Everything that came thereafter, was more popular, commonly seen, and less unique.
Like a number of domestic luxury cars from this era, I don’t find the exterior and interior design consistent-looking, when considered together. The pleated seats and door panels, combined with the cheap-looking woodgrain, and circular instrument cluster pods, lend a rather ordinary appearance to the inside. Pleating was often overdone, during the late ’60’s. As here. I feel a more linear dash design, and sophisticated-looking seat cover pattern/style, would have been significantly more flattering, and richer-looking. And more consistent with the dramatic exterior.
The hidden headlights, sequential taillights, dramatic styling, suicide doors, and relative low volume of these Birds, really aided their image, and uniqueness. Compared to those that followed.
OMG that awful steering wheel and gear indicator. Exactly the same as a Maverick. The best thing about ordering the optional cruise control was the nicer steering wheel it came with. Then again, maybe that was the point to get the customer to pony up for the option.
There’s a lot about this car that just doesn’t speak to me, or at least I’d mostly just not pay attention. But the proportions and “stance” do look just about perfect in the profile shot of the Mecum auction car.
When it is riding a bit low at all four corners, it has an added toughened/badass appearance. Riding lower, the lead photo of the nose shot, looks pretty good.
The wrap-around rear seat back looked cool, especially in the earlier models, but was obviously dumb from an ergonomic standpoint. But then looks were always paramount with the T-Bird.
I never really liked this generation, especially the 69, but I have to say in part because I never looked too hard at one nor have seen one in a option combination I like, but I like the white on white test car with the optional faux magnum 500 wheel covers quite a bit, and those taillights I never really cared for look handsome in the lead photo, they actually bring back the afterburner look in a more 70s shuttle craft sort of way, which as much as I like full width taillights the 67-68s definitely lacked.
Won’t make it into my dream car bucket list by a wide margin, but reading this article certainly puts it as a high point for the collective 67-71 generation, the 429 is a far superior architecture to the FE and unlike its bunkie beak 70 facelift it still has expressive styling even if it’s not my favorite to begin with.
New for MY69 was the Mercury Marauder X100 using the same unitized body on perimeter frame platform introduced on the full size Fords and Mercurys for MY65 and T-Birds for MY67. I bring the X100 up because Motor Trend, Car & Driver and Car Life all tested one and it would appear that two versions were made available to the press. One was a non air conditioned, bucket seat car with the standard suspension and a lower rear axle ratio. The other was an air conditioned one with a bench seat and optional competition suspension. Car Life tested the former and described the handling as “cumberson” but said it’s acceleration had almost “supercar status” with a 1/4 mile time of 15.17 seconds at 92.3 mph.
Car & Driver tested both versions and had this to say about the one with the optional competition suspension: “Marauder’s handling was a happy surprise. In recent years, riding in full-size American cars-including Mercurys with
their endless low-frequency bouncing on underdamped suspensions has been more like riding a life raft on the high seas than a car on the road. Not so with the Marauder. The shock absorber control is such that you hit a bump and feel it just once rather than going through the diminishing oscillations for half a block. You know there is a road under you because you can feel it and that’s very reassuring. You feel that if some object suddenly came into your path you might even have the courage to try evasive maneuvering rather than just slamming on the brakes and hoping for the best. And the ride is not too harsh. The wide Polyglas H70 x 15 tires let you know whenever you cross a tar strip, but they also stick like demons when you change directions. Of course the Marauder is very understeering in the FoMoCo tradition, but it’s extremely controllable in a wide range of situations-which is more than we can say for most of its competitors. With a list price of only $3I.I0, the competition suspension is probably the only real bargain on the order form.”
So a Marauder X-100 properly optioned could deliver very good acceleration and handling. It would follow that Ford could provide the same on a T-Bird given their common platform and the same options.
This model of Thunderbird is one of my favorites, but did designers really think that copying design styles from a hearse with Landau Bars was a good idea?
Hmmm. I saw a ’67-9 T-bird two days ago. It was on a flatbed semi-trailer, flattened to a 24″ height. Also saw a ’62 Galaxie 500 in the stack. Are salvage yards crushing old inventory, or was it some cars that lingered too long? Saw some newer vehicles in the mix, including a Chevy Silverado ‘OBS’ 2wd with both its front alloy wheels still mounted.
Interestingly enough my dad had a 69 marauder x100 at the same time his buddy had a 67 thunderbird. I was a kid so I don’t remember the motor in the thunderbird but I do remember it being surprisingly quick in keeping up with dad’s marauder but couldn’t go around a corner at the same pace without scraping the door handles on the pavement.
I thought these cars looked cool.
The author criticized the car as “round off at the corners. The right front fender slopes away behind the bulge in the hood and the rear fenders and trunk are below the line of sight out the rear window.” All this was presented as a criticism of the driver’s view out the car, which I can buy. However, in the squared off era in 1969, those designers could have been on to something, in making the car just a bit more aerodynamic in rounding off those edges.
Visibility was reduced out the rear side view due to the landau roof style, which may have in part inspired the opera windows that became more popular, briefly in the 70s.
The opera windows let in light. They did nothing to help with visibility. (unless for a back seat, passenger))
Nice looking car for sure. Prefer the “non “Landau”, coupe though.I think all the “4 doors”, were “Landau’s”. Can’t recall ever seeing one without the bars.
All four-doors were Landaus — the vinyl top helped to cover some awkwardness about the C-pillars and door shut lines with the four-door. You could still get a non-Landau two-door hardtop, but they were much less popular than the Landau version.
These cars were really rare in Canada. This is not my favourite generation of Thunderbird. The cars had become bloated and space efficiency was dreadful. That curved rear seat is a real head scratcher and the rear quarter visibility is just plain dangerous.
There is one incorrect detail that warrants correction. Disc brakes were not standard on ‘Birds in ’65; they were available, but as optional extras. Drums all-around were still the standard brakes in ’65. The Lincoln of that year, however, did go standard with disc brakes. It also revealed one issue that engineers didn’t grasp until they were forced to with a recall: The brake fluid formula they installed, which had been in use ever since brakes went hydraulic, could not handle the high temps of disc brakes, vaporizing in the lines and causing total brake failure (Ford did not follow GM’s lead with split-hydraulic brakes until ’67). The end result of that was the creation of a new brake fluid that could handle disc temps; that new formula became the DoT-3 standard.
Anyway, back to the main topic. Although it’s true that the T-Bird’s identity was in crisis, and said crisis made even more so with the clap-door variants introduced in ’67, I liked the clap-door models better than the coupes.
I don’t think that’s true. Check the brochure, dated August 1964: https://oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Ford_Thunderbird/1965-Ford-Thunderbird/1965-Ford-Thunderbird-Brochure/slides/1965_Ford_Thunderbird-18-19.html
Note: “Thunderbird Standard Equipment: Power Brakes: New Front Disc Brakes, Drum-Type Rear Brakes.”
I’ve never seen anything suggesting that front drum brakes were available on the Thunderbird in 1965 even as a delete option (unlike the Corvette), and Automotive Industries‘ manufacturer survey for 1965 indicates that 100 percent of 1965 Thunderbirds had front discs.
All 1965 Thunderbirds had front disc brakes as standard equipment. My Dad owned one so equipped.
Also noted in this 1965 commercial:
My dad bought a ’67 T-Bird that was a total disaster, blown head gaskets again and again. I thought it had the 390, but knowing his love of torque monsters, I would imagine it was the 428 instead. Regardless of engine choice, his cars always were “hopped up” with a cam, etc. He swore that the ’67 Bird would be his last Ford ever, but that wasn’t true. I absolutely hated the color, the “misty blue” as we kids called it in front of our parents, but when away from adults, it was “Weak ass blue”, and even my sister, known in the future for very bad color choices on her cars thought it was a bad choice. The rear seat was just weird. I spent a lot of time in the front and back seat of that last ‘Bird. Styling wise, I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it like the Lincoln below.
In ’69, dad would buy his last Ford product, a Lincoln Mark III, and he instantly regretted it, and two weeks later, he would trade his brother for his ’69 Caddy Sedan De Ville. I don’t think he had it long enough to get it worked on before he traded it. Both cars were basically the same awful “Avacado” color, with green interiors. My dad had the Caddy worked on, and it pulled like a locomotive, but got even worse mileage than it did stock, something like 7 MPG the way he drove it. I guess the problems my dad had with his 3 T-Birds turned me into the Fordaphobe I remain to this day. They are never on my list of possible vehicles, even though I don’t hate their styling like I used to from almost as long as I can remember. To me, they always seemed to mess up a basically decent looking design. Mopars looked the best to me in the mid sixties to early 70’s period, with GM close until ’73, when the Colonade horrors appeared, and at that point, GM styling began to lose it’s way, with the exception of the Camaro/Firebird. It took them until 2010 to ruin the Camaro’s looks. One of several reasons I bought a Challenger instead. And another Challenger after that. I never “got” the Mustang’s styling from day one.
For comparison, Car Life tested a 67 4 door Landau in the February issue. It had a 428 with a 3.00 to 1 rear axle ratio. Curb weight was 4590 lbs and the test weight was 5000 lbs indicating that the test weight of 4600 lbs for the 69 was an error. The 67 T-Bird did the quarter mile in 16.4 seconds with a speed of 82 mph at the end. This was less time than the 429 but a slower speed at the end indicating the 429 was making more power than the 428. This makes sense given the 429’s superior breathing ability at higher engine speeds.