1956 Ford Thunderbird

The Ford Thunderbird has been around for a long time and we hope this TB also will be. It is one of 5 "Hot Rod Machines" released within weeks of each other. The only mission of the Thunderbird TB is to bring smiles to cachers as they move it along from cache to cache

The Thunderbird went on sale October, 1954, and quickly overwhelmed the Corvette in sales volume. Ford had thought it would sell about 10,000 examples that first year, but found itself unable to keep up with demand. Production of the "55" ran deep into September of 1955 when other 1956 models were already in showrooms. With such a solid start, Ford saw little reason to screw with the Thunderbird formula when it was time to develope the 1956 models. A "Continental Kit" was now standard that mounted the spare tire outboard of the car on the rear bumper. This cleared up more space for luggage in the shallow trunk, but made accessing that trunk more difficult because cargo now needed to be hoisted around the spare tire. The other big change was the addition of optional circular "portholes" in the fiberglass roof that eliminated some serious blind spots in the car. There were also new vents in the front fenders to bleed off heat before it cooked the driver's and passenger's feet into hams. Vent wing windows were also new and the car could be had in more colors and some two-tone paint schemes. But the best news was a new optional 312 cubic-inch version of Ford's OHV V8 that was rated at a throaty 215 hp when inhaling through a four-barrel carb and backed by an overdrive manual transmission. That output swelled to 225 hp when the 312 was mated to the Ford-O-Matic. Output of the standard 292 V8 rose to an even 200 hp and it was only available with the three-speed manual transmission.