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Final Parking Space: 1969 Ford Thunderbird Two-Door Landau
With the new Ford Mustang and Mercury Cougar luring away potential Thunderbird buyers during the middle of the 1960s, the suits in Dearborn decided their best move would be to pump up the T-Bird’s size and opulence. The fifth-generation Thunderbird was built for the 1967 through 1971 model years, and I’ve found a very solid example in a San Francisco Bay Area car graveyard.
This generation of Thunderbird was the first (and last) to be available with four doors. It went to a body-on-frame chassis after nearly a decade of unibody Thunderbird construction.
It was bigger and heavier than its predecessors, but the T-Bird would get larger still for 1972.
This car has the Thunderbird symbol in just about every possible location.
The 1967-1968 Thunderbirds got 390- or 428-cubic-inch FE-series V-8 engines. Late in the 1968 model year, the old FE was replaced by the new 385-series engine: a Thunder-Jet 429 rated at 360 horsepower.
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This four-barrel-equipped, premium-gas-drinking brute remained the Thunderbird’s only available engine through the 1971 model year. For 1972, the switch from gross to net power ratings plus an emissions-mandated compression drop from 10.5:1 to 8.5:1 brought the Thunderbird 429’s rated output down to 212 horses (at that point, the Cleveland-derived 400 became the T-Bird’s base engine while the 429 and its 460 big brother became options).
390s and 428s tend to get grabbed out of junkyards quickly, but the 429s and 460s often go to the crusher these days. A high-compression four-barrel 429 like this one might get rescued, though. It would be just the thing to bolt into a (smog-exempt in California) 1972-1975 LTD Country Squire.
A three-speed automatic was the mandatory gearbox in this generation of Thunderbird. 1960 had been the last model year for a manual-equipped T-Bird, with three-pedal rigs not returning until the debut of the Fox Thunderbird in the 1983 model year.
This was a big, fast machine, and it boasted a very generous helping of Detroit personal luxury inside.
The base MSRP for this car was $4979, or about $43,857 in 2025 dollars. This car has some pricey options that pushed the cost up quite a bit higher; the air conditioning added $427 to the price tag, for example (that’s about $3785 after inflation).
The clock was standard equipment.
An AM radio was base equipment, but the replacement of the original audio system with this El Cheapo™ 1990s cassette deck means that we’ll never know what originally lived in this car’s dash.
I predict that the hidden-headlight hardware will be purchased soon.
I left those behind for the eBay sellers who prowl this yard, but I did buy the sequential-taillight mechanism in the trunk. I’ll use it to control flashing marker lights on my next car-parts boombox.
It’s a very complete late-1960s personal luxury coupe with no rust, a mighty big-block engine, and a pretty nice interior, but this generation of T-Bird doesn’t get the enthusiast love of its predecessors and so it ended up in its final parking space.
I often bring an old film camera with me on my junkyard expeditions, and in this case, that camera was a 1910s Kodak No. 2A Folding Autographic Brownie (with a serious dust problem I can’t seem to eradicate). If I’d known that I’d be shooting a Thunderbird, I’d have brought along my 1962 Brumberger Thunderbird camera, a hilariously low-quality unit from Brooklyn that featured unlicensed use of the Ford Thunderbird logo on its face.
Do you want the Hot Bird or the Cool Bird?
Last week it was a Lincoln and now a Ford? Is Murilee deliberatly trying to torment Sajeev?
100% yes. You should see the text messages between us.
So are you in discussions to save a ’69 Thunderbird. Body looks decent.
That would be a negative.
With a factory rating of 360/480 those early Thunder Jets are nothing to sneeze at. I can think of more than one car I wouldn’t mind dropping it into. I’ll be having those faux landau bars too. They should work just fine on the hearse conversion XK-E. Who doesn’t love ‘Harold and Maude’ ?
Hopefully, someone will rescue this beauty and restore it to its original beauty.
Unfortunately, self-serve salvage yards need a resale license to sell what they pick up – and most do not. And the ones that do will attempt to sell the car as a whole ONLY IF a title came with it. When the car is dropped in the lot, it’s a done deal – sold as parts only😒And in this case, really sad, too. Murilee, you’re quite correct. Going by your pics, it’s very complete and in decent shape.
So you buy all of the parts in a batch load and straighten out the title legalities later. Worst case you unbatch the parts and resell
I see a lot of basket cases in this series but that car is 100% salvageable
I truly appreciate your B&W photography with a real camera and real film, then make the magic in the darkroom.
FWIW, just watched Derek Bieri rescue a 68 TBird back to the Road Worthiness.
To be honest, I develop the film myself but I haven’t made darkroom prints for quite a few years. I scan the negatives and work with the images digitally from that point. You can develop black-and-white film in a sink but making real prints on photo paper is a lot more work.
It’s certainly interesting when one takes the long view of a brand like the Thunderbird. What it started out as aspiring to be, then how it continually transformed in an attempt to maintain some relevancy. Even up until is most recent redo, the question can always be asked…what are you trying to be?
I wonder if it had intermittent wipers? We had them on a 69 LTD
What’s the name of this junkyard?
I inherited Mom’s 67 TBird 4 door and am very interested in a 429 to replace the worn out 390. Mom drove this car from the dealership new in 67 until 1989!