It was a gorgeous, turn-key proposition (and air conditioned besides). It was everything the Thundering Bird was not. The other car on my short list was a ’71 Continental Mark III. The biggest problem was how the car had been parked under a pine tree and needles had filled the concealed cavity under the rear glass, causing rust holes that kept the inside of the trunk wet and caused havoc with the interior chrome. The windshield had a couple of big cracks and the fender skirts were missing. The seat upholstery was decent (though not decent enough to avoid new upholstery if this car went the way I imagined), the driver’s door panel was shot and the dash pad was a mess. The transmission shifted right though, and it seemed to drive OK around the block – other than the way the power steering seemed to want to turn left more than it wanted to turn right. The car had the famous Swing-Away steering wheel, the 4 bbl 390 V8 (in its first year) and, well, it was a Thunderbird!Īlthough I was thrilled that I could finally have the 390 with the 4 bbl carb that had been denied me in my ’67 Galaxie convertible, this one didn’t run that well – it was hard to start and wasn’t terribly smooth after it started. The fix had been to disable the transmission’s park function. They had gotten the transmission rebuilt, but told me that the shop could not get the park mechanism right, which led to binding and a cracked shift collar. They had started with a decent car, but didn’t like the white color and painted it red to match the interior. They were people who did not do things in a normal way – they lived in a restored Victorian home deep within the city limits and were far more artsy than I had ever been. The couple selling it had bought it to drive a few years earlier. I had always loved those Thunderbirds – there was always something special about them. One day I saw an ad for a 1961 Thunderbird. The cars that interested both me and collectors in general tended to be stuff that had been some combination of sporty and expensive when new, so that was where I started looking. Muscle cars were just starting to get big, but I wasn’t really into those. If I were to get something that needed much work and investment, it would have to be something worth some money in the end. But with a project, my choice of cars would have to be different, with no big, low value sedans. So a car project was something that would fit right in with that kind of life. But for the most part, I was happy to leave work on a Friday evening and have a minimum of human interaction for the next couple of days. I am fine interacting with others – I have no problem doing so in my professional life, and if a friend would call and suggest a fun activity, I would be all-in. I was ready to tackle a project! After all, I was single, owned a house with a garage, had my tools and plenty of spare time on my hands. After all, I had owned two-at-a-time before the big white Plymouth, so why not now? But this time, I wasn’t looking for a practical daily driver. Thus came the spring of 1988, when I suddenly realized that I had one car, a two-car garage, and therefore room in both my garage and my life for another car. The next spring I took my mind off cars by buying an old garage (which came with an old house), and the following fall I salved that urge with the ’66 Fury III. Before I got married, and for awhile after that milestone event, my “gotta get another car” pangs continued to strike every spring and every fall.
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