Mel46 wrote:The T Bird was a great car until it became too big. It took Ford quite awhile to realize that you buy a sporty looking car because it is sporty looking, not because you want a family T-Bird. The same went for the Mustang. The 1971 Mustang was a truck with no rear view. I had multiple Mustangs and that particular year sucked the worst.
Mission creep. The original T was a great car - and frankly more sporting than the Corvette of the same era.
But, dealers reported too many people looked at them and said, "Can't do it. No back seat."
Meantime, Robert MacNamara, later to be the brains behind Johnson's Splendid Little War...he hated the T. It had its own production lines. The body was made by (IIRC) Briggs, for Ford. He wanted Ford to make ONE car, and he wanted it to be like the Falcon. An appliance.
Putting the Squarebird (the name Ford fans have for the first Big Bird) on a modified Ford chassis, saved money. Platform-sharing, or Badge-engineering...whichever term you like.
Now it was a four-seater, and the novelty sold them for a few years. Later the dripping bling brought a new buyer - the same buyers who would go for the Grand Prix or Monte Carlo. That market, too, would be exhausted; and by this time, Lido Iacocca, lover of big, big cars, was in control. So the Bird grew bigger...until it didn't appeal to anyone, except Mark III buyers.
Badge-engineering the Torino into a downsized Bird saved it for a few years, but that was just novelty, again. By this time, the memories of the original T-Bird were fading.
So...in trying to satisfy potential buyers who gave a flippant reason not to buy a Thunderbird...they lost sight of the original market.
