1996 Buick Regal GS - Wild and Crazy

I cheered like a sophomore when I first saw GM's new-for-1988 midsize cars. After a decade of my favorite car maker shrinking their once mighty designs down to ill-performing, homely Lilliputian-esque turds what were known at first as the "GM10's" and later "W-bodies" were a delightful step in what I thought at the time was the right direction. They weren't so much upsized from the "G-bodies" they replaced inasmuch as they were mercifully, on the heels of the ultimate disaster that was the shrunken GM "E-bodies", not any smaller, and I thought they looked great. They were nimble handlers too compared to the even the best of the "G's" and their interiors were cavernous too. What was not to like? Sure, a little more power would have been nice but, again, compared to the "G's" (save for the turbo Buick's) the first "10's" were relative rockets. Our subject is a 1996 Buick Regal decked out in top-of-the-line "GS" trim.

The problem with the GM10's was that at first they were only available as coupes. While that was fine for twenty-four year old coupe loving me, the truth of the matter was America was rapidly moving away from even "family-sized" coupes and into vehicles that were inherently more practical. Talk about being out of step with the times. Although GM eventually rolled out sedan versions of these cars come 1990, those two years might as well have been twenty years seeing how rapidly the buying landscape changed back then. To make matters worse the sedan versions of all the "10's" or "W's" were quite unbecoming and appeared to be afterthoughts on a series of cars that clearly were intended to be first and foremost coupes. 

Short lived as these cars in particular were, Buick's redesign and model shuffle for 1997 did not include two-door versions, I found noting not to like about their small on the outside and cavernous on the inside dimensions. And once you did the Olympic gymnast move to get into the back seat you found that there was a surprising amount of leg and head room back there. These later Regal GS' with thrones out of the Roadmaster, updated dash design, "gran-touring suspension" with the fancy alloys and meaty tried and the tried and true "3800 V-6" had it going on.  Well, at least to me they did. 

Frankly, seeing how slowly they sold, I was amazed that GM still made two-door versions of these cars come the mid to late 1990's. Pontiac continued to make a coupe of the Grand Prix after 1997 (through 2003) and Chevrolet made the Monte Carlo (coupe) all the way through 2007 but with Buick and Oldsmobile out of the mid-sized coupe picture us wild and crazy coupe lovers knew it was just a matter of time before they went the way of dodo as well. 

I've had to fight back urges to kick the tires on this one. It's for sale over in Grand Rapids Michigan for under five grand. Such a deal and hopefully someone will grab who appreciates it for what it is and isn't into just finding a cheap car. It's old and perhaps it looks it, at least that's why my son says although I still think it looks as handsome and timeless as when it was new. Here's the listing.  Go grab it and rub it in my face that you did. 

1989 Buick LeSabre T-Type - Part Deux

It's impossible to say if there was anything The Big Three and a Half could have done back in the 1980's to assuage the deluge of tony Germany makes and models coming ashore in the United States. I'm of the opinion that even if they matched what the imports offered, "Yuppies", or what were once known as "young-urban-professionals", would have still sought makes and models from Bavaria because they were flashier fashion statements than anything available domestically. Didn't stop Buick from trying and this 1989  Buick LeSabre "T-Type" was one of their attempts to appeal to younger buyers back then who were leaving, actually more like fleeing, domestic showrooms.

The LeSabre T-Type first appeared for 1981 but it wasn't an import fighter by any means. More in the spirt of the "sporting big car" that was the Buick Wildcat from the '60's, it was more of an appearance package than anything. Having what Buick referred to for years as their "Gran Touring" suspension and had some black out trim, it being the no-fun-allowed early 1980's it was saddled with a gaggle of smoggy motors and super high axle ratios. Being a fan of the "aero-kissed" 1980 GM B and C bodies, I'd love to get my hands on one of these and breathe some life into it. Giddy-up.

Fast-forward to 1987 and Buick firmed up the suspension on their 1986 vintage LeSabre coupe, beefed up the wheel and tire package, threw in buckets, a console with floor mounted shifter (!), black out treatment and their fetching leather wrapped steering wheel and, presto. LeSabre T-Type part deux. The whole thing was, admittedly, fairly incongruous and those with a proclivity for BMW and Mercedes makes and models couldn't be bothered. Buick's core-core whom wanted nothing to do with touring suspensions and facsimiles of bucket seats wanted nothing to do with them as well. Those that could do the mental gymnastics to get their arms around these cars, like me, where few and far between.

That was a shame since the "GM-70" or "H-body" chassis the T-Type LeSabre was based on was a watershed of domestic automobile engineering and the the suspension tuning on these cars did wonders for them. Problem was, again, the import makers were doing similar things already and doing them much better.

These "big" front wheel drive LeSabre's sold well enough for GM although the vast majority of them sold were four-door models. The coupes sold so poorly that GM dropped the line completely come 1991 when they redesigned the H-bodies. These "T-Types" sold even slower than the base coupes; just over twelve thousand of them were sold between 1987 and 1989. 

1973 Buick Centurion - I'll Think About It

I mentioned Buick's Centurion in my recent soliloquy about a 1973 Buick Apollo and I thought I'd do a quickie deep dive on one today. Our brownish red on off white convertible here hails from model year 1973. Depending on your point of view she's either a beaut or a brute. I'd say a combination of both. 

The first Buick Centurion was a 1956 GM Motorama concept car that was as far out '50's cool as it got. Squint your eyes a tad and you can see a lot of 1971-1973 "boat tail" Buick Rivera in the rear end although none of that polarizing styling made it to the Centurion of the 1970's. 

These cars replaced the Wildcat in the Buick lineup and were marketed more as a luxury car than sporting full size car like the Wildcat was. Buick changed up the trim somewhat on their LeSabre and shoehorned it into their lineup supposedly above the LeSabre but below the Electra. While the splitting of model hairs to come up with what are supposedly different models still goes on today, to the unenlightened the Centurion was a LeSabre. Wait, you know what? To us that know better it is a LeSabre. Who's kidding who? It was available as either a two or four-door hardtop and a convertible like our subject here. 

More years ago than I care to admit, I test drove a 1973 Centurion convertible and was not impressed.  In fact, it was one of the more terrifying experiences of my young driving life. Although I learned to drive on my father's woe-be-gotten '72 Cadillac deVille, I had never gotten comfortable driving it because it was just too damn big and loosey goosey. Manly Man I portended to be, I felt as though I needed a car that was equally as big as my dad's and, hence, the test drive of that Centurion. For the record, my Daddy's Caddy was slightly bigger since it rode on GM's "C-body" chassis whereas these rode on the slightly smaller wheelbase GM "B". 

Powered by the Buick "350-4", V-8 that was offered as the base engine on '73's only and not the mighty "455-4" our subject has, I found it sluggish and unresponsive despite the owner bragging about how powerful the car was. What there was of handling was ponderous - I could hardly keep the thing in lane as the front end seemed to have mind of its own. Not sure if the car was supposed to be like that or not seeing the car was a good ten years old at the time and the owner was the kind of guy who looked like he beat the living daylights of it. What got me the most was what a shuddering mess the whole thing was - not unlike my father's Cadillac. 

I came to find late that the flexing of its chassis was not only endemic to all convertibles back in the day, but the 1971 vintage GM full size cars were designed to flex to some degree to make them ride smoothly. Well, that may have made them nice to ride in but to drive these things you should have had to apply for a boating Captain's license. 

I recall the guy wanting around $1,800 he was as flexible on the price as the car's chassis was. I was between cars at the time and that price was a good $750 to $1,000 more than I wanted to spend, and he quickly caved to like $1,200 which made the conversation fairly awkward since I really didn't care for the car. I loved the way it looked and the notion of convertible to me has also been more romantic than practical but oh-my-god what a slob of ride and handler that thing was. I told him I'd think about it. 

The year of that test drive was 1983 and folks were giving these cars away back then. Our very clean subject here is for sale for $14,995 so it would have been nice to spend that little back then and have it appreciated to the degree that these have. Shuddering body and all. However, I have no regrets to this day about not taking him up on his willingness to take $1,200 for it. 

1973 Buick Apollo - Short Attention Span

Apollo was the name of seventeen missions launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) between 1961 and 1972 which included seven successful lunar landings. Apollo was a fitting name for those missions as Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology and was the god of oracles, healing, archery, music and arts, sunlight, knowledge, herds and flocks and protector of the young.

"Apollo" was also the name of a series of two and four-door Chevrolet Nova's sold by General Motor's Buick division in the early to mid 1970's. Our subject here is a 1973.

Naming anything "Apollo" by the fall of 1972, not-to-mention something as unabashedly ordinary as a  Chevrolet Nova based small Buick, was met with a fair amount of indifference if not ambivalence given that Apollo-17, launched on December 7, 1972, was the final Apollo moon landing mission.  In just three very short years since the first lunar landing in 1969 America had grown indifferent towards the money suck that was the space program. We won the space race and we weren't making plans to go to Mars and beyond so let's move on. American's short attention spans are nothing new.

You don't need to be a "car-expert" to see what this car is although you probably need to be of a certain vintage. GM started "badge-engineering" when they slapped a once hallowed Pontiac nameplate on a Nova for model year 1971. Story goes that Pontiac was clamoring for a compact car to offset the deluge of imports coming ashore and GM obliged by simply changing some trim on a Nova and calling in "Ventura". Oldsmobile and Buick got Nova's of their own for 1973. Save for some trim pieces the only difference between the cars was their divisional V-8 engines. Buick advertising going so far as to recommend the "Buick V-8" over the standard Chevrolet six-cylinder engine Apollo came with; Buick having to buy the Chevrolet engines from Chevrolet and all.

If that makes no sense to you you're not alone. Then again, old school GM.

Cadillac got a Nova of their own but few people noticed since they did such a swell job of rebodying their 1975 "Seville".

I found this 1973 Buick Apollo on Facebook Marketplace the other night and what got me about it was not only does it have an asking price of $9,000, as ridiculous as I think that asking price is, based on other Apollo's for sale around the country, the owner may have this car priced below market value. Seriously. Seller claims less than nine-thousand miles on the clock so that might be driving the price somewhat but we all know that mileage on old cars doesn't really mean anything.

The asking price for this car bodes well for folks like my wife and I who have a "classic car" but that kind of money for a Chevrolet Nova knock-off is about as crazy as that twenty-grand that guy in California is asking for his grand mother's rusted out 1971 Dodge Demon. I mean, if non-descript, disposable old appliances like this is going for that kind of money, what's the market going to be like for more mainstream and desirable "muscle" and classic cars?

Subjective? No doubt. One person's collectible is another person's trash and vice-versa but nine large for this? Wow. It's not that these "X-body" cars didn't have anything going for them. They were robust little vehicles, actually, at some two-hundred inches long they'd be considered full-size cars today, they handled and braked better than any Electra, LeSabre or Centurion, had just as much usable interior space, were much better on gas even with the optional (but recommended) V-8 and with the hatchback option that our, is this brown (?) or orange (??) subject does not have, were pretty practical. That's the hatchback fan in me right there; I never understood why they didn't take off in this country.

That I've always thought that badge-engineering was bunk and that this car is not worthy of being called "Apollo" is my problem but apparently not my problem alone. Buick renamed the Apollo coupes "Skylark" for 1975. The sedans remained "Apollo" for '75 but they too became Skylark's for 1976.

1990 Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe - Soft Spot

Here's another fine hoopty I don't need that hopefully by blogging about it will exhaust any want I have for it. It's a 1990 Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe for sale at the same dealership I bought that (god awful) 2005 Mustang GT from about a year and a half ago. The big difference is that  Mustang was priced right. This is priced at a ghastly $10,500. C'mon, guys. Really?

Seeing how little they budged on the price of the Mustang and with Covid and everything there's no sense in me kicking its tires. Based on it having only gone 49,000 miles in it's thirty years on this earth and its apparent solid condition I might be be willing to spend maybe $7,500 all in but $10.500 plus taxes and all that ancillary tacked on nonsense when you buy a car?  Sorry. Not going to happen. By the way, KBB.com values this car, actually, it's so old they don't even go back to 1990 and I had to use a 1992, at around $2,700. A nationwide search of similar Thunderbird's in like condition pegs it around $8,000. Word to the wise, don't take KBB as gospel. Any online research tool that can give you actual nationwide pricing is far more accurate as to what any car is going for. I'm actually surprised a reputable dealer has this up for sale in the first place. 

I've always had a soft spot for these 1989-1995 Thunderbird SC's. They're hunky, chunky and absolutely fabulous looking. In the early 2000's I drove a '92 SC with the five speed and I loved the way it rode, handled and accelerated. Comfy too. Great car.

The "Super" in "Super Coupe" refers to an Eaton M90 supercharger Ford strapped on it's "Vulcan", 3.8 liter V-6 engine. Making all of one-hundred and forty-five brake horsepower and two-hundred twenty some pounds of torque in normal guise, the big blower rammed enough additional air in that  horsepower spooled up to two-hundred and ten. While horsepower gains were modest by even standards of the day, the biggest difference the blower made was to the seat of your pants when you stomp the gas - three-hundred and fifteen pounds of "right-now" torque up from two-hundred twenty. This thing can move. Up to a point. North of seventy-five it 's all but gutless but what fun getting there.

Problem with these cars was that despite its good looks and refined chassis and power train they were dated even when they were brand new. While Ford didn't have nearly as much riding on this car, it's Mercury Cougar clone or eventually the Lincoln Mark VIII as GM did on their mid size personal luxury cars, they didn't sell well either. Blame shifting consumer tastes as folks whom ten, fifteen years prior may have bought a big, heavy, impractical domestic coupe opted for other fare. The demise of the personal luxury all starting with the "Great Downsizing Epoch" that reduced most of them to stubby characturtures of what they had been. They still had their fans but the die-hards, like moi, we were few and far between.

Super Coupe's were not cheap either. A leather trimmed SC pushing hard against twenty-five grand. A lot of money back then.

Ford didn't do this car any favors come 1992 when they started offering their "Windsor", 4.9 liter V-8 in these things. With just as much horsepower and almost as much torque, while they didn't bedeck those cars in the Super Coupe's handsome (but oh-so-90's cladding, it all but matched the "Super's" performance. And for less money too. Ford swapped out the Windsor for their SOHC V-8 starting in 1994 - same year they upped the horsepower and torque on the Super Coupe. Guess what? No one cared.

With sales slowing to a piddling, Ford ditched the Thunderbird after 1997. Save for the abortive retro-Thunderbird of 2002-2005, which went from oh-so-cool to rolling joke very quickly, Ford hasn't looked back since.

Which makes the asking price for our silver fox here even more vexing. Here's the link if you're so inclined to make an offer on it. Remember what I said about how inflexible they are on pricing. Maybe you'll get it for five hundred bucks less. Never hurts to try.

Oh, and blogging about it hasn't cured me of it. I still want it. 

1980 Chrysler Cordoba - Clanging The Land Yacht Bell

Chrysler was more than fashionably late to the key party that largely defined domestic automobilia in the 1970's. Recycling the name of a trim level Chrysler used on 1970 Newport's, Chrysler found themselves, and almost inexplicably so, with a hit on their platform shoes with their 1975 Chrysler Cordoba, hawked flawlessly by a pre-Fantasy Island Ricardo Montalban, in a series of cinematically delightful commercials. Whether it was Tatoo's boss, the styling of "Cordoba" or a combination of the two, Cordoba sold so well from 1975 through 1977 it accounted for sixty some percent of all Chrysler sales.

Maybe it was planned obsolescence rearing it's ugly head but as was often the case years ago, Chrysler couldn't leave well enough alone. Subtle as the changes were, a thorough updating of Cordoba's styling for 1978 botched Cordoba's handsomely clean, distinctive good looks. Combine the update, what even a Chrysler designer described as tacky, along with Cordoba having to share showroom floor space with the new, far more manageably sized and almost as luxurious Chrysler LeBaron and sales of "soft, Corinthian Leather" dropped faster than sales of pet rocks. 

The personal luxury car market being as lucrative as it was back then, Chrysler stayed in the game through the great downsizing epoch. Like General Motors and Ford, by 1980, Chrysler had to downsize as a new wave government mandated fuel economy regulations went into effect. Mr. Roarke was back on TV pitching an all-new, smaller Cordoba, albeit sans the exotic locales of the first series of commercials, and claimed to have "liked what they did to his car". Ha. Amazing what we'll say when someone is paying you handsomely to do so.

For us fans of the bigger is better idiom as it once applied to cars the 1980 Cordoba should have been a (sorry) huge hit.  Losing just two inches of wheelbase and not even six inches of overall length, on paper, this was our kind of downsizing. So, what the hell went wrong?

Frankly, in general the problem was the styling. Or lack thereof. Whereas the original Cordoba was arguably a tastefully restrained 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the 1980 Cordoba looked as though it was designed by engineers who wouldn't know a Mahl Stick from a T-square. Aside from the fender arches, horrible fake wire wheels and tires there isn't a single curved line on this car. Interestingly, the fake convertible top on our 1980 here, what was known back then as a "carriage top", actually helps to make it appear not quite as boxy as it actually was.

The 1980 Cordoba's problems were more than sheet metal deep too. In an age when folks were seriously fuel economy conscious, not unlike how these days how seriously we take being safe if and when we have to go out and into public, Cordoba's mediocre (at best) gas mileage and clumsy handling dynamics, thanks to its 1960 Valiant derived underpinnings, further curtailed sales. These cars were still too heavy and their crude engines, not only provided stone slow performance, they slurped gas only marginally less so than Cordoba's of old did.

Chrysler built two other personal luxury coupes off what they referred to as their "J-body" chassis (aka stretched to the max '60 Valiant) and in my opinion both the 1980-1983 Dodge Mirada and 1981-1983 Imperial by Chrysler had a sense of dangerous, cool elan, especially the Mirada, that the previous Cordoba had in spades; well, the 1975-1977 versions did. Both sold like ice tea to eskimos just like the Cordoba. did. Sales of GM and Ford's smaller (and ugly) personal luxury cars were way off too clanging the land yacht bell that the days of the personal luxury car were numbered.

Chrysler pulled the plug on all three after 1983. The market segment that was once so hot in the 1970's shrank to a niche and died a miserably slow death finally petering out when Chevrolet rolled the last Monte Carlo in 2007. Ricardo Montalban, who was a somewhat known screen actor who was doing traveling stage shows when he was discovered by Chrysler executives when on tour with a traveling show in Detroit in 1974, continued to work for Chrysler pitching their myriad K-car wares through 1993.

1980 Ford Thunderbird - Soul Less and Disposable

The latest in a series on the demise of the personal luxury car. 

From 1977 through 1979, Ford moved their Thunderbird "down" to go grill to grill with the Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix. And the new smaller, somewhat more manageable not to mention lower priced Thunderbird sold quite well. So well in fact that it would be the best selling Thunderbird of all time. Granted, two of those years it was sold GM sold "downsized" versions of the Monte Carlo and Grand Prix and no doubt many of those Thunderbirds were sold to buyers put off by them. However, the CAFE hangman was waiting for the popular "midsize" Thunderbird come 1980 and our two-tone 1980 here is what Ford came up with to placate the government.

In a vacuum, the 1980 Thunderbird and it's equally awkward Mercury Cougar cousin, weren't bad looking cars. However, they appeared to have been hit with the same shrink-ray Chevrolet applied to the 1978 Monte Carlo seeing how they appeared to be 7/8 scale versions of the popular 1977-1979 Thunderbird. Perhaps if Ford had used their full size Panther platform like they did with the 1980 Lincoln Mark VI for this design it wouldn't have looked so awkward from just about every angle. Then again, seeing what Lincoln did with the Mark VI and the 1980 and 1981 Continental Town Coupe, both built on the Panther chassis, I wouldn't hold out much hope that they'd do much different with a Panther body Thunderbird.

On paper, the 1980 Ford Thunderbird appeared to be everything that personal luxury car buyers wanted. Although some sixteen inches shorter than the 1979 model, nine-hundred pounds lighter and remarkably having more genuinely usable interior room, Thunderbird was still a fairly large, well equipped two door automobile with improved fuel economy,  adroit handling in comparison to the previous model and a rock star nameplate. So, what went wrong?

Well, most people didn't buy the previous Thunderbird or Monte Carlo, Grand Prix and Chrysler Cordoba because of generous leg, hip or head room, zero to sixty acceleration times or cornering prowess; they bought them in lieu of their inherent faults because they were fashion statements. And despite the fact that these Fox-body Thunderbirds were infinitely superior automobiles to what came before them, all the salesmanship in the world fell on deaf, disenfranchised personal luxury car buyers because these Thunderbirds were obviously nothing more than dressed up Ford Fairmonts. And the long and short of it was that that was just not good enough for the fashion conscious tastemakers that drove the personal luxury car market.

Ford quickly got to work drawing up the "Aero" bird that took off with a certain degree of success for 1983. However, the dye had been cast; personal luxury car buyers started tossing aside cars like this because they weren't as appealing as they had been. They eschewed their inherent impracticality, seriously, they make no sense today, for other vehicles and vehicle types. Namely sport utility vehicles that combined all of the styling and image buyers desired with unsurpassed utility.

If the great downsizing epoch did anything it was that it led to better cars albeit a gaggle of ones led by cars like our 1980 Thunderbird that were soul less, disposable appliances. 

1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe - Beware The Gap

This 1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe "bridged-the-gap" between the Fox-body, "Aero" Thunderbird of 1983 vintage and the "MN12" Thunderbird that debuted for 1989. The thought at Ford was that there would be too much of a leap between generations if they just fast-forwarded to the '89 'Bird from the "1983" model. Alrighty. Then. Don't you just love it when car companies act as though they know what's best for us without even asking? About the only thing needed to be bridged was the sticker shock that those who had "1983" Thunderbirds would experience when they attempted to trade up to a "1989". Reminds me of the signs in Penn Station back in New York warning train riders to be, "Aware of the Gap" between the platform and the trains themselves.

A couple of years ago I blogged about an '85 Turbo Coupe and I made reference to what a seismic improvement in overall curb appeal these cars were over the '83 jellybeans that never rowed my boat.  Nice to see that I believe I was dead on. The slicing, dicing, kneading, cajoling and bobbing they did to the sheet metal on these cars turned what I thought then and still do now was a misshapen automobile that I could possibly, given the right circumstances of course, actually live with. While still a far cry from a Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS, Oldsmobile 4-4-2 of the same vintage or even a Buick Grand National, again, never say never.

The first Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe debuted along with the new for '83 "Aero" bird and was stuffed with, of all things, a turbocharged version of Ford's misbegotten "Lima", 2.3 liter, SOHC, inline four-cylinder engine. Shout to O-H-I-O, "Lima" refers to the fair Northwest Ohio city of Lima  where the engine was built. It was also the hometown setting for the Fox TV series, "Glee".

Making all of one hundred and forty five horsepower and two hundred forty pounds of torque,  it was even a far cry from the relative tire-shredder that Buick's turbo V-6 "T-Type" was to say nothing of Ford's own god's-green-earth V-8 powered Mustang GT. While it's safe to say that a Mustang and Thunderbird buyer were mutually exclusive, you have to fathom that a Thunderbird buyer would also have cross shopped the similarly themed GM makes and models. Their top of the line sporty models, again, save for the Buick, all having more powerful and smoother V-8 engines.

Thing is, Ford didn't see the this Thunderbird so much as competition for the GM makes and models but keeping up with the likes of Audi, BMW and Mercedes. Yeah, I know. Oh, the things we convince ourselves of so we can sleep at night.

Can't say I blame them given how much advanced technical gobble-dee-gook Ford baked into this car compared to what GM was doing at the time. ABS brakes, electronically controlled suspension, a really sweet clutch and five-speed transmission and of course the turbo inline-four rather than a four-barrel V-8 or turbo V-6. Thing is, GM was about to get out of the rear-wheel drive luxury\muscle car market while Ford, not sure if it was a good thing or not seeing big coupe sales were already sliding south, was "all-in" on staying the course. What's more seeing that even by the time the first of these '87's were about to roll out of Dearborn the MN12's were already making sneak-peaks and word had gotten out that the wobbly-kneed Lima turbo-four was to be replaced by a supercharged 3.8 liter V-6.

Purportedly the "High Output" V-8 used in the Mustang GT would turn the Thunderbird into a gas guzzler but that doesn't make any sense seeing that Lincoln had already been using it in their version of the Thunderbird since 1986. Putting my 1980's goggles on I can only hypothesize that Ford didn't want to use their V-8 in the Thunderbird for fear that it would make the Thunderbird more alluring to Mustang buyers. It's a head scratcher that's all but been made irrelevant by the passage of time. Lots  and lots of time.

Still, in hindsight, the 1987 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe was a most handsome updating of the original Aero 'Bird from 1983. And one, honestly, that could handle the tail lights off a Monte Carlo or 4-4-2 and with a better ride. Of course, given a choice between those cars and one of these I think you know what I'd spend my money on. Get one of these reasonably priced - this thing here was listed at around, I kid you not, twenty grand, and swap in a period correct "5.0 H.O." and you've got a real runner.