1956 T-Bird Story
When Ford Motor Company started rolling their Thunderbirds off the assembly line in late 1954, there was no doubt they had a hit on their hands. Scores of new and dedicated Ford customers loved the innovative, sporty look and had to make this new cool car all their own. This continued through 1956, when the design changes became quite evident to the car crazed public.
Los Angeles. The car was just a few months old. A former Marine and aerospace engineer, he had not yet met my mother (who was still in high school at this time) and probably had no idea he would be settling down in the next few years.
“Crazy George” as he was known in some circles, had owned Ford cars since he first got behind the wheel at 14 years of age. He attended Inglewood High School and crossed paths with Ed Iskendarian and Vic Edlebrock when he began hot-rodding his 1935 Ford five window coupe, 1936 Ford three window coupe, his 1939 Ford five window coupe and his 1940 Ford deluxe convertible. In other words, he had always felt compelled to make his cars “his own” by putting his customizations on them.
While his car looked sporty enough with its peacock body and white top, he slowly made changes to the car which would reflect his personality. First, because he claimed he had been on a ship in the Marine Corps for “too long” he decided to find someone with a ’55 Bird that wanted to trade tops. “No more portholes!”
Eventually there was a local guy who wanted to trade, but not before he had removed the fender skirts and flared the rear fenders to match the front ones. The turn signal lights were removed from the front and the stock grille was taken out and modified with horizontal chrome bars. When the grille was removed he decided that the trim around the grille had to go. That gave him the idea that the nose of a ’57 Thunderbird looked good, so he attached the stainless grille trim to the front of his car and welded it in to make the car look “nosed.” That started to look good to him, so he removed the insignia from above the grille, removed the grille from the front of the hood scoop and lengthened it four inches.
While he was in the trim removal mode, he removed the hash mark trim from both front fenders as well as the Ford logo insignias. The front fender mounted fixed antenna was removed and a retractable Cadillac antenna was mounted on the passenger rear fender.
By late 1958 he had met my mother, who had recently graduated from Burroughs’s High School in Burbank. She thought he was a pretty cool guy with his flat top haircut and his neatly polished Florsheim shoes. They married shortly thereafter and he was still interested in customizing his car and began another car project as well; a 1932 Ford V8 roadster.
With his interest divided between two cars, the Thunderbird was still slowly evolving. The rear deck lid had the fuel filler door and key assembly filled in, with a push button solenoid in the cigarette lighter to open the trunk. The continental kit was removed and the spare mounted in the trunk. The tail light assemblies were removed and 1956 Mercury station wagon tail lights installed in their places. Both front and rear bumpers and guards were removed and 1955 Thunderbird front bumpers were installed on both front and rear of the car, sans bumper guards, and the bumper bolts were reverse welded to make the bumpers look smooth and clean.
A custom license plate holder was just the thing he needed to mask where the continental kit mount went, so he designed and built that from scratch. Also fearing stone chips, he designed and made stainless steel stone guards for the front lips of the rear wheel wells. With the wheel wells opened up he needed some classy wheel covers, so he chose 1956 Lincoln Mark II covers, which must have been the heaviest and most complex covers around at that time. With 40 individual fins each attached with two nuts, they were labor intensive to maintain.
While the engine was not modified in any way, there was little done to change the interior. The sun visors were removed and the holes filled in and the rear view mirror was removed and a small Jaguar XK 120 mirror mounted on the center trim screw at the bottom of the windshield. The windshield wiper arms were removed and chrome lugs attached for that all-too-cool hot rod look. Then the car was painted Cadillac bronze.
When I was born in January of 1960 I was brought home from the hospital in our T-Bird. The car then became my mom’s first car until 1966 when she got a new Mustang with pony interior and deluxe trim. The car was kept up and I was always told the car would someday be mine, but when it came time for me to have a car, the T-Bird was off-limits. Being a Ford family, I found a 1956 Ford Town Sedan (Buckskin tan and Colonial white) for sale by owner with just 32,000 miles on it. She was named Sherman after the tank. My car was totally stock and I kept it that way, not sharing my father’s passion for customizing cars.
On a handful of occasions I was allowed to drive the T-Bird to a high school function and even once with the top off! When I graduated from Redondo Union High School I thought the car would be mine, but my father thought it was too valuable to drive around every day, so the car sat some more. I did manage to take it out on a few dates, which were all too cool, since we were in a surf town and T-Birds were oh-so-cool.
In 2006 my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and it was apparent he would not be able to function on his own. He began receiving care and I contacted Rod at Prestige Thunderbird to inquire about restoring our car. My thought was at that time to restore the car and use it as a tool for my father’s memory, but during the restoration process he passed away.
I decided to keep the car modified as he had done it, retaining the original Peacock and Colonial colors which had graced it from the factory. Also, since I knew I wanted to drive the car, I added some creature comforts to make the driving experience all the better. Those changes include front wheel disc brakes, air conditioning and a CD changer in the trunk.
The car is all done and I have only taken it for a few short rides, but the memories have all been restored as well. It is a great feeling to have the car back and running again.
October 2009
