Car of the Week: Bill Scaffidi's 1955 Ford Thunderbird

mongooz

mongooz

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(unfortunately, not a lot of pics)

According to Barb, the “advertisement” was really just a photograph of a 1955 T-Bird body. “It wasn’t a finished car back then,” Barb explained. “It was the bare frame of a first-year Thunderbird and a lot of pieces, of which many came to him in buckets.”

The T-Bird was purchased and kept in the family garage. “It was just a two-car garage and filled with all kinds of household necessities,” Barb recalled. “The T-Bird was his retirement project. It was a former drag racing car and needed a lot of attention. It had the wrong motor and transmission, a roll bar and parking lights that were welded shut.”

Barb said her dad worked on this car for at least 25 years before he turned it over to others who finished restoring it to its original glory. Throughout the years, Bill was engaged in bringing parts and pieces back home. He practically “lived” in the basement or garage where he tinkered with the T-Bird and its parts, even during the ice-cold and snowy Wisconsin winters.

read more: https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-bill-scaffidis-1955-ford-thunderbird
 
That's a beauty.
It's a shame Ford didn't try to make Thunderbird keep pace with the evolution of the Corvette for styling and performance over the years.
 
Tig said:
'55 is my favorite year of the T-bird.
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mine too.

same goes for the '55 Chevy.
there's a guy who lives around here who has, and drives daily, a Rat '55 Gasser. with the high front end and the mini beer keg gas tank in front of the grill and the fat cheeters and chrome reverse wheels.....the whole enchilada. and it's cool, and he gets into it. :thu:

i'm guessing it's some kind of small block, prolly a juiced up 350, because if he was jumpin' on it and it had a 427 in it.....you'd know it!!
 
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That's a very nice looking vehicle. I would love to take it for a Sunday drive up the coast.
 
Andrew Sak said:
The T-bird.
With that extra clearance, the Gasser looks like it's ready for a race in the L.A. river basin(aka Tbunder Road in the movie Grease).
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they did that back in the day to get the weight shifted to the back tires, so they wouldn't spin so much and grab instead.
back then, they didn't have ladder bars or traction bars or really any good tire compounds. so put as much weight as you can on the back and still control the car.
 
mongooz said:
they did that back in the day to get the weight shifted to the back tires, so they wouldn't spin so much and grab instead.
back then, they didn't have ladder bars or traction bars or really any good tire compounds. so put as much weight as you can on the back and still control the car.
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That's a much better reason than trying to look cool.

Did the T-bird ever have a production model with a rear mounted engine? The car in the OP originally had the engine under the hood?
 
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