It was rated at 252 horsepower and 267 pound-feet of torque compared with 281 horsepower and 287 pound-feet for the Jag mill-all of this to eliminate any possibility of Jag buyers thinking their elegant new cats were propelled by something as plebeian as a mere Ford engine. The new Thunderbird arrived with the same 4.0-liter aluminum V-8 employed to propel the Lincoln LS, a destroked and slightly dumbed down (no variable valve timing, for example) version of Jaguar's 4.0-liter DOHC AJ-V8. We were discussing horsepower, as in more of it. In this sense, the revival Bird is faithful to the 1955-57 original, which the company characterized as a "personal car." Our own assessment, expressed in a T-Bird test in the June 1956 issue of C/D predecessor Sports Cars Illustrated, described the car as "best suited to turnpikes and drag strips."īut we digress. Ford prefers "relaxed sportiness" as a dynamic descriptor. You might have observed that whatever the resurrected Bird lacked in sports-car-ness it made up in style, and you'd get no argument from us. Revived after three years of suspended animation, this Lazarus of T-Birds came to the market in 2001 with an oversupply of hype, an undersupply of chassis, and a power supply that was only adequate. Ford's approach, in addition to boosting engine output, is to make the car more collectible by limiting production to "four or five" years. With sales lagging some 24 percent behind original forecasts-19,085 in 2002 versus a hoped-for total of 25,000-the Thunderbird does seem to be in need of some sort of showroom stimulant. Convertibles for $5000: Window Shop with C/D.
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