NASCAR HISTORY: The Great Cars; Ford Thunderbird

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

May 9, 2001

DEARBORN, Mich. -Thunderbird was a fast classic. And a fast classic. Car enthusiasts took to its styling as quickly as Thunderbird took to racing on the beaches of Daytona, the salt flats of Utah and the race tracks of NASCAR.

Ford introduced the two-seat "personal car" in 1955 and by the next year was the fastest car in the standing mile, reaching 88.779 miles per hour during Speed Weeks in Daytona, Fla. In 1957, a Thunderbird "Battlebird" was clocked at 160.356 mph in the flying mile.

Two years later, Thunderbird was competing in NASCAR, scoring a very impressive six victories in its first season. A Thunderbird almost won the very first Daytona 500, but Johnny Beauchamp, it was finally determined days afterward, finished second to Lee Petty in a photo finish that is still talked about more than 40 years later. Thunderbird also competed in the 1960 and '61 seasons, and then disappeared from the stock-car circuit for more than 15 years.

In the late 1950s and early '60s, Thunderbird was flying across Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. In 1959, L.W. Farrington reached 173 mph to shatter a record, and in '63, Farrington's Thunderbird achieved 241 mph to establish another mark.

When Thunderbird returned to NASCAR, it quickly scored its first victory in the Great American Race. Bobby Allison - driving a Diamond Jubilee Edition Thunderbird commemorating Ford Motor Company's 75th anniversary - started 33rd and moved to the front by the 72nd lap. In a race that featured 38 lead changes among just six drivers - Allison, Buddy Baker, A.J. Foyt, David Pearson, Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough - Allison won by a healthy 33.2 seconds. To this day, no driver has started further back and won the Daytona 500. Allison, who hadn't won a race since 1975, would take his Thunderbird to victory lane four more times in '78, five more times in '79 and three times in '80.

Thunderbird took on a new look in the early 1980s. The "Aerobird" was an aerodynamic innovation. Buddy Baker scored the first victory in the next generation Thunderbird, winning at Daytona on July 4, 1983. A young driver named Bill Elliott would win his first NASCAR Winston Cup race later that year, three more in 1984 and 11 - all on superspeedways to set a record - in '85. Elliott won 40 races in a Thunderbird from 1983 to '94 and won the points championship in 1988, the first by a Ford driver since David Pearson in 1969.

During the 1980s, Thunderbird also achieved tremendous success in drag racing. Thirty of Bob Glidden's 85 career victories were with a Thunderbird, and Glidden, a 10-time NHRA champion, named an '87 Thunderbird as his favorite car. Glidden drove Thunderbirds to championships in 1985, '86, '87, and '88. In 1985, Glidden covered the quarter-mile drag strip in Pomona, Calif., in 7.557 seconds - in a Thunderbird - to set Pro Stock record, and then bettered that mark later that year in Reading, Penn., and again in '86 in Indianapolis.

Alan Kulwicki drove Thunderbird to the NASCAR points championship in 1992, the same year Ford won its first manufacturers' championship in 23 years. That year, Thunderbird won 16 of 29 races. Thunderbird would deliver manufacturers' championships to Ford again in 1994, when it won a modern-era 20 of 31 races, and '97, when it won 19 of 32, to establish a standard for Ford's next NASCAR entry, the Taurus, which was introduced in '98 and scored titles for Ford in '99 and 2000.

Text provided by Greg Shea

Editors Note: To view hundreds of hot racing photos and art, visit The Racing Photo Museum and the Visions of Speed Art Gallery.