I owned this car around 74 this picture is from Dover dragstrip around 66. Sold it to someone in Old Bethpage LI NY and never seen it since, when I sold it it had a tilt nose Willys chassis and front axle. Any body know of it. Pat
My Buddy J. & I wanted to do a flip, saw an ad for a nice blue 57 Bird, Priced right.... I had J. Call, found out it was just sold, The seller kept the conversation going and added that he had a Golden Rod Yellow 55 as well possibly available for around the same listed as the 57-Hmmmm?, interesting ???? Social Distancing was a reality and it took us about 3 weeks to give it a look see. We it’s J’s now and the 82, yr old former owner delivered it. On another note 30 yrs ago today I used mine in a nice occasion. (Something to do with my HS Sweetheart).
1955 Thunderbird #434 competing at 1957 Mille Miglia in Italy. Drivers Francois Smadsa and Anna Rafelli. Finished 137th Strangely enough, Europeans find this fascinating and offer plastic models From France Can catch a few glimpses here. First at 1:12
Not strange. There is a big trade in short run 'commemoratives' of obscure race cars. It isn't uncommon to pick up a magazine that covers them and see a model of a car that raced once and went out early. Snares all of the diehards and completists. In this case, they only had to add half a dozen stickers and four of them are identical.
I read what some say,that were not even around when the T-Bird came out end of 1954,but I was !. By far most of it is full BS,can't blame them really,they were not there and some write ups done by 53 n 54 Vett loving reporters were hard on the T-bird. Others done much later with a preset idea from those early write ups ,just add to the BS. I was there an into cars a lot as a teen,sure I liked the Vett,but I liked all the sports cars of early 50s. No one I know fell for add hipe or mag write ups much back then,they had ,like me,there own take on what they saw and what they thought. Me and all I knew saw a very cool Ford sports car for 3 years. Then Ford gave in to BS an built ,to me an all those I knew,a big box that really did match the BS. I'll always love the 3 early Bird's an the other cool sports cars of the times going from 40s to the 50s. There will be a time,not so far off,were no one will be around to tell what was ,vs BS you read.
Oregonian Larry Kalsch bought this '56 in the early 60's, and drove in on the street with a 427. He turned it into a race car with a High Riser (shown) before switching to a Cammer around 1969. It met a sad ending at Seattle in '72, running on an oiled down track, when it flipped, short of the finish line. He ran a best of mid 9's @ 152. It certainly had the wow factor, with the crowd !