1956 Ford Thunderbird, click picture to enlarge.The rivalry between the Ford Thunderbird and the Chevrolet Corvette has been the strongest of any other two cars ever made for people of my generation. This is a strange feat considering that the cars are not classed the same by the manufacturers. The Corvette has always been called an American Sports Car as opposed to a European Sports Car. The Thunderbird, on the other hand, was called a personal luxury car. It was called a personal car because it was first made as a one seater that could carry two people. To compare the two cars, at first the Thunderbird outsold the Corvette in 1955 and 56 but since then the Corvette has generally outsold the "T-bird" judging by the number of each car that you see while just driving around. Performancewise the Corvette has more power and speed than the Thunderbird and the Corvette has been more of a consistant production car than the Thunderbird since the Thunderbird was stopped and restarted a few times during the production years from 1955 through 2005. Even with these factors showing the Corvette to be the better performer in many categories I still liked the Thunderbird the best, probably because I am just a strong Ford man anyway.
The 1956 Thunderbird had an optional 312 cid engine but the standard engine was the 292 cid V-8 with a Ford-O-Matic transmission. The open top convertible, by far the most popular model, came with two tops, a removable hardtop and the conventionl cloth top. The hard top had a round port hole window on both sides of the rear of the top that made it very appealing to the public. The car had a 12 volt ignition system that was a change from the six volt systems of the 1955 series.
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Sincerely,
Maynard Wright, Georgia Boy
mrw-ss@hughesnet
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