TBT: New Aerodynamic Design Gets T-Bird Flying Again

The Ford Thunderbird has a storied legacy with Ford Motor Company beginning in the 1950s, but by the early 1980s, sales had dipped drastically. Finally, however, a new aerodynamic design revived the T-Bird’s fortunes and kept the venerable Ford soaring for years.

The 1983 Thunderbird marked Ford’s continued departure from boxy, hard-edged designs and was previously seen in the 1979 Mustang and continued with the 1986 Taurus. The pivot to aerodynamic design, already popular in Europe, not only revived the Thunderbird, but would save Ford from financial trouble. It also helped the company meet increasing demand for improved fuel economy.

Development work on the 1983 Thunderbird and its Mercury counterpart, the Cougar, started in the late 1970s, and early feedback was promising. A 3/8-scale model, code-named “luxury aero car,” received enthusiastic support from company leaders, while panelists in a consumer research clinic in June 1980 mobbed a full-sized fiberglass model when it was shown.

The shape of the all-new Thunderbird was refined 800 times in its five years of development, a benefit of more than 500 hours of wind tunnel testing, which was not yet readily available in the 1980s. Ford tested the car at both Maryland Aeronautics Lab in Baltimore and at the Lockheed Aircraft facility in Marietta, Georgia. The resulting drag coefficient was 17% better than the previous model year, leading to a 2 mpg increase in fuel efficiency in highway driving.

Aerodynamic features included a sloping hood, tapered fenders and quarter panels, a sharply-raked windshield, contoured parking lamps and an integrated decklid spoiler. The car’s windshield wipers were also relocated out of view – and away from the flow of air passing over the car. With the design changes, the car was also expected to appeal to a younger demographic – the median age of its buyers was expected to be almost 10 years younger than the previous model year buyers, according to a marketing manual from that time.

The Thunderbird came with a standard 3.8-liter V6, while the sportier Thunderbird Turbo Coupe that came two months later offered a turbocharged 2.3-liter, four-cylinder engine – the company’s first use of a “blow-through” design for the turbo. The Turbo Coupe also marked a Ford first for a new rear suspension, the Quadra Shock, a four-bar link, coil-spring suspension.

The car quickly earned praise from auto enthusiast publications such as MotorTrend, which wrote “enter the brave new ‘Bird for 1983, the car that has the potential to blow a huge hole through the middle of the competition in the mid-sized specialty car segment.”

The new Thunderbird did exactly that. The new-age design helped to more than double Thunderbird’s 1982 sales figures in its first year. Then, in both 1984 and 1985, Ford sold more than 150,000 Thunderbirds and went on to lead the mid-specialty market segment each year through 1988. The aerodynamic Thunderbirds were also a hit on racetracks, highlighted by driver Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Cup Series championship in 1988.

Thunderbird and Cougar went on sale in February 1983 and the company quickly had 70,000 orders for the cars. The reinvigorated Thunderbird would average sales of more than 100,000 units each year and remained a staple of the Ford lineup until it was discontinued in 1997. It returned as a concept vehicle in 1999, with a new production version of the iconic two-seater debuting in 2001. It was again produced until 2005.