Meticulously maintained since the time of its restoration, it is offered with both tops, owner’s handbook, jack, and spare. The effort resulted in a Best of Show award at the Misselwood Concours d’Elegance at Endicott Estate in Massachusetts. Used 1955 Ford Thunderbird Stock 07581 in Los Angeles, CA at Beverly Hills Car Club, CAs premier pre-owned luxury car dealership. It is opulently equipped with options such as power steering, power brakes, Ford-O-Matic transmission, power windows, radio, MagicAire Heater, tinted safety glass, wire wheel covers, seat belts, and engine dress-up kit.Īfter having been sold new and spending its life in Texas, this Thunderbird was treated to an extensive concours-level restoration in 2013. It had a 102-inch wheelbase - more than a foot shorter than a 1955 Ford sedan - yet borrowed heavily from the many new styling touches adopted for the years. This Ford Thunderbird was built on February 28, 1955, in the iconic color combination of Thunderbird Blue with turquoise and white interior. The Thunderbird was a resounding sales success, garnering 3,500 orders on the day of its introduction and selling more than 16,000 examples in its first model year. The striking Ford convertible was nicely appointed with standard equipment, while myriad available options allowed the buyer to create a sporty yet sumptuous driving experience. He said he'd heard that there were as many as 8 catalogues that were saved, but Bob Tuthill, Jim Petrik, and I seem to be the only collectors who have them.Introduced at the 1954 Detroit Auto Show, Ford Motor Company dubbed its new two-place Thunderbird, a “Personal Car of Distinction.” Unlike Chevrolet’s new Corvette, the Thunderbird catered more to style and comfort than raw sports car performance. Later, I sold the page proofs to John Robinson for $50.
#Ford thunderbird 1955 registration
As I was negotiating with him for a $1,200 1934 Packard Custom Cars catalogue, he agreed to credit me $400 towards it for the second catalogue (I never really considered destroying it so that I would have the "only" one in captivity). These estimates do not include tax, title, registration fees, lien fees, or any other fees that may be imposed by a governmental agency in connection with the sale and financing of the vehicle. Once home, I phoned Bob Tuthill who'd never seen the piece. I was awed to own the world's supply of something. I bought both, and he threw in the page proofs, gratis. The man knew what he had, because he wanted $100 each for them.Īccording to him, Ford had ordered all copies destroyed, and these were the only ones saved. What's more, there were two of them, and two or three page proofs.
There could only be one piece that deserved the term, so I immediately went over to check it out. Armory where he'd come across a man who was selling what he claimed to be a rare Thunderbird catalogue.
One Sunday in the early '80s, I was at home when a local friend with no interest in cars, John Rison Jones, telephoned to say that he'd returned from an antiques show at the D.C. Somewhere along the way I heard a rumor that there was literature showing the car with the spear, but I never saw any. This motif was repeated on the '55 Ford passenger cars but was dropped from the T'bird when it went into production. When Ford announced its sensational Thunderbird in '54, the prototypes bore a chrome spear on its sides which began at the headlamp, swooped down through the front fender, started upwards, and continued horizontally through the door and fender to the rear. Read how Vinson explaned its acquisition and signifigance in his unpublished "Auto-biography":: All copies of this catalog were reportedly destroyed, making this item among the rarest in Vinson's collection. The chrome spear seen running along the side of the car in the catalog above was dropped from the design when it went into production. The cover of the 1955 Ford Thunrderbird catalog Taylor Vinson heard a rumor of the rare catalog but only confirmed its existence when he obtained two copies of it at an antiques show in the 1980s. The rarer of the two was thought to have been destroyed by the Ford Company when they modified the design of the car after producing the sales literature but prior to production of the car. The story of the 1955 Ford Thunderbird catalog is actually the story of two catalogs.
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