The Sports Car Market/American Car Collector guide has a top price of $41,700. However, if a VTCI Senior Award is dated within the past year or two, it can be a rubber stamp for a top car.Ī cursory inspection showed our subject car to be restored and in number 1 condition, but the SCM Pocket Price Guide - and other guides - do not put it at a $90,000 estimated value. Granted, if it were awarded in 1985, that’s white noise in the background, and the car needs to be inspected to see how far it has unwound. The award helps verify the car’s condition. So, if you say your Thunderbird has earned a VTCI Senior award, people tend to notice. VTCI is one of the major T-Bird clubs, and it is well established - even outside of T-Bird circles. Would that make it worth $90k? This is the closest reason to say… maybe. The car had won a Vintage Thunderbird Club International Senior award. Besides, the “three-legged dog” contingent that would want a non-porthole car just because it’s an oddity is pretty small - and the supply of cars is pretty large, so it’s a non-issue. But would that make it worth $90k? Heck no! When you think ’56 T-Bird, a white porthole top car with Suzanne Somers behind the wheel - right from “American Graffiti” - comes to mind. While our car has both tops, the hard top is the NON-porthole flavor - a no-extra-cost option that carried through into 1957. If anything, that package should lower the car’s value.įirst-generation T-Bird buyers like their trinkets - the more the merrier - and if they are not authentic, such as the often-seen 1961–63 vintage Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels, that’s fine with most. Our example is not equipped with power steering or power brakes - just a Town and Country signal-seeking radio, Ford-O-Matic, both types of tops and wire basket wheel covers. Then it hammered sold for $90,000 ($95k with the juice). I grabbed a couple of block shots of the car after Mecum announced that the reserve was off. Then our white ’56 rolled up - I had to double-check it as a ’56 because of the non-porthole hard top - and it took off like a rocket. Another E-Bird was a strong sale at Mecum Kansas City last year at $139,920, and I haven’t seen a driver-grade car cross the block lately. I moved on and picked a less-than-spectacular ’57 E-Bird, simply because it seems like everyone has restored these rare, dual 4-barrel-carb cars to be show winners. It was a very typical 1956 Thunderbird, nice but not stunning - and not overly glitzed-up. I looked at our subject car, but it didn’t strike me as any big shakes, and I moved on. I didn’t know that I’d end up profiling the car for SCM, but I did want to write up a 1955–1957 T-Bird for my report on this auction, as there were several crossing the block during the sale. I was back in Kansas City on December 3, 2011, and our subject T-Bird was about to cross Mecum’s auction block. These cars seem to be stuck in a value time warp, as they did a meteoric rise in value in the mid-1970s and have stagnated since then - for the most part. In fact, within the past two years, I’ve seen less-than-proud-but-running ’55 T-Birds sell for as low as $15k. Now, 32 years later, two-seater T-Bird values haven’t changed all that much - although $15k will get you one-quarter of the nicest ’56 Crown Victoria on the planet - or the four nicest 1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VIs. That said, $15k would also get you a typical 1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI brand-new off the showroom floor - and $15k would also get you the three nicest 1956 Ford Fairlane Crown Victorias on the planet - which was more my dad’s style. In 1980, $15k would get you a very respectable first-generation T-Bird. My dad thought I was nuts to drop $30 on a book, let alone a book on T-Birds, a car he never really warmed to (and he has only once NOT gone to the Ford dealer for a new vehicle in his whole life).īack then, that book was a landmark reference on first-generation T-Birds, and it was written in 1973, when the first generation T-Bird initially caught on in the budding collector car market. While on the road, we stopped at a mall in Kansas City, where I bought a copy of THUNDERBIRD! An Illustrated History of the Ford T-Bird by Ray Miller and Glenn Embree. In 1980, I had just earned my driver’s license and was on a family vacation. This car, Lot S69.1, sold for $95,000, including buyer’s premium, at Mecum’s Kansas City Auction on December 3, 2011.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |