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The Ford Thunderbird is a personal luxury car manufactured and marketed by Ford Motor Company for model years 1955 to 2005, with a hiatus from 1998–2001.. Ultimately gaining a broadly used colloquial nickname, the T-Bird, Ford Introduced the model as a two-seat convertible, subsequently offering it variously in a host of body styles including as a four-seat hardtop coupe, four-seat ...
The first generation of the Ford Thunderbird is a two-seat convertible produced by Ford for the 1955 to the 1957 model years, the first 2-seat Ford since 1938. It was developed in response to the 1953 Motorama display at the New York Auto Show, which showed the Chevrolet Corvette.
The Automatic Safety Transmission (AST) was a tangent outgrowth of this work. The AST was a semi-automatic transmission using planetary gears and conventional friction clutch, requiring the driver to use the clutch to shift into or out of gear, but not between the two forward gears. Oldsmobile offered the AST from 1937 to 1939, while Buick ...
A Toploader transmission is a manually shifted gearbox design built in three-speed and four-speed configurations, introduced in 1963 by the Ford Motor Company to replace the BorgWarner T-10. It was used in most Fords and Mercurys from 1964 until 1973, as well as in some foreign models, and is officially designated the 3.03 three speed or Ford ...
In addition, small but important changes to shift linkages, better build quality, and stricter tolerances restored Packard levels of reliability to the 1956 transmission. Also new that year was an aluminum transmission casing, making the Ultramatic 90 lb (41 kg) lighter than its competition, including the newly-launched push-button Chrysler ...
Pushing a button on the shift control preselected the chosen gear. The electrical circuit was closed only after the driver fully depressed the clutch pedal. This energized the appropriate transmission mounted solenoids necessary for returning the transmission to neutral and then completing engagement of the preselected gear.
Although the 1955–1957 Ford Thunderbird had proved successful (in comparison to the Chevrolet Corvette), Ford executives—particularly Robert McNamara—still felt its overall sales volume had room to improve. Market research suggested sales of the Thunderbird were limited by its two-seat configuration, making it unsuitable for families.
The American Ford line of cars gained a new body for 1955 to keep up with surging Chevrolet and Plymouth, although it remained similar to the 1952 Ford underneath. The Mileage Maker I6 was bumped up to 223 CID (3.7 L) for 120 hp (89 kW) and the new-for-1954 Y-block V8 was now offered in two sizes: Standard Fords used a 272 CID (4.5 L) version with 162 hp (121 kW) with 2-barrel carburetor and ...