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.