Days of Thunderbird
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Local club members dedicate themselves to the enjoyment of classic ’50s
automobile.
By Chris Boyd, Peninsula News
For three years in the 1950s, Ford Motor Co. produced a series of automobiles that captured a generation’s imagination. Almost 50 years after the last Ford Thunderbird rolled off the assembly line, a group of Peninsula residents and their friends continue to celebrate the legendary vehicles made in 1955, ’56 and ’57.
Most of the nearly 30 members in Thunderbirds of South Bay, a local club started by locals Richard Twohy and Jon Mandell that’s dedicated to the classic cars, were teenagers when they first laid eyes on the slick machines known as T-birds. From the confines of his tiny Iowa hometown, club member Fred Peitzman remembers seeing the church pastor driving around in a ’55 T-bird.
“I was in high school when they came out,” says Peitzman, whose red ’57 T-bird glimmers in the sun. “I thought that was the neatest thing I’d seen in my life.”
In 1957, fellow member Tom Reidt was a senior at Serra High School in Gardena. Some Serra students’ fathers purchased T-birds for their sons, and the young man drooled at the prospect. “I had the same thing, love at first sight,” he says with a grin.
Today, Reidt owns a sleek powder blue ’57 model that he purchased with money he pulled from the stock market just before the ’87 crash. It was a prophetic move. “Before I bought this, I had a dream of a powder blue Thunderbird,” he says.
Club co-presidents Bill Combs and Bobb Murphy, brothers who own a white ’56 T-bird, purchased the car for Murphy for his 80th birthday. “I just fell in love with it,” Murphy says.
“These cars are reminders of the good times we remember from the 1950s. Those were the days,” Combs says. “It was a time when you could actually work on your own cars, and some of our members still do.”
During their monthly meetings, club members discuss everything from repairing and maintaining their T-birds to displaying them at car shows. This past September, three members’ cars appeared in Palos Verdes’ annual Concours d’ Elegance, a show “intended to rival Pebble Beach,” Combs says. “When you show a car, the judges are looking at how clean the car is, how authentic it is.”
Though a few members display their cars in serious competitions, most simply show them off for enjoyment. Recently, members modeled their T-birds for a photo shoot outside the Palos Verdes Bowl in Torrance, which is remodeling with a ’50s theme.
Aficionados also model their vehicles at an annual Ford car show at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park and the Pageant of the Thunderbird in Anaheim. Other times they take field trips to places like Los Angeles’ Petersen Automotive Museum, which they’ll visit Jan. 15, or Ruby’s Diner in Redondo Beach, where members take their cars for summer cruising nights.
“The club has been involved in some pretty extensive trips,” Combs says. “It’s always something planned around the automobile.”
The T-bird
So what of this automobile that occupied just three years of Ford’s long manufacturing history? Only 53,166 of them made it off the assembly line, but some car buffs estimate that more than 30 percent of those vehicles survive today.
“It’s amazing how many of these cars are still on the road,” Combs says.
Like many cars, the T-bird needs to feel the pavement regardless of its age. “I drive mine usually once a week,” Peitzman says.
Says Reidt, “You’ve got to run these things.”
Running a T-bird can be an expensive proposition. Some of them cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 — there are less pricey models, but they may require extensive work.
Even when they came out, T-birds were not cheap. While the original invoice for Peitzman’s car totals just $3,622.64, “That was a lot of money in ’57,” he says. “These cars had features in them that are in luxury cars today.”
“It was sort of an answer to the Corvette,” which hit the automotive scene in ’53, Combs says.
T-bird buyers could choose from all sorts of options, including a Town & Country radio that automatically turned up the volume when the driver accelerated to compensate for the noise, power windows, power seats, power breaks and, yes, seatbelts. There also was an option that moved the seat back as soon as the driver cut the ignition to make it easier for folks to get out of the smallish vehicle.
“It’s tough getting in and out of these cars,” Peitzman says.
Of all the features, however, perhaps the slickest are the pointed fins on the rear of the ’57 model. “We grew up with fins,” Reidt says.
Whether it’s the flair of the fins or the way the old engines hum, T-birds hold a special place in many people’s hearts. Peitzman may best sum up the feelings of fellow T-bird aficionados: “To me, it’s just the most beautiful car that was ever built.”
For more information about Thunderbirds of South Bay, contact Bill Combs at (310) 373-7172.