1963 ford thunderbird4/5/2024 Available for 19, the fiberglass cover over the rear seats was meant to evoke the original two-seat T-Bird. The highlight of my fling with the 61-63 T-Bird came when we were on vacation in NY, and I saw a red Sports Roadster in the flesh for the first time (there were none in Iowa City). I guess the public didn’t quite agree with me, because the Square Bird outsold the Bullet Bird, right through its last year. They impressed me on some level, the interior, mainly, but I though their front ends looked like a hideous creature from the depths of the ocean. My feelings for Ford’s late fifties styling has been well documented, and that extended to the 1958 – 1960 “Square Bird”, regardless of how revolutionary a car it was. Was 1961 Ford’s finest hour, at least for a very long time to come? In my book, yes. The American Dream has never been a static affair. In my dream driveway, the T-Bird was replaced by an ever changing palette of GM’s finest. My brief childhood love affair with Ford was mostly over, especially after one too many vacation trips jammed into our black stripper ’62 Fairlane. Mark of Excellence with its holy trinity of 1963 Riviera, Grand Prix and Corvette Sting Ray. The squared-off, fussy 1964 T-Bird confirmed my defection to the Church of St. Just three years later, both the stunning 1961-1963 “Bullet Bird” and Kennedy were gone. Yes, in the fall of 1960, Ford was building my dream. Only in America could one could realistically aspire to own a car that actually looked like a Dream Car in a car show, one that would glamorously jet you away from the humdrum of ordinary life, if not exactly rocket you to the moon. Seeing fifty ’61 Thunderbird convertibles in Kennedy’s Inaugural Parade only cemented the image. What more was there to aspire to then this? (first posted ) What exactly is the American Dream? Was it easier to answer that question fifty years ago? If you were seven years old, and had just arrived from Austria at the same time the 1961 Thunderbird first appeared, the answer is definitely yes.
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