I wish Ford still had a direct competitor to the Corvette

"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro) 01/31/2018 at 18:00 • Filed to: thunderbird, corvette, ford, chevrolet, what if, alternate history

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While Chevy did eventually come around to developing a “personal luxury car” too, the Corvette stuck around and doubled down on its desire to be a Real American Sports Car. If only Ford had decided to do both cars as well...

What if the Thunderbird had continued to be a Corvette fighter? How would it have evolved differently in this alternate timeline?

I think the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! gives us our first glimpse of what could have been. Sure, it already had the Grand National for a GM competitor, but with a little imagination, I picture a totally different car. Take out the T-bird’s rear seat, shorten the car by a couple of feet or so, make it lower to the ground, tweak the styling so that it doesn’t look like a total chop job, and see what that does for the car.

Or skip the Fox-body and do all that to the even-sleeker MN12. Easily the most aerodynamic of the Thunderbirds, and perhaps even more slippery than the C4 itself, I bet a smaller, shorter, lighter version of this would have made an excellent sports car.

lone_liberal > Urambo Tauro 01/31/2018 at 18:11

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But was the two-seat Thunderbird ever really a Corvette fighter? I know there was the odd race car here and there and a few supercharged examples but for the most part it seems like they were just smaller personal coupes.

PS9 > Urambo Tauro 01/31/2018 at 18:18

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Nah. Not having a vette in the lineup always meant ford had to try to make the mustang perform and be just as good. And look at the result; the GT350 is a legit alternative to the C7. They have no reason to give us an almost world-beating mustang if something else in their lineup can already do that (at a price point mere mortals can afford).

Audistein > lone_liberal 01/31/2018 at 18:18

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Yeah, the Thunderbird competed more with the Monte Carlo than the Corvette.

djmt1 > Urambo Tauro 01/31/2018 at 18:20

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I’m surprised they haven’t built a modern Cobra, just a couple of concepts every now and then. Maybe they can’t be bothered or maybe the production capacity just isn’t there. Maybe they could outsource it but then again RWD Ford powered V8 2 seaters don’t exactly grow on trees.

On a totally unrelated note I bet that new TVR would look good in blue with white stripes.

Especially with those side pipes.

beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard > lone_liberal 01/31/2018 at 18:23

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the first gen ones were, the rest weren’t really. They forked in directions, which is what the question was about I guess

DayManFighterOfTheNightMan > Urambo Tauro 01/31/2018 at 18:24

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You know what I really want? A good Mustang-based Sports sedan with either the 2.3L Ecoboost or their 2.7 L ecoboost V6 (5.0 Coyote would be amazing) with optional AWD and optional Automatic at a reasonable cost. And no, the Fusion Sport doesn’t count although I don’t mind a very similar interior.
Aka the Australian Ford Falcon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Falcon_(FG)

lone_liberal > Audistein 01/31/2018 at 18:25

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Even way before the Monte Carlo when the two-seat Thunderbird was available, back in the era when the T-Bird was supposedly a Corvette competitor I don’t think it was.

lone_liberal > beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard 01/31/2018 at 18:28

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What I’ saying is that I’m not so sure even the first gen (two-seat) T-Birds were actually directly competitive to Corvettes. They were more stylish cruisers with the odd “Battle Bird” thrown in to competition while the ‘Vette was a sports car that was widely raced.

beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard > lone_liberal 01/31/2018 at 18:31

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it wasn’t a clone, but it was a competitor. Two different ways of doing the same thing. It’s well established that Ford brought it out to compete on the salesfloor with the corvette.

boxrocket > DayManFighterOfTheNightMan 01/31/2018 at 19:49

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It still frustrates me that Ford went with the Volvo-based Taurus (nee Five Hundred) instead of making the Falcon domestically. Or maybe both. Falcon could have been a successor to the Crown Victoria and the Taurus could then better compete with the Avalon crowd.

shop-teacher > lone_liberal 01/31/2018 at 21:49

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I’m with you on this. Even the two seater ones were more about cruising in style, than being a true sports car.

RT > Urambo Tauro 02/01/2018 at 15:26

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It’s Chevy that changed, not Ford.

In the beginning, the Thunderbird and Corvette were both ‘personal luxury cars’. It was Chevy that changed its Corvette into a full-fledged sports car, while the Thunderbird continued down the same route as before.

TL;DR

Poliwhirl is the orignal two-seat personal luxury car duo.

Poliwrath is the T-bird, Politoed is the Corvette.

Urambo Tauro > RT 02/01/2018 at 15:50

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I have to disagree. I see Ford’s choice to add a back seat as the more radical departure here that helped define what we came to know as the Personal Luxury car. Chevy kept the ’Vette a two-seater, one of many choices that cemented the Corvette as more of a sports car (even if it wasn’t very sporty in those early years).

Not that 4-seater sports cars and 2-seater PLCs don’t exist... It’s just more characteristic for a sports car to abandon the rear seat altogether, and for the PLC to have one.

RT > Urambo Tauro 02/01/2018 at 16:06

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“I guess you could technically say the engine’s center of mass has been behind the front axles since the C2,” says GM’s Director of Performance Development, Jim Sloan.

GM’s front-mid-engine layout in the C2 was perhaps just as radical as the deletion of the back seats in the T-Bird. I’d personally consider it to be a much bigger change myself, as it was an alteration to the structural layout instead of a simple interior feature.

But GM still made Thunderbird rivals afterwards, they just weren’t called Corvettes. It was Ford that abandoned this market entirely. I’m guessing that’s why Ford gets the blame for ending the competition, even though both cars departed from the formula.