The MN-12 Ford Thunderbird. It’s almost a forgotten car at this point…the few I see still running around are on their fourth or fifth owners or they are rotting behind a building somewhere. Shame, really…4.6L V8, independent rear, and an available third pedal on certain models in a sleek two-door body ought to add up to a slam-dunk option for a build, right? Not so much. We’ve seen some decent Thunderbirds crop up once every blue moon or so, but for the most part they don’t happen. Lohnes might be thrilled to death with that…he’s hated just about every T-bird after 1958 that wasn’t attached to Bill Elliott or Bob Glidden…but I’m always disappointed that I don’t see more of them.

Then I see that there’s an early MN12 T-bird in our project files wearing 1990s Mustang Cobra wheels. Hmm, not a bad start, I think. Whose car is it? Jim Forbes. Jim is one of those guys in our forums who simply does. We might talk about what we’re going to build…meanwhile, as we’re jawjacking about how we’d do it, he’s the guy who would have the car blown apart and would be busy with the upgrades before anybody knew what happened. We know it’ll be fast…everything that man has touched that we’ve seen has been quick, from his Nova gasser that’s a Drag Week veteran to his ’55 Chevy, a car I first met at Bonneville damn near a decade ago now.

Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news to you tried-and-true Blue Oval types, but…well, we promise the car will be quick enough to run at the upcoming Roadkill Zip-Tie Drags in Tucson, Arizona. We can’t promise that you’ll like the methodology. But we highly doubt that matters to Jim.  At least someone is doing something with a 1990s Thunderbird that we approve of!

BangShift Project Files: The Turdbird