Car and Driver’s road test of a 1964 Ford Thunderbird reminded me of what I enjoyed about the magazine in its heyday. Although it threw in a few bits of fawning praise, that struck me as an obligatory sop to the magazine’s ad-sales department in an otherwise unflattering review.
When you first turn the page to the road test you might wonder whether Car and Driver had gone soft. A subhead reads, “Who wants a Thunderbird? Every last Walter Mitty in the entire United States, that’s who wants a Thunderbird!” (1964, p. 34).
That throat clearing out of the way, Car and Driver proceeded to denounce the car as “the embodiment of the strange desire to fabricate an immensely complicated device that in essence does nothing in any practical sense” (1964, p. 34).
The anonymous writer noted that the test car weighed in at 4,200 pounds — too hefty to be a “‘hot’ 4 seater like a 289 Mustang.” Meanwhile, the convertible was lacking as a four-place touring car because the “trunk compartment is stuffed with pistons and motors for operating the top, and luggage space is therefore practically nonexistent” (1964, p. 34).
T-Bird’s roadworthiness was ‘unpleasant adventure’
Car and Driver lauded the bucket seats as well as a smooth, quiet ride on turnpikes — but utterly panned the Thunderbird’s handling and braking. “The soft suspension and unusually flexible body construction make any change of direction, even passing a car, an unpleasant adventure.” The brakes were grabby enough that they “caused various staff members to turn routine reductions of speed into horrendous panic stops” (1964, p. 35).
Note that the reported body flex happened even though the Thunderbird was among only a few large American cars that had unitized construction. Presumably this was primarily a problem with the convertible.
Also see ‘1958-76 Thunderbird: The rise and fall of the Ford that shook up GM’
Compared to today’s gadget-filled cars, the 1964 Thunderbird may be viewed as rather simple, but Car and Driver warned that it required “a study of the instruction book before getting underway. Should this step be ignored, the first miles are spent in agonized wonderment over what all those blinking lights might be trying to tell you” (1964, p. 34).
Perhaps more importantly, Car and Driver warned about the potentially “massive outlay of cash that must be involved in maintaining a vehicle of this sort once it becomes so old that some of the insanely complicated gadgets begin to wear out” (1964, p. 35).
Despite the above-mentioned demerits, Car and Driver ended on an amusingly positive note. The magazine noted that if the onset of mid-life had resulted in such indignities as your secretary snickering “when you try to be sweetly dangerous, there may be a solution to the whole thing at your local Ford dealer. You see there’s this fascinating button on the dashboard that you press and by golly” (1964, p. 35).
It’s a fun read — and a reminder of a time when car magazines had a modicum of literary style. This road test also hinted at where Detroit was going astray. The 1964 Thunderbird displayed too much emphasis on flashy styling and fancy gimmicks and not enough on roadworthiness and basic utility.
Road & Track’s review was more trenchant
I don’t mean to suggest that Car and Driver was alone in criticizing the 1964 Thunderbird. Richard M. Langworth noted that Road & Track was even more trenchant, summing up the car as for people who “worry about spreading girth and stiffening arteries, and who couldn’t care less about taste” (1985, p. 225).
Also see ‘Late-1960s Ford car design film shows US automakers losing it’
Langworth was mixed in his own appraisal. He suggested that the Thunderbird’s crisp new exterior sheetmetal was overshadowed by an “interior dominated by a dash that would have done justice in an airplane. No serious driver liked the ornate speedometer with its red-banded drum pointer, or the chrome-trimmed minor gauges, or the plethora of highly styled buttons, knobs, and levers. But Ford would have the Mustang for the enthusiast crowd. . . .” (1985, p. 224).
That’s true — and the 1964 models would be among the best-selling Thunderbirds prior to shifting downmarket in 1977. However, I do wonder what the sales trajectory of the T-Bird would have been like if Ford had not waited two decades to make the car more internationally competitive in its roadworthiness.
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RE:SOURCES
- Car and Driver; 1964. “Ford Thunderbird convertible.” August issue: pp. 34-36. Posted by the Automotive History Preservation Society.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1985. The Complete History of Ford Motor Company. Publications International, Skokie, IL.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Ford Thunderbird (1964)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Ford Thunderbird (1964)
One wonders what C&D and R&T were doing road testing this iteration of the Thunderbird, a car clearly not built or marketed for the likes of the AC Cobra and Borgward Isabella crowd. Too soft? Too complicated? Ouch. Too amusing!
1958-1960 T-Birds had flat window glass. 1961-1963 had curved window glass. 1964-1966 back to flat glass. Perhaps Ford used the 1958-1960 T-Bird underpinnings for the 1964-1966 models. (?)
My uncle had 1961 and 1963 T-Bird coupes. No chassis flex there with the roof. Did the 1961-1965 Lincoln droptops have chassis flex issues, too, as it was the same unit-body engineering as the Thunderbird ? Did Chrysler full-size convertibles suffer from chassis flex or did Chrysler engineer its unit-bodies right the first time in the late 1950s ? The feature that made the Thunderbird a halo car like the Chrysler 300 letter cars were those with the four leather bucket seats, although the dashboards of both the Ford and Chrysler were an airline pilot’s dream.
JH stopped by to say, “Car magazines taking a dump on all things American?! Impossible!”
To which I would ask: Did that actually happen? Evidence, please.