![]() The iconic vinyl top and landau irons were introduced in 1962. ![]() The Thunderbird helped launch the brougham era with a boxy roofline that evoked the classic cars of the 1920s. Even though the four-seater T-Bird was a parenthetical effort, it proved to be more financially lucrative than the launching of the Continental and Edsel brands and moving both the Mercury and Lincoln upmarket. The biggest irony of the Thunderbird is that it made a mockery of Ford’s enormously expensive effort to invade the premium-priced and luxury-car fields in the second half of the 1950s. The 1958 Ford Thunderbird was supposed to be a niche car, but it sold better than both the Edsel and Mercury in the top end of the premium-priced field ( Old Car Advertisements). The 1958-60 T-Bird showed that the public would pay a premium price for a smaller car even during a recession. In addition, the Thunderbird challenged the 1950s Detroit groupthink that the more expensive the car, the bigger it had to be. The early four-seaters were only available as a two-door hardtop and convertible - and in high-end trim. The Thunderbird also defied the then-dominant practice of fielding a broad range of body styles and trim variants. For this reason, the T-Bird is arguably one of the most significant halo cars of all time.Īlso see ‘1958-60 Lincoln: Failing to beat GM at its own game’ Indeed, the Thunderbird almost single-handedly spurred a massive product-proliferation spree that resulted in a diversity of personal coupes, ranging from the high-priced Cadillac Eldorado to subcompact “pony cars” such as the Toyota Celica. The T-Bird’s unusually low height and long-hood, short-deck proportions would eventually be widely copied by both American and foreign automakers. T-Bird unleashes massive product-proliferation spreeĪ key reason the Thunderbird was able to develop an exceptional level of cachet was because it was given a unique body that had more sporting proportions than a typical premium-priced car. The T-Bird challenged GM’s hierarchy of brands by competing price-wise against the automaker’s top-end premium-priced cars even though the personal coupe was sold through plebeian Ford dealers. The success of the 1958-60 T-Bird showed that being different was a better strategy ( Old Car Advertisements). ![]() In the 1950s Ford spent a fortune vainly trying to better compete against GM’s highly successful five-brand pricing hierarchy. Each of these brands offered distinctive styling and mechanical features, but by the late-50s they shared a common platform. This approach was most highly developed at GM, where a car buyer could show they were moving up in the world by switching from the low-priced Chevrolet to a higher-priced Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and - at the pinnacle - Cadillac. For one thing, 1958-60 T-Bird was the first Big Three postwar car to undercut the “hierarchy of brands” strategy that then dominated the US auto industry. The early four-seaters were remarkably subversive on a number of levels. ![]() 2 automaker could better compete against mighty General Motors if it pioneered new markets rather than trying to directly compete model for model. The four-seater Thunderbird was a surprisingly pivotal car for the Ford Motor Company. ![]()
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