If you browsed my most recent El Mirage gallery you had to have noticed photos of this wild custom ’62 Thunderbird. The Rocket Birds are kind of an acquired taste, and I happen to dig them to death; Lohnes, meanwhile, thinks the whole lot of ’em should find Titanic-adjacent parking. Yet even he had to admit that this car has a certain something.

When I first saw it I thought it was sheer greatness, but upon closer inspection I decided I could sure live without the enclosed front wheels, the second set of fins on the bottoms of the quarters, and the exhaust gills on the rockers. Upon further review I read on the car’s web site that it was intended to mimic what Ford would have built as a factory show car in the late ’50s. If that was the goal, they dead-on nailed it. Not all that older show-car stuff was 100 percent cool, and it was often overkill. 

What do you think? You at least have to give it credit for topping the Popular Mechanics list of Coolest Cars of SEMA and then showing up motoring on the dry-lake bed a week later.

See the entire story at the Thunder Flite web site, and hope that they never execute the paint-scheme drawings seen there.