All 13 generations of the Ford Thunderbird are on Autocade now.
I believe the first entry of the 13 that we put in was the boxy, Fox-platform 1980 generation, completed on August 17, 2009. The 1977–9 Thunderbird was added in 2011. A few more generations were added in the first few days of January 2014.
It took till tonight before the 1955 and 1958 generations were added, cars before my time. While Autocade focuses more on after 1970, we sometimes will go back with longer model lines to the very beginning, and something as classic as the Ford Thunderbird deserves it.
We’re shorter on print references for older models, which also delays their completion.
I had heard of the Ford Thunderbird as a boy through a Playart model of the 1967–9 generation, which was particularly tiny—unlike the real thing. As with so many cars, I became more aware of them in 1981, which might explain why I chose that one to enter into the original Autocade website first.
I gained two items that year that helped with my knowledge: my Standard 2 teacher, Mrs Graham, had gone to the US with her family and kept the Hertz Rent-a-Car brochure to give to me. The second was the 1979 number of Auto Katalog, which my friend Karl Urban gave me. His father had previously owned it. That was my first Auto Katalog and filled in a gap of what the previous Thunderbird looked like. Matchbox then released its 1957 Thunderbird as part of its 75 line-up. When the time the aero ’Bird came out for 1983, it was plain exciting. By then I was a regular car magazine reader.
The Chevrolet Corvette still needs doing, as do others like the Pontiac Grand Prix, which will happen. The original push was to fill in a lot of the mass-market gaps, with specialty cars to be added later. US models took longer because there are fewer references with capacity stated in cubic centimetres, and Auto Katalog was not always right.
For now, enjoy journeying through time with all the T’birds up.
Also check out Indie Auto’s write-up about the Thunderbird’s history from 1958 to 1976, which was incredibly insightful, and spurred me on to adding the first two generations tonight.
Jack Yan is founder and publisher of Autocade.