More From The 2026 Greenwood Car Show

It isn't often I look at a car and have no idea what it is. This is a rare and very cool Brazilian Volkswagen SP2. Made around 1973, underneath the skin it's the same car as the Type 3.

Rare 1964 Studebaker. The South Bend IN plant closed at the end of 1963 and Studebakers were made for two more years in Canada.

Packard straight 8 from the mid-50s. I was just thinking how much it looks like a LEGO.

Pierce-Arrow. The biggest problem driving this car in the 1930s was the starving people throwing rocks at you.

This Ford Model A has had some restoration work but it remarkably original.

Nash Metropolitan built in England for American Motors.

This 1971 Jaguar XKE was the brand's first 12-cylinder car. Congratulations are due to the owner, as this car is almost impossible to keep running.

1955 For Thunderbird with a 1956-7 removable hardtop.

Jaguar XK120 from around 1949. The fastest car in the world when it was made.

VW Beetle from the late 50s. The speedometer is the only gauge. If you run out of gas, you operate a tiny lever on the floor that gives you one more gallon to get to a gas station.

MG TC from the late 1940s. The remarkable thing about keeping this car on the road: the frame is made of wood. The car used a traditional coachbuilt construction method, featuring steel body panels nailed or screwed onto an internal structural framework made of ash. As in the ash tree.

1922 Baker Electric. These cars were popular with women because they were easy to drive, quiet, and didn't break down. It's too bad all the old electric models disappeared by the 1930s.

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Restoration Shop in Ballard

It's easy enough to sink tens of thousands of dollars into your classic car. When I checked out these vehicles at the restoration shop in Ballard, it struck me that each had some good points and some bad points for your restoration dollar.

1951 Chevy 3100 Advanced-Design truck
Pro: Everybody loves it. Easy to maintain.
Con: Hard to drive.

1962 Ford Thunderbird
Pro: Well-built and powerful. Makes a statement.
Con: Old man's car. Kind of tacky.

1982 Jaguar XJ-S
Pro: It's a V-12 supercar. Surprisingly affordable.
Con: It's surprisingly affordable because it's impossible to keep running.

1981 Fiat 124 Spider
Pro: Fun.
Con: Not very reliable.

1980 MGB
Pro: Fun.
Con: Not very reliable.

1958 Cadillac Coupe DeVille
Pro: Wow power, easy to maintain the drivetrain.
Con: Kind of a money pit - it's got power everything with 1950s wiring.

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In Traffic Behind a 1960 Ford Thunderbird

I probably should not inhale for a minute or two.

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One Ugly Thunderbird. Ford, 1967.

All-new for 1967, this car is a long, long way from the attractive 1966 "Thelma and Louise" Thunderbird convertible. The T-bird was always kind of an old-man's car, now Ford decided to take the car even more in that direction by making it closer to a Lincoln product. Pretty much any two-door car made by GM or Chrysler in this era is considered a valuable collectable. Ford products, not so much. And it would get worse. The car pictured here is downright tasteful compared to the "bulldog" T-birds introduced later.

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Sucking in the 70s: Three Cars from America's Most Tasteless Decade

Stop by 15th Ave West and Dravus, and you'll find the gas station where the 70s survived. Both cars pictured below were very successful. The Chrysler B-body coupe, pictured here as the 1976 Dodge Charger but also sold as the Chrysler Cordoba, Plymouth Fury and a bunch of other names, was a big hit at a time when the company was staggering toward bankruptcy. And the 1978 Mercury Cougar, which was the same car as that year's Ford Thunderbird, sold an unbelievable 565,000 copies for Ford and Mercury combined.

On the one hand, these cars are remembered as gas-guzzling land yachts from an era when Detroit was increasingly losing market share due to its inability to compete with smaller, more practical, higher quality and less garish-looking cars from Japan. On the other hand, at least these cars tried to add a little artistry to their design, unlike today's world of identical gray SUVs.

The 1974 Maverick pictured below is parked around the corner; I suspect it also belongs to the gas station. Love the vintage stereo receiver in the back seat!

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1957 Ford Fairlane convertible, 1961 Ford Thunderbird and other clean used cars

 The '77 Malibu from my last post was from the Shoreline used car dealer who happens to sell a lot of vintage cars. Don't know where he gets them.

 

Ford sold more cars in 1957 than Chevy, but a '57 Bel Air convertible is worth three times as much as the Fairlane convertible from that year.

 

There's no mistaking a Thunderbird for any other car.

 

More from the bigger is better era: 1962 Chevrolet Impala with 283 v-8.

1977 Chevrolet El Camino. If the classic car-truck is your jam, and you're on a budget.

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1963 Ford Thunderbird

There's no car that says, "They sure don't make 'em like this any more" quite like the Thunderbird. I spotted it out on the Kitsap peninsula, land of huge estates and eccentric people who can afford museum-quality classic cars. No kidding, this car is absolutely flawless. Note the tilt-away steering wheel.

 

 

 

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1955 Ford Thunderbird Under a Twilight Sky

Just beautiful. A few observations:
* Note the lack of sun visors. In '56 both sun visors and vent windows were added to the windshield.
* It's very easy to distinguish a '55 from a '56. All '56s had the spare tire in a continental kit.
* Folks remember this car for the removable hardtop with a porthole in the side, but the '55 hardtop did not have the porthole, creating a wicked blind spot for the driver.

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1983 Ford Thunderbird

From curbsideclassic.com: "Ford’s initial attempt at building a personal luxury car off the mid-sized Fox platform, sold from ’80 through ’82, missed the mark as far as the public was concerned, with sales pretty much going off a cliff. A drastic transformation from angular to aerodynamic styling for the ’83 model year, however, turned things around. Moreover, the rounded contours of this car are widely considered to have paved the way for the radical shape of the ’86 Taurus, which could fairly be said to have permanently transformed the public’s expectations for domestic styling."

Putting it another way, this Thunderbird ushered in the era of, "all cars will now look the same."

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The Beautiful 1957 Ford Thunderbird... and the Hideous 1958

Ford replaced the two-seater Thunderbird in 1958 with a four-seater that looked like a mutated catfish. And it was wildly successful, far outselling the previous model. Unbelievable.

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1971 Ford Thunderbird - Four Door Landau

The most popular American collector cars are those made by GM and Chrysler circa 1970. Fords? Not so much. Ford products of the time mostly seem to be either dull-as-dishwater or, on the other end of the spectrum, exercises in bad taste and excess. This Thunderbird is a good example of the latter. The big T-bird coupes made through 1966 were not strong sellers, so Ford decided to go for more of an old-man's luxury car. The first edition of this design in 1967 was not too bad, but in 1970 Ford decided to really beat this car with an ugly stick, replacing the flat grill and hidden headlights of the '67 design with the bulldog look you see below. Combine that with the dubious design features the car already had, including a mandatory vinyl top and "landau irons" on the roof, and you've got what might have been the least-attractive luxury car to come out of Detroit until the 1980 Cadillac Seville. Sales were only 36,000 units in 1971, with only one-sixth of those being the four door.

* This Thunderbird and the 60s Lincoln Continental were the only mass-production cars made after World War II with suicide doors.
* The T-bird made a huge comeback later in 70s, selling 352,000 in 1978 alone. Why everyone was so crazy for that land yacht, I don't know. Who can explain anything about the 70s?

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1957 Ford Thunderbird

To see a car like this in original, unrestored condition is very unusual.

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