I agree with the OP.  My dad had a 60 and 64.  He was fresh out of engineering school in 60 and flush with money and a bright future ahead.  The T-bird was the ideal car for him.  Lots of power good styling and yet could take a double date or hit the highway for a 6 hour trip.

Nothing after detuned-oil-crisis 1972 model anything is thought of or considered when pondering a "classic model" car.  And the 70's colors and fat-curves?   And 80's cars?

Names don't mean anything anymore?

You're joking right even though it's very recent history there's plenty of evidence that says otherwise?!

Hell let's take for example ford since we're talking about them

They remained the Taurus to 500

Absolute sales disaster with over 100k complaints along with a shit transmission

You CANNOT betray a name especially with an American car, if you do, you will get fucked, HARD, and probably will lose tens of millions of dollars as a result

You won't see the likes of say Porsche putting a 911 name on a suv for instance

I had one of those. Slightly modified. Great driving car

It was a poor attempt at capturing the retro market.

But as usual, they went with the bean counters and platform shared from the Lincoln LS, which is already shared with the Jaguar s type.

I agree they should have used the panther platform and gone all out on the design.

Choke yourself.

Landau tops forever.

That's when Ford and Jaguar was the same company. Ford had the brilliant idea to turn a Jaguar into a Thunderbird and it flopped.  I remember guys on the Mustang forums were ready to cash in their Cobra's and Mustang's for a retro T-Bird they could build up using Cobra engines/trans and possibly rears.   Boy, was there a lot of disappointment when everyone found out it was just another Jag.
This was highly anticipated, and if they had just followed social media they could have figured out what path to take.  But someone had it in their head that it would have only been bought by blue hairs so it didn't need performance options.

Sometimes it seems that the marketing folks at Ford just have their heads up their ass all the time.

If I could do an easy swap with a 2002 T-Bird and a Coyote/10 speed or manual from a salvage car, I would have been all over it.

Bingo.
Part of the brief retro craze.
Then they fucked it up by not following it thru properly.

with the New Beetle, Retro cars were all the rage.

but both ford and chevy missed the mark bigly by over pricing them. the thunderbird and chevy SSR.

both over priced, both total flops.

but it wasn't as bad as that chrysler prowler, that shit was a fuckin disaster.

The LS sucked hard

I have worked on those crude overpriced pieces of shit and I have a coworker that worked on them from since they were brand-new until they stop making them

They were so terribly thought out, stupid expensive parts, a disaster for a engine cooling management system

I would have rather bought a god-forsaken Mercedes of the same vintage than that damn accursed shit

One of the worst platforms of the 2000s for sure

Yes this. My father had one for two decades in running but poor condition. It just wasn't worth restoring. Since then I've been in restored 64's and while the nostalgia hit was nice I remember thinking "there's still no way I'd pay what it would take to purchase or restore one". Something about them is boring.

The convertible model is nice but still not worth the price.

Thing is, the PT cruiser was the only one of the retro crop that really had any success.
Prowler, SSR and HHR were pretty much flops.

Although I suspect the SSR will be a bit of a collectors item.

One of my neighbors had a new bird (and a Model T). The T bird was such an underwhelming car.

That was the biggest problem, and seems like I recall someone saying you had to sign a contract that you wouldn’t sell it to a private party. Could be wrong on that.

You must be high as a kite, I could rub my dick on those fenders it's so pretty

I kinda like the way the XLR looks. Be badass to build a profoundly fast (like 800hp+) example of one

All I know is that I got a blowjob from a stripper in the parking lot of a Las Vegas apartment complex in one.

That was rad.

Saw that same stripper going by a different name on a modeling show a couple of years after that.  Lately she popped up in a commercial for neck cream or some shit.

WTF, why no picture???

Ford Probe was supposed to be the new Mustang.

The Prowler was probably one of the most egregious examples of parts bin engineering out there.

Why bother with pictures of that confused POS?

The FWD "mustang" became the ford probe.

I think it's one of the best examples of the 2000's retro styling craze. It's just that everything else was a total dumpster fire of epic disappointing proportions.

The Corvette was tinkering with mid engine designs since the early 70's. They even wanted to throw a Wankel in it.

Quite a scary thought isn't it? Don't get me wrong the probe and it's Mazda sister is a interesting car

But Mustang it is not

I sure do miss my 1987 Turbocoupe.  Wish I could find another one in as good a shape.  Lost her to hurricane Wilma in 2005. =(

Nice. I always liked those. One of the guys I used to street race with had a 5 speed Super Coupe. That thing was an impressive sleeper with a pulley/chip/exhaust on it for what it was back in the mid/late 90s.

Yeah... no.

The thing about cars, especially those outside the appliance segments, is that they are very emotionally driven purchases.

Old people don't necessarily like to buy the vehicles that target old people. The Corvette isn't officially marketed to old guys, but who buys them? Old people. Who is probably the single largest demographic that buys new production Miatas? Old people. Scion was an entire brand marketed to young people. But who actually bought all those cars outside the tC and the FR-S?  Old people.

Old people that just want to be comfortable buy luxury vehicles from Cadillac, Lincoln, Lexus, and Mercedes. Old people that want to "recapture their youth" don't want anything even remotely targeted to old people.

The 11th gen T-Bird was very clearly a car marketed to old people. It wasn't designed to be cool car or a fun car or a nice car in general. It was designed to be Memberberries on wheels. That had a polarizing effect on the target demographic while pretty much entirely excluding any other market demographic. THAT is the mistake.

Today, it actually is possible to successfully market and sell a two door land yacht. I know this beyond a doubt because there is a company actually selling big ass, two door land yachts, and they're a hit.

Click To View Spoiler

Those cars aren't marketed to old guys, but old guys are, once again, a huge percentage of the people actually doing the buying. That's the secret to success.

I have a 55. It was a nice car when it came out. Ford could have really made a home run with the retro model. A Mustang 5.0 and available 5 speed manual along with styling changes would have resulted in a much different story.

Galaxie 500?
Torino?

They do with the GT. But the GT is not a high production number car. It's a cool car, but at $500k it's definitely priced out of the same ballpark as the Corvette. Ford calls it a supercar, and I guess it can technically be considered one. It has a claimed top speed of over 200mph and 0-60 time of just over 3 seconds (Corvette has a claimed 0-60 time of just UNDER 3 seconds); so definitely within supercar specs.

And while I don't think it's apples to oranges, it is Gala apples to Red Delicious apples.

Nah.  It was a great platform.  

Are you talking about the degas bottle with the cooling system and how they always cracked?  I blame that more of Ford not investing anything in the platform after launch, which is really why the LS withered and died.  The actual platform was solid, though.

The only thing i really hated on them was lower front ball joints.  

I think part of the problem is that the Thunderbird has never really had an identity. It started as a roadster and slowly bloated over the years until Ford lanced it like the ugly boil it had become and it was turned into a neutered pony car in the early 90’s.

It has never consistently and directly competed with a GM car (a la Mustang vs Camaro) and therefore was never refined to the point of excellence. Ford has always attempted to simultaneously make it a niche car while also blatantly following the most obvious sizing and styling trends.

If you ask 10 people to describe a Corvette or Mustang you’re likely to get 10 pretty similar responses. Those cars are iconic. They have identity. Stylistically they’ve been (mostly) very consistent. Have the same 10 people describe a T-bird. You’re bound to get 10 different descriptions.

The last generation thunderbird attempted to draw on nostalgia that really never existed. Sure there were some women who recall the platinum blonde hair of Suzanne Summers peeking through a porthole window in American Graffiti. Otherwise what comes to mind when you think Thunderbird? The hand-me-down car that your friend drove in high school because his mom upgraded to a Taurus.

I'd love to see a new Galaxie 500 Skyliner Retractable Hardtop. I'd probably not love to see the price though.

The very first Thunderbirds . . . 1955, '56 and '57 . . . were the best.

My grandpa drove his 55 to the dealership to check them out when they first hit the lot.
The owner walked out,checked my grandpas out and said he would do a straight trade.
My grandpa laughed and said I bet you would.

^^^This.

Bring back the modern iteration of the SuperCoupe.  Blown 5.0, IRS, stick.  I'll buy one, heck two...one for the wife unit as well.

It would look more like a Fiesta than the original.

That's somewhat the thing though, they could have done it correctly

The more affordable versions of personal luxury cars that could perhaps be instead called personal premium cars were targeted towards younger people in there mid-thirties to mid-forties

What's the death of the horsepower race in the 60s to 1970 personal luxury car sales skyrocketed by a lot.

Hundreds of thousands of them we're being bought up by lots of people, Thunderbird cougar Cutlass Toronado Grand Prix the list goes on

Take example the 77 to 79 Thunderbird, despite being a short 3-year run they sold 950000 of them

No I did not accidentally add another zero, and also you have to take into account that there was only around 175 million Americans at the time

They were EVERYWHERE

Upper middle class families that really cared about image in the late 70s were buying them hand overfist

After work Mom and Dad would get a babysitter and take their Thunderbird to the Disco for a Night of music booze drugs and sex.

But things definitely we're changing by the early eighties and none of the American brands were able to manage the transition correctly and so most of them lost their hold to BMW, Audi or even some of then Rising Star Japanese brands

If they really did try hard to recapture that 70s feel and era like my personal suggestion in the Op it would have been far more successful

But in the end it would have been too late anyway, the coffin was already buried for that class of vehicle

I remember that period well.  

The failure of the T Bird was key even in a long-standing argument/discussion with a BIL.

I have a BIL that was a ford performance engineer in that era.

I had proposed for years, since the mid 1990s, that there was a market for a peak muscle car era look that was timeless, futuristic, nostalgic, all at the same time, and there was a market for, say,
A car that looked exactly like a 1967 Corvette, Mach I Mustang, 70 Chevelle, or 69 Dodge Charger,
But with current, best interior, handling,performance, etc.


When the 02-05 Flop of a Thunderbird appeared, it was a flop and he pointed out how wrong I was.
I argued a 250hp/240 lb ft two seater based on looks from earlier than the universal appeal era was the problem, not the concept.
That it lacked performance, and was not even the right sort of Thunderbird most living, driving, fans of Ford Thunderbird thought of as one.
 I proposed that, had it been say, a 350hp LS1 powered two seater that looked like a 1967 Corvette offered by Chevy and classes the ‘Vette Classic, it would have been from the universal appeal era, had appropriate performance, and met the expectations of living, driving, buying fans of Corvettes and been a success.

The 2005 Ford GT he also used as an example of the failure of my theory.  I countered that while the look and performance were there, a limited production vehicle with an MSRP three times that of a new Corvette was a built in self limiting factor and not a valid comparison.  If it had been the same look, but with a less exotic drivetrain and design features, and an MSRP comparable to the Corvette, and a standard production model vs limited, it would have been a hugely successful Corvette competitor attractive to Ford fans, the same people buying corvettes, and even appeal to younger affluent buyers with no old guy car stigma.

The 04-06 GTO was also used as an example of my failed theory.  Despite a good price, performance, and rock solid name/history it obviously looked nothing like a car from the appropriate era / GTO.

Finally, a few years later, a very retro looking Challenger and retro-ish facelift of the 2010 Mustang gave some evidence in my favor.

But the T-Bird remains the prime example and first of designed on wrong era, underpowered, not the T-Bird fans would have been expecting, etc.

For sure.

First generation T bird was the only good one.  Every one after that was an abortion.

Lol

They sold and built 53166 1st Gen Thunderbirds which had a 3-year run

The 77 to 79 models also had a three-year run but they sold 950000 of them

The Second generation Thunderbird even sold 198000 which was almost double the first gen

I can't help but giggle at some of you guys when it comes to your logic

They were giant over sized crap, regardless of how many they sold to suckers.

2 seater car

kids started moving back in with their parents and grandparents were expected to run the kids around too.


t birds and monte carlos for the man who wants to hear his music in peace

Well what you think Thunderbird should be and what it actually is/was are definitely two different things

That's another problem that happened in the downsizing of the personal luxury cars, they killed the back seat space

People still wanted the size of the mid 70s models but just wanted them to be more modern in technology and also be more fuel efficient

Ford was actually pretty good at keeping the size large while keeping weight down but they fucked up the styling on the early 80s models, luckily for them they pretty much nailed it the immediate generation afterwards for 1984 but they threw that generation up in other ways as well.

Hindsight is always 20/20 though

It would probably be a Turbocoupe. Depending on the actual size of the platform it could share the drivetrain of the SHO (3.5l EB AWD) or the Fusion Sport (2.7l EB AWD).

There was also 40 million more people in the US by 1977 so I’d hope they would sell an extra car or two.