“Cars still had character in 1973,” he observes. A 1973 Ford Thunderbird he saw reminded him of a similar one that his brother-in-law had once owned. He found much to admire in the old cars on display at car shows. That is when a friend introduced Conrad to the world of antique automobiles. Sitting around the house doing nothing proved to be frustrating. No more hunting or fishing trips were in his future and his newly purchased power boat was reluctantly sold. Despite the car's size, the instrument cluster was compact, and, no wonder, the fuel gauge took center stage.įord installed a choice of two engines under the hood: a 7- and a 7.5-liter engine, both mated as standard to a 3-speed automatic gearbox.A heart attack six years ago dramatically altered Robert Conrad's active life style. Inside, Ford offered the Thunderbird as a personal luxury coupe fitted with leather seats, automatic climate control, a mini AM-FM stereo (options), sunroof, and 6-way power front seats. A red strip spread across the entire rear board in the rear, but only the outer sides were lit. Its overall length was so big that it should require its own zip-code. From its sides, the car looked like a faux-cabriolet since it didn't feature a B-pillar between the doors and the quarter panel. The long hood, suitable to cover one of the biggest V8 engines ever installed in a Ford, featured a profiled surface with a raised center part.
Its double rounded headlights at the front and the pinned-out grille in the middle made the Thunderbird like a battleship on wheels. Despite the higher torque, it was slower to the 60 mph mark (92 kph) than the British XJ limo. A 4.2-liter Jaguar engine provided 240 hp while the 7-liter T-Bird offered a mere 212 hp. But the carmakers were ready for that and fitted their cars with big engines tuned for shallow power for their engine's displacements.
The only thing that stood between the big blocks and the customers was the emissions control regulations. In 1972 the Muscle-Car era was coming to an end, but nobody knew it. But the 1973 oil crisis deeply cut into its sales. The seventh and largest Ford Thunderbird shook the American car industry in 1972 with its huge size and massive engines.
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