One of the Michigan, metro Detroit, AMC Coon brothers, in the 60’s, had a drag racing Thunderbird with a cammer in it. Saw it at Milan a few times. Never saw it fully hookup. Anybody have a pic of that car ?
I've owned this baby Bird since 1996. Drive it about 2000 miles a year. I've rebuilt all major components except the transmission which works just fine (Ford-O-Matic).
Spent a few minutes on the 56 the other day, had the rears mounted up and was sick of bumping into them. Wasn't digging the flares much, but they look a little better with some filling. Also found some local wheels for the front
My 55 bird is called a hot rodded sports car. 351 Cleveland, manual shift C4, severe engine setback, lowered 3 inches. Hauls ass and sounds like a hotrod and drives like a sports car. Well, kinda... And it is the 281st Tbird ever built, s/n is 100281
Anybody have any pics of the bright red 55/56 Thunderbird street/drag car that was in Hot Rod and some other magazines several times in the 80's? It ran a blown big block Chevy with slicks on the back, skinnies up front and had a hardtop. Also I seem to remember it had no hood. It was NOT a pro street car. It just looked like a street car that happened to run fast. Wish I had more info to provide but I'm going off memory here. I do remember reading it was destroyed in a top end accident at the end of a pass. Would love to see a picture of it again.
In '55 the T-bird was built on the regular car line alongside plain 'ol Fords, so that 281 represents the 281st car to come off that line. In just terms of only T-bird production, the actual number is probably considerably lower. I remember seeing an article about the very first production T-bird being found and restored, and it had a 100003 serial number. And you could find two Ford cars with the same six number serial; each Ford assembly plant started at 100001. The difference would be in the preceding 4 characters, which in your case would be P5FH. P is the motor (292), 5 is the year, F is the assembly plant (Dearborn, and IIRC all T-birds were built there), and H is the body type. You could possibly pin it down further by decoding the rest of the data plate.. http://www.tbird.org/DataPlate/cdata.htm Ford started production on September 1, 1954, so I wouldn't be surprised if your car was built within the first few days of production. The 'item number' might offer another clue.... Mercury used the same format, except they started at 500001.
I have finally got the grille made & installed really happy how it turned out . the car is now sitting like I want
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