(first posted 10/4/2016) One of the bigger introductions from a domestic brand for 1987 was the revamped Ford Thunderbird. The T-Bird received a thorough restyle along with significantly reworked suspension components–in essence a thorough overhaul of an existing platform. How well did Ford do? Have a look at Car and Driver’s extended preview drive report from October 1987.
The quarter billion that FoMoCo spent on the Thunderbird refresh was significant, equating to $550 million in today’s dollars. While far short of the cost of a new platform, this was still a significant expenditure for a car at the late stage of its life cycle.
One of the challenges with re-skinning an aerodynamic design is freshening the looks without adding clutter. While the 1987 T-Bird was fresh and attractive, the style was not shockingly different. To the average U.S. consumer, the looks were probably not noticeable as a major refresh. Audi’s designs today face the same problem: even enthusiasts can miss the newest models…
Much attention was lavished on the Thunderbird Turbo. Ford was working hard to position the blown Bird as a halo model to attract the attention of discerning shoppers eyeing imports. The electronically controlled shock absorber system was a sophisticated approach to balancing ride and handling. Engineers deserve credit for trying to wring more out of the humble Fox platform than most people would have dreamed possible…
So what was the sum of all these changes? Was the Thunderbird now truly world class? Sadly, no. The Turbo 4-cylinder was still too rough for a car like the Thunderbird. The fancy suspension was not applied to the “ordinary” T-Birds. The new looks weren’t quite new enough. Ford was undoubtedly disappointed in the final sales tally for 1987: 128,135 were sold, down 22% from 1986 (companion Cougar XR-7 sold 104,526, down 23%). Still, the sales were enough to put the T-Bird at the top of the Personal Luxury category (Cougar XR-7 was 3rd behind the evergreen Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme). However, the category itself was a big part of the problem–buyers were abandoning larger coupes in search of smaller, nimbler cars, often with 4-doors. The market was looking for a new kind of thunder, while Ford was still offering a really nice version of the old.
Thanks, GN.
Interesting to compare this test with R&T’s test I uploaded a while back:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-reviews/vintage-road-tests-honda-prelude-2-0-si-ford-thunderbird-turbo/
The “C/D jury” may have been out at the time, but I still look at those photos and think what a good-looking car these Turbo Coupes were. The ’83-’86 T-birds were attractive, but awkward in places–this refresh fixes all the awkwardness, at least to my eye. Still on the list of cars I’d like to own someday, especially considering how well the 2.3 responds to upgrades.
+1. Beautiful then and still so now. Although isn’t the front overhang loooooooong!
Ford was asking a lot of it’s personal luxury buyer. A lot of development had gone into the Lima four to get it up to a claimed 190hp. But look at the interior, monochromatic sure and euro influenced sure. But not even slightly luxurious. Then when the car starts up here is a big unbalance shafted four to shake and moan. And heavier than a Mustang GT and hence could break into the 7s to 60. So not even that fast despite all the shifting required. The turbo coupe finally got the four speed auto for 1987 and that might have worked better but for the detuning to 150hp.
Thunderbirds in the eighties were so confused. Volumes had really dried up since the late 70s heyday. And a Mustang SVO repackaged with a bigger back seat was not going to get the buyers back.
Considering this was considered luxury in the 80s, the Tbird’s interior isn’t far off
Ooo, Eurospec not N/A E30. What are the clues? Metric Speedo, no instant mpg meter, no A/C, no cruise, no leather or leatherette.
So this is actually a little misrepresentative of a US spec E30.
Even still, Tbird has all of that, minus the MPG gauge – although ironically that center clock seen in the tester is in fact the seldom ordered trip minder with MPG and DTE read outs, but was nixed from the option list for production 1987s – and leather too was available. Luxury interiors of the 80s are vastly different from what we are now accustomed to today, it was very much based on smart design and minimalism. Another example would be the Audi 5000.
Even BMW probably would describe the interior you show as purposeful rather than luxurious. Put yourself in the place of the many that bought the relaxed edition from 10 years before. Do they really want a stretched Mustang?
Considering the sales of the still relaxed 80-82 Tbirds and the sales of the 87, yes, they did. Fashion and priorities change, and much of that change, besides favoring that more purposeful European sense of luxury, was also the shift away from personal luxury coupes.
Plus let’s not kid ourselves, the 77 Thunderbird’s interior was a LTD II (itself unchanged from the 1972 Torino) interior through and through, just with a few Tbird logos embroidered here and there, far removed from the luxury that preceded it in 67.
It’s not European spec. The combination of all-red rear turn signals and a metric speedometer indicate It’s a Canadian car, and analogous to an American version in performance.
The E30 is euro spec.
I really liked these, though perhaps not quite as well as the first version.
The great tragedy of these cars is that the HO 5.0 out of the Mustang and the 5 speed stick never made it into the car. That would have been a sweet, sweet combination – a Mustang GT for grownups. I was in a position where I could very well have bought one, but could never make myself settle for that rough (albeit fast) turbo 4, nor was I prepared to settle for the AOD transmission.
With you on all points. The demographic for mid-size “personal luxury” cars desperately wanted a V-8 in these cars, and generally had little interest in a turbo 4. Ford’s marketing efforts for the turbo never really broke through the bias against it.
I think America had simply been through too many diesels, turbo lags, cylinder deactivation that didn’t work, etc., to convince the T-Bird’s demographic that this technology was a good idea. Realistically, the execution did not turn out be one of Ford’s better ideas, and a simple V-8 remained popular in the T-Bird when Ford was willing to offer one.
Yes, I am now reminded of how well the Mark VIII LSC did at the time. I could see an automatic-only policy in the Lincoln, but a hot T-Bird might have been just the ticket, especially with the car (in a way, at least) being raced in NASCAR-Land.
That and four doors!
I believe CAFE was cited as why that couldn’t happen. FoMoCo might’ve been OK with a bigger-ticket Lincoln dipping into guzzler territory, but not the T-Bird at that price point.
But that era of T-Bird and the Grand Prix were my go-to rent cars in the late 1980s.
These were really nice cars. Anyone who didn’t buy one missed the boat in my opinion.
Agree. I think the criticisms regarding their lack of refinement are misguided. These were solid, honest cars that offered great performance for their price and era.
In my eyes it was unfortunate Ford seemed to overreact to the unrefined accusations because the car they replaced it with (MN12) was overcomplicated and overpriced – in retrospect, putting that money into updating the Fox-bird would have been better value.
So does every internal combustion engine these days have to run like an electric motor, otherwise it’s “rough”? I beg to differ; I have had, and been around many 2.3L Fords, hardly what I would call rough. You want rough? Try a 224/3.7L Mercury Marine 4 cylinder. No balance shafts. A 2.3L Ford is downright silky in comparison.
It’s not that every engine has to be silky smooth, but for the times, serial “personal luxury” coupe buyers such as myself found any four cylinder engine a turn-off, especially at a stop light. We were used to V-8s, and sometimes V-6 engines, and wanted easy off the line torque, a smooth idle, a little kick when downshifting on the freeway, and a quiet burble engine note. Ford may have made a valiant effort with its turbo Ford, but Thunderbird buyers generally were not interested.
The 2.3 Turbo was (subjectively, mind you, just my own assessment) rough when viewed in the context of a “Personal Luxury Coupe”. Even though the T-Bird at this point (at least in Turbo Coupe guise) was trying to compete with the likes of the newly poshed-up 300ZX, the overall feel and sound of the 2.3 came across as a bit unrefined, especially to folks who might have thought a Thunderbird should glide effortlessly in a hush of smooth power.
I’m only basing this on a nearly 30 year old brush with a Turbo Coupe owned by a friend. I was driving a Chrysler Conquest at the time, which to my senses felt and sounded a whole lot more sophisticated and smooth than the T-Bird. Mind you, the Thunderbird was a bigger car overall, and still trying to adhere to some vestige of the old personal luxury profile with a bit of cayenne pepper to spice it up. My friend’s car did everything it purported to, and he loved it, but from a “Personal Luxury” perspective it fell short even in comparison to some contemporary cars that weren’t marketed in that class.
We’re talking cars, not boats. Having owned an ’83 Turbo Coupe, I can attest to the fact that the 2.3 was obnoxiously rough, rude and noisy above 4000 rpm. Yes, very few Pintos and Rangers were ever revved above that, so it doesn’t feel bad in those settings. But this was supposed to be a world class performance coupe, and the NVH that set in very abruptly was just not ok. It got real old.
That’s cool Paul. My dad had an ’83 Turbo Coupe back in the day and I have fond memories of it. I would have been about 10 years old at the time and it was the quickest car that I had experienced. IIRC it had a light on the instrument cluster that would come on when the turbo kicked in which I thought was especially cool. I would love to have it today but he ended up selling it for a 300zx.
I had many T-Birds during this generation (and the next), and as to these, I had one of each; an ’88 Thunderbird LX with the fuel injected 5.0L V8, and an ’88 Turbo Coupe with the 5 speed stick, and can attest to the NVH of which Paul speaks above. The Turbo Coupe was a blast to drive, but when taking a trip to the mountains or anywhere for that matter, we always jumped in the LX 5.0. (The featured ’87s were no different from the ’88s).
The Turbo Coupe handled better, and made for a nice sporty personal luxury coupe to take on the windy-twisties, but the 5.0L, with all of the options, leather, yada yada, was a MUCH better road car. And with the sequential port fuel injected 5.0L V8, it was plenty fast enough. It could take an ’85 carbureted Mustang GT of lesser weight in the stoplight drag every day of the week.
Ford’s problem was the same as with the Taurus: Lots of money invested in other good stuff, but with engines, it was still variations on old themes & nothing state of the art enough to impress import buyers. The injected 302, as mentioned, was their only serious contender in a segment under pressure from CAFE rules.
The blown Lima was a good try, but refinement matters in cars with luxury pretentions, so no room for Boy Racer or “Hoon” antics (I like that Aussie term).
It just has to be as smooth as the competition’s fours at the time. Standards are a lot higher now than they were in 1987. If, say, Toyota could build a smoother four, why couldn’t Ford?
I’d like to have this test car…..but…..with a 271 hp Mustang GT 302 engine in place of the shaky, noisy, no-bottom-end Pinto 4 cylinder engine.
I test drove a Nissan Maxima and a Turbo T-Bird back-to-back in the day. The Ford was fast and I loved its looks. The Maxima was clearly more refined, particularly in body structure, suspension and NVH. The Ford’s struts let out a loud clunk on every road irregularity, something the Maxima didn’t do. I really wanted to see Ford join world class cars, then. That was going to take a while longer.
Good contrast: While Ford was repeating their Falcon evolution by improvising upon a budget platform (the Fox this time), Nissan’s Bluebird/Maxima, though in RWD form not much newer, was an upmarket model all along, with a less pedestrian chassis & engine.
A weakness with the hybrid Fox strut was limited suspension travel, too easy to top out over humps.
I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if Ford had saved their money and just done a refresh of the front fascia and used the savings to bring out the MN12 platform a year earlier and/or with a better interior? Heck, while they were at it, they could’ve made a version of the MN12 for the Mustang and given it IRS!
Having owned a first year MN 12 T-Bird, I’ll vouch that the LX grade interior was actually very nice for the times. I recall one quibble with part of the upper dash – can’t recall it in detail. Otherwise, very nice and contemporary. It was usually pretty well regarded by both the press and buyers.
Over time the interior was decontented, and by the mid ’90s was a fairly dull monochromatic theme with Ford’s approach to putting some modern curves and lines in it.
Thanks for the insight, Dave. I remember reading an article years ago (can’t recall where unfortunately) that essentially said that Ford ran out of money when it came time to design the interior for the MN-12, and was basing my comment on that. I haven’t been in one in decades, and admittedly don’t have much of a recollection of it.
As I recall it was the deletion of dual front airbags (would have been the first Ford equipped with them in 1989) in favor of automatic shoulder belts. Supposedly the “sunglasses tray” on the top of the passenger side dash was originally to house the passenger bag, but due to the change in plan the tray was substituted into the existing dash design, and was eventually smoothed over for the 1991 model year. Dual airbags would officially appear for the 94 redesign.
The interior design itself was in the can at least as early as 1987, previewed on the Lincoln Vignale show car. The production 1989 interior was almost completely identical to this, right down to the switches
I pulled a brochure photo of the ’89 LX interior. This is what we had except it was all dark navy blue. Very sharp, and the interior showed almost no wear in the 10 years and 100k miles we owned it. Granted, we were a young couple with no kids until the last two years, and it spent a lot of time in home and work garages.
My quibble was with the top upper edge of the main instrument panel in front of the driver. It was hard plastic, and the finish edges were not the greatest. Otherwise, an attractive and entertaining interior.
My other main quibble was with those motorized seatbelts. They did almost kill me a few times – typically when reaching through the window to start the car (did my own oil changes). I’d forget the damn shoulder belt was hooked up, and bam, I looked stupid and strangled.
Interesting comment on the airbags. I can sort of see that in the steering wheel design. That is a big hub for no airbag.
Canadian cars had regular 3 point belts. We rented a 89 Cougar in Florida once and couldn’t believe how stupid the power shoulder belts were—you still had to buckle the lap belt manually.
Although the overall design was rather attractive, the worst aspect of the early MN-12 interiors was the very cheap, very thin, and very brittle plastic used on the dashboard and doors. The “fairly dull monochromatic” theme in the 1994-1997 T-Bird and Cougar at least notably improved the materials quality.
I’d agree on the upper dash, but the bulk of the door card was some kind of formed soft touch material that held up very well in my car. The fabric insert was good quality. The plastic panel around the window switches looks a bit hard, but again, part of the standard was its competition at the time. I saw a lot of early Taurus influence in this interior, and found it a pretty acceptable place to spend time during our epic young couple cross country drives.
We played with the idea of upgrading to a ’90s T-Bird V-8, but felt the interiors were disappointing enough to slow us down. We were moving so slow that we kept reproducing and traded on a ’99 Chrysler Town and Country instead.
Memory may be playing tricks on me, as I distinctly recall the door panels in a family member’s ’90 T-Bird LX being of the same hard plastic as the upper dash. I see quite a few older MN-12s still plugging along here in NM, so hopefully I can check this out for sure in the near future.
I do remember, quite clearly, thinking the interior shown in the brochure image you posted above was extremely attractive. The woodtone accents really made the design pop to my then-teenaged eyes, especially that band across the steering wheel hub. I agree that the newer, more “organic” interior (which was very mid-90s Ford) lacked character.
That woodtone, if I recall correctly, was actually metal painted like wood – with a sort of stainless color edging. It gave the “wood” a higher quality look and feel, and harks back to a time when manufacturers would paint doorsills and dashboards to look like wood. That ended for most cars in the early 1950’s. It was a neat retro touch that kept things from feeling so “plasticky.”
The switchplates on the door panels are hard plastic, and rather flimsy so those may be what you’re thinking of. The rest of the door panels are actually quite nice soft touch top to bottom with the same upholstery as the seating surfaces used for inserts. The whole drivers binnacle assembly on the dash is hard plastic though, and consequently I find those initial interiors much nicer from the passenger seat than the driver, opposite from the later 94s with the wraparound theme, which are somewhat clostrophobic in any seat but driver.
The MN12 was a complete boondoggle from the start. Not only did it miss every target placed for it (price, weight, cost, MPG, sales etc) , it was a career ender for those associated with it. Not only that, but this expensive platform was only used to underpin 2 models (3 if you count the Mark VIII), so it was never amortized.
The least they could have done was make the IRS adaptable to the Panthers.
The high-end Panthers like the Town Car could have really used it to boost it’s luxury credentials. They could have kept a low-end police-taxi version with a solid axle if need be.
My recollection is that Ford kept exploring other applications for the MN12 rear suspension — I am 98 percent sure I recall a Motor Trend news item about a Mustang mule so equipped — and deciding it was too heavy and too expensive to be worthwhile.
The 99-04 Mustang Cobra used a semi-adaptation of it, utilizing the same aluminum differential housing from the Mark VIII and overall similar geometry, just compacted to fit the existing Fox floorpan. Ironically flashing forward to today curb weights between a V8 MN12 and the IRS S550 Mustang are very close.
Ford spent “quarter Billion” to re-do this car, and it was only on sale for 2 years. What a waste. They made the plans when 2 doors were selling, but like the Cutlass, went out of style fairly quick.
The MN-12 was expensive and heavy, trying too hard to out-do BMW, when it could have just kept the Fox chassis a few more years. Worked for the Stang. While Enthusiasts loved MN’s, they lost money, were rental fodder, discounted heavily, and off the market by ’97.
If they put the cash spent on winning “Car of the Year” for T-Bird, instead into continuously improving Taurus*, it could have not ended up as “fleet queen” and kept up with Camry/Accord.
*Same with Tempo
The Tempo was hampered by being a spinoff of the Erika Escort platform. It wasn’t going to be an Accord rival without a complete redesign — which Ford eventually did, giving us the Mk1 Mondeo/Contour/Mystique. So, you see how that worked out.
A good-looking car. Hertz rented the Super Coupe with the supercharged V6 for several years in Southern California. Every time they had one, I took it.
Of all the T-Birds I owned or drove from 1983 through 1997, my one regret is that was the only T-Bird drive-train I never got to experience, The Super Coupe.
While my ’97 Grand Prix GTP had a supercharged 3.8L V6, with FWD, they could only boost it so much. The T-Bird’s supercharged 3.8L V6 had WAY better HP & Torque numbers than the Grand Prix’s, but sadly, my ’94 Bird was a 4.6, and my ’97 Bird was a normally aspirated Essex motor, and thus not much faster than my old ’83 T-Bird with the same engine, albeit carbureted.
There, between this post and the post above, I think I got all of my beloved ‘birds mentioned here. LOL ;o)
My wife and I bought a 1985 Turbo Coupe not long after we were married; it replaced the Nissan 300ZX that she had been driving. I didn’t think that particular T-bird interior looked or felt cheap. To me, at least, the car looked good, drove well and the front seats felt both supportive and comfortable on long trips. The worst part of the car was the turbo four; I don’t remember the roughness so much as the pronounced turbo lag. You had to learn to deal with this, especially when passing on two lane roads. One needed to anticipate the openings in traffic, boot the gas pedal, and then wait a couple of seconds for the turbo to spool up. In my opinion the Thunderbird would have been a much more enjoyable car with the 5.0 out of the Mustang GT, especially considering that by then Ford had moved on from the carburetor and gone to fuel injection.
I remember when Ford popped that rounder more modern dashboard in these things. Talk about trying hard, I had so much respect for Ford in the 80s. One thing that bothered me though was Ford’s stubbornness in pairing the Turbo exterior and suspension with the 5.0L. It was like with the Fox Mustang where it took them forever to do the GT and only then did the sales really take off. They would have had more luck with the Bird if they had done a 5.0L GT version early on. Still it was a fantastic and very successful car.
One thing that drove me nuts with these cars was that only the turbo coupes in these years offered the floor shifter which meant you were stuck with the rude crude laggy turbo 4. The base and LX always had column mounted shifters(was a floor shift even available on base and LX cars?) That was one of several things I liked better with the G-body cars like my 1987 base Cutlass supreme coupe which has bucket seats/floor shift and a full gauge cluster, another thing the non Turbo coupe T-Birds lacked. That was a shame because an LX V8 would make a nice setup with the SFI 302 even though it only made 150 horses in these years.
The MN12’s fixed this issue with a floor shifter clearly offered on LX models along with the Super coupes. Too bad it took until the early 90’s to offer the V8 again as the V6’s were more trouble prone.
My 1988 Thunderbird LX 5.0L had the floor mounted shifter IIRC (it’s been a while). I seem to remember resting my hand on the shift knob (as I always do) and using the button to downshift from 4th (OD) to 3rd (Drive with OD locked out), as I do now in my Mustang (only now it’s 5th down to 4th, respectively).
The individual buckets and floor shifter were optional in the base and LX, but rarely ordered. They were of course, standard in the Turbo Coupe and Sport.
The neat analog gauges were exclusive to the Turbo Coupe, save for the ’88 Sport, which had basically the same cluster, save for a 6,000 RPM tach. However many well appointed cars had the optional digital gauges with complete instrumentation.
Yeah, I had the digital cluster in my ’88 LX 5.0, power leather seats on both sides, and basically every option they come with. The only thing I found in the owners manual that my car didn’t have was the thing that remembers 2 or 3 drivers’ seat settings. It was listed in the manual, but I could never find the darned control for it. Every other option was on that car. My stepson had a 5.0 Sport ‘Bird, and his gauges looked very similar to his mom’s Turbo-Coupe, without the boost gauge of course. It was cool having 3 ’88 T-Birds in front of the house back then. ;o)
The 20th anniversary Cougar had the seat memory standard, I think it was actually the sole model and package it could be obtained. It was on the door switchplate below the lock switch
The ’87 T-birds weathered Ford’s ‘aero refresh’ at least as well as everything else. Not one car came out better looking with the googly eye composite headlights and blobby front clips, but some fared better than others. The F-series and Bronco in particular were ugged up pretty badly. Still, Id have preferred a ‘4-eye’ T-bird with the 302 and a 5 spd swapped in from a Mustang if that’s the route I had to go. But in reality, if I were buying in ’87 Id have probably chosen either a Daytona Shelby Z or the LeBaron GTC coupe…with the Turbo II and manual either way.
AFAIR Ford deliberately kept the 302 HO out of these to protect Mustang GT sales.
CAFE may have played a part as well. In the late 80s, one of the Ford fanboi mags did a V8 swap in one of these.
I imagine it would have also posed an existential threat to the Mark VII, which had fragile enough sales without having a near identical cousin share the same highly regarded H.O. powertrain too.
That’s how I recall it as well. Although that didn’t really make sense since all four Fox sporty-coupes (Mustang, T-Bird, Cougar and Mark) had pretty distinct looks and trim levels.
I’ve always been very skeptical about adjustable shock absorbers. Maybe in recent years they’ve reached a point of technological evolution to be worthwhile, but in the ’80s and ’90s, they mostly seemed like an expensive gimmick.
Good handling with a decent ride, as Lotus often demonstrated during their consulting days, depends heavily on getting the right balance of spring, damping, and bushing rates — they don’t have to be rock hard, but they have to be properly matched to each other and to the tires. Dual-mode or three-mode shocks just make it that much harder to achieve that balance. If the damping is matched to the spring rates in one mode, softening the shocks is going to be a recipe for float and jitter, and stiffening them is going to make the ride stiffer without buying you anything handling-wise except maybe psychologically.
The stopping distances for the Turbo Coupe are surprisingly mediocre. The hardware is all there, there’s no shortage of rubber, and the ABS obviates premature lockup problems, so 194 feet 70 to 0 is longish. Very curious.
I’ve always loved the Aero Birds; more specifically, the ’87-88’s, which really ramped up the Euro styling. I’ve always been a fan of that nose job.
I remember reading an article about it’s successor–the MN12–something like “BMW Aspirations on a Mustang Budget”. That was the reality that Ford was always faced with……they didn’t want to cut into Lincoln sales, nor did they want to cut into Mustang sales. This was the exact problem that the Thunderbird had faced, in general. It was a Ford, so it had to be affordable enough for enough people to own, but somewhere, the Thunderbird line had lost it’s “aspirational car” status; basically starting in the late 60’s, when it became a junior Lincoln. When it lost it’s sportiness, it started the downward slide, in my opinion, and the Turbo T-Birds and 5.0 Birds weren’t enough to win people back.
As an owner of a Thunderbird Super Coupe, I’ve been both wowed and frustrated by them. They’re great when they work, but when they break down (head gaskets, etc) or get electrical gremlins or no start conditions, they are the absolute worst cars to work on. The JBL Premium Sound system is ridiculously complicated. Spark plug changes are a 4-6 hour job (the driver’s side involves going under the car to get at two of them, unless you take off the intercooler/ power steering/ lower intercooler tube), and I had to make a hard decision on mine just a few days ago–sell it for parts, or fix it up and dump a crapload of money into it. I chose the former. The reality is that these cars (unless in original, low mileage condition) aren’t worth much, and the much easier and fun thing about them is to modify them to go faster, so finding non-modded, low mileage examples are getting to be more and more rare as the years go on. And such is the Thunderbird’s legacy, as well……if the cars kept their value more, less of them would hit the wreckers.
Something that I think is a sin of both the Aero Birds and MN12’s is that they have no critical defining era flaws. They had flaws, but nothing bad enough to make them endemic of a certain era. They’re not enough of anything to really be true collectors cars, and in the article, they subsequetly nailed it about predicting its future collectability. They’re modern enough that they handle and drive well, but for example, the jump from 50’s cars to mid 60’s cars in terms of performance and handling, are light years apart from each other, and the 50’s cars at least have a defining character flaw that people either love or hate about them, as characteristic of some part of automotive history. As a result, there are many diehards that strive to keep those cars around and fix them up, because they stand out in some way.
The aero craze was something that the Aero Birds helped usher in, but after many years, cars started looking so much alike that there wasn’t any real defining characteristic of their particular existence. I feel the same way about the homogenous styling of all the super aerodynamic shapes coming out of the modern design studios from car makers…..aside from the specialty cars and sports cars/ Pony cars, there’s nothing generationally inspiring enough about them to save them from the crusher in 20 years. They’re just transportation; you drive them until they wear out, and then send ’em to the scrapyard because nobody gives a damn about them.
In my opinion, the ’87 T-Bird restyle was too much [dislike the tail panel], in other words “change for the sake of change”. And why did they bother with just a 2 year run, the all new MN-12’s coming? Mainly since I liked the 83-86 version a lot, back then.
I also agree that the MN-12 Birds kind of fell into obscurity due to what became common styling. Mustangs kept character traits, and are popular collector cars, while 90’s T-Bird became a “Taurus 2 door” mainly sold to rental fleets.
I bought mine new off the showroom floor and I loved it (for a time). Ultimatley though, that Turbo 4 just didn’t hold up. It’s OK though, as memory serves, I gladly traded it’s short life span for the fun I had with it while it was still running. :>)
I currently own an “87 Turbo Coupe. I will simply say this…it is the most wonderful car to drive I have ever owned. And I have had my share of performance cars. On top of that it really looks good. As a side note, the “87 Thunderbird remains to this day the fastest car in NASCAR history!
What Ford should’ve tried to do is adapt the Taurus SHO 3.0 L V6 to the T-Bird. That was a sweet engine. With a manual, they could’ve created a real driver’s car. That could’ve been an engine carried forward to the ’89 models as well.
I owned a white base 1987 T-Bird with the standard 3.8 L V6 and 120 horsepower. Bought it in 1996 and kept it for five years. It was definitely not a fast car, not even a quick one, but then I’m usually in no hurry when I drive. If memory serves, it would do 0-60 in something like 13 seconds, top speed was around 100 mph (tried out on German autobahn). That kind of performance was more than good enough for me. More importantly, though, the car was very well put together, had a very solid feel to it, and never let me down, not once. I found the ‘Bird quite stylish and supremely comfortable. Even this base model had automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, power driver’s seat, ice-cold AC, power door locks, power-operated outside rearview mirrors, cruise control, tilt steering wheel, a fine stereo system with cassette player and few minor goodies on top of that. The blue interior was very tastefully done and the cloth seats never gave me a sweaty backside or an aching back, even on extended trips. I sold the car to a friend in 2001 because I needed four-door (a ’95 Buick Park Avenue) and he got 10 more years of faithful service out of it before inadvertently rear-ending another car. He subsequently sold “my” T-Bird to a collector who rebuilt the damaged front end and is apparently very happy with the car today. In summary, my ’87 Thunderbird was attractive, solid, dependable, and even relatively economical to own and operate here in Germany where I live.