![]() While our car has both tops, the hard top is the NON-porthole flavor - a no-extra-cost option that carried through into 1957. If anything, that package should lower the car’s value.įirst-generation T-Bird buyers like their trinkets - the more the merrier - and if they are not authentic, such as the often-seen 1961–63 vintage Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels, that’s fine with most. Our example is not equipped with power steering or power brakes - just a Town and Country signal-seeking radio, Ford-O-Matic, both types of tops and wire basket wheel covers. Then it hammered sold for $90,000 ($95k with the juice). I grabbed a couple of block shots of the car after Mecum announced that the reserve was off. Then our white ’56 rolled up - I had to double-check it as a ’56 because of the non-porthole hard top - and it took off like a rocket. Another E-Bird was a strong sale at Mecum Kansas City last year at $139,920, and I haven’t seen a driver-grade car cross the block lately. I moved on and picked a less-than-spectacular ’57 E-Bird, simply because it seems like everyone has restored these rare, dual 4-barrel-carb cars to be show winners. It was a very typical 1956 Thunderbird, nice but not stunning - and not overly glitzed-up. I looked at our subject car, but it didn’t strike me as any big shakes, and I moved on. I didn’t know that I’d end up profiling the car for SCM, but I did want to write up a 1955–1957 T-Bird for my report on this auction, as there were several crossing the block during the sale. I was back in Kansas City on December 3, 2011, and our subject T-Bird was about to cross Mecum’s auction block. ![]() These cars seem to be stuck in a value time warp, as they did a meteoric rise in value in the mid-1970s and have stagnated since then - for the most part. In fact, within the past two years, I’ve seen less-than-proud-but-running ’55 T-Birds sell for as low as $15k. Now, 32 years later, two-seater T-Bird values haven’t changed all that much - although $15k will get you one-quarter of the nicest ’56 Crown Victoria on the planet - or the four nicest 1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VIs. That said, $15k would also get you a typical 1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI brand-new off the showroom floor - and $15k would also get you the three nicest 1956 Ford Fairlane Crown Victorias on the planet - which was more my dad’s style. In 1980, $15k would get you a very respectable first-generation T-Bird. My dad thought I was nuts to drop $30 on a book, let alone a book on T-Birds, a car he never really warmed to (and he has only once NOT gone to the Ford dealer for a new vehicle in his whole life).īack then, that book was a landmark reference on first-generation T-Birds, and it was written in 1973, when the first generation T-Bird initially caught on in the budding collector car market. While on the road, we stopped at a mall in Kansas City, where I bought a copy of THUNDERBIRD! An Illustrated History of the Ford T-Bird by Ray Miller and Glenn Embree. ![]() In 1980, I had just earned my driver’s license and was on a family vacation. This car, Lot S69.1, sold for $95,000, including buyer’s premium, at Mecum’s Kansas City Auction on December 3, 2011. ![]()
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