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Rough Start: Making A Bird Of Prey Out Of A Thunderbird


Rough Start: Making A Bird Of Prey Out Of A Thunderbird

Call me a downer, but I believe we are seeing the end of the Second Musclecar Era. It was a good run, and as gearheads we should feel blessed that we have so much to choose from for builds. Look at the engine selections: 840-horse V8s, 500-horsepower plus V6s, four-bangers that would stomp any V8 from the 1980s…feel lucky to have been a part of this. Junkyards are a veritable farm, and it’s harvest season, folks. So, with that on the mind, I want to offer up a potential build. One on the cheap. One that wouldn’t take much, if any, work to bolt in and nothing more than the usual ECU tweaking or replacement to make feasible. Are you game?

The subject of this experiment is a derelict 1996 Ford Thunderbird LX. Yeah, these don’t have much of a following past die-hards, do they? After the Thunderbird line abandoned just about all sporting pretense in the mid-1960s, it never really got the swagger of the original cars back. It is kind of hard to go from Corvette fighter to “sporting limo” to disco barge and not have a reputation issue. Ford tried like hell starting in 1983…the Aero Birds kicked ass in NASCAR, and the MN-12 platform cars did well. But on the streets? Meh. The 1989-1997 Thunderbird didn’t really resonate with many past your Aunt Judy, the one who wanted to be sporty but thought a Mustang was too juvenile and thought a BMW was too yuppie. Hot rodder fodder, these are not.

 

I disagree. The 1994-1997 cars used the two-valve 4.6 Modular V8…which means that the current Coyote engine shouldn’t present a problem whatsoever. That 205-horsepower lump of a 4.6 needs to go serve anchor duty on a small fishing vessel. A Boss 302-spec Coyote engine and six-speed manual transmission in a car as unassuming as a T-bird is only part of the equation. Add in performance suspension parts meant for a Terminator Cobra, re-shoot the paint on this sun-scorched example, hit up The Driveshaft Shop for axle shafts that will work with the Thunderbird’s wider stance, and you’ll end up with something that will take on a road course with ease before stretching out on the Interstate. And if there is one thing Aunt Judy did get right about choosing one of these, it’s that they are comfortable inside. Plenty of room to stretch out.

Starting with an unloved $2,000 car that could probably be talked down, imagine what you could get this MN-12 to do for the cost of a seven-year-old Mustang GT. If we had a Coyote engine sitting on standby, we wouldn’t be able to start this project fast enough.

Facebook Marketplace link: 1996 Ford Thunderbird LX


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2 thoughts on “Rough Start: Making A Bird Of Prey Out Of A Thunderbird

  1. Tedly

    The 4.6 DOHC will fit with about 1/4 inch of clearance from the shock towers, I’m still not sure about the Coyote, but it’s really close. The front suspension takes up a lot of room under the hood, a tradeoff for how well these handle and how comfy they are. Still, a centrifugal on a decent 4.6 DOHC will be more than enough to scare you.

    All kinds of little tricks and tweaks you can do to these to up the fun factor, a lot of it from scrounging junkyards.

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