Danville Street Sighting - 1956 Ford Thunderbird

Today marks the fourth day of the fabled countdown to Christmas.

On the fourth day of Christmas my archive gave to thee:
Ford Thunderbird,
Beige French shed,
Tuned Chevy LUV,
and a Park Lane down on the street.

Isn't she sweet. We've taken a look at a few early Thunderbirds on California Streets and this is the second '56 to appear here. My area has a lot of these cars, with an entire club chapter bringing T-Birds to local car shows year after year. This one appeared near the high school on a weekend, as cars for sale often do in Danville. I've come across an awful lot of Danville street sightings there.

Danville Street Sighting - 1979 Ford Thunderbird Town Landau

In my previous feature we looked at a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, which debuted a few years after Elvis Presley got into the rock 'n roll scene. Now we look at a 1979 Thunderbird, a car that was built a couple of years after Elvis died. And much like Elvis, the Thunderbird was immensely popular from the start and they both got very fat around the same time. Unlike Elvis, though, the Thunderbird survived for another few decades thanks to a series of total reinventions.

Livermore Street Sighting - 1956 Ford Thunderbird

When I was a kid I had a fairly limited range of interest in cars and one of my favorites was the first-generation Ford Thunderbird. Children aren't the most sophistocated creatures so I guess the most iconic designs make the biggest impression. For me it was the '57 Bel Air, the '59 Cadillac, '70 Chevelle and various bedroom-poster fare such as the Viper RT/10, Ferrari F50 and Lamborghini Diablo. Take a look on eBay sometime at the most common diecast models for sale and you'll see what I mean about what appeals to kids. That said, the early T-Birds are very pretty cars. I always preferred the '57 when I was young but the '55 and '56 have their own merit and my interest in them has grown over the years.

San Mateo Street Sighting - 1957 Ford Thunderbird

When I was a kid I adored the 1955-1957 Ford Thunderbird. They were just infinitely cool. I had a Hot Wheels '57 T-Bird from their "Gleam Team" series, a strange release with a plastic body molded in gold-chrome with geometric patterns. I also had a larger, probably 1:43 scale red '55 T-Bird coupe with opening doors, which was one of my favorite childhood toys until I accidentally broke it into several pieces. Oops! My childhood love of early T-Birds stuck with me and I still really like them today.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1967 Ford Thunderbird Fordor Landau

In the late 1960s, the large personal luxury car made up a popular segment of the new-car market. Mercedes would have you believe that they invented the four-door luxury sports coupe niche in 2004 with their CLS. What does that make this 1967 Ford Thunderbird, then? The Thunderbird was primarily known as a luxury coupe with sporting pretensions, or at least a big plush car with an enormous engine. It would propel you down the road nicely, and into the ditch at the first hard corner. Let's face it, this is not a sports car. It's a luxury cruiser that twelve years earlier had been a sports car with two doors and two seats. The 1967 T-Bird was a body-on-frame car with formal, yet dramatic styling. It was available as a coupe or a sedan with rear suicide doors and a thick C-pillar exaggerated by very small windows and an unusual shape of the window frame, so that the fake landau bars actually follow the shut line of the door. The four-door accounted for 24,967 sales in 1967, nearly one-third of all T-Birds that year.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1960 Ford Thunderbird

It's been four years since I began documenting the collection of the San Francisco car collector I like to refer to as Fifties Guy. To date I've photographed over a dozen cars belonging to him or his friends who might share his hobby. Many of the cars have been sold over the years, and new ones appear as time goes by. The most recent one I've seen as of the time of this writing was this 1960 Ford Thunderbird. My friend and I were exploring the city after the California Mille car show and, as I frequently do when I'm in the area, I decided to stop by and see if there were any members of the collection present in the public domain.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1963 Ford Thunderbird

For those readers who cringed at the 1961 Thunderbird I featured last time, rejoice! Here's a beautiful 1963 T-Bird I found in sunny Santa Cruz. This car is nearly perfect and I'd wager it's been restored. For some reason I love 1963 Ford products in metallic beige. I have a diecast display model of a '63 Ford Galaxie 500XL painted this color, which I chose because it was subtle and elegant compared with the bright reds and blues of the time period. Mind you, I complain about modern beige cars but I don't see it as too much of a double standard. Modern cars are boring to start with and beige makes them even worse!

Alameda Street Sighting - 1961 Ford Thunderbird

It breaks my heart sometimes to see a classic car being kicked around. At some point it ceases to be a beautiful machine and metastisizes into that ugly old car everyone avoids in parking lots and curses on the highway (you know, the vehicle everybody blames the bad smell on whether it's at fault or not). There's only so much a car can take before it becomes cost-prohibitive to repair. This is typical of cars from the 1970s onward, the big boats that aren't worth very much and thus make no economic sense to restore after a wreck. Those cars usually end up unceremoniously dropped off at a junkyard when their owners decide it's better to take the scrap value and run rather than invest another dime in their old jalopy.