Me & My Car: Pleasanton man owns first-, last-generation Thunderbirds

Looking back, I think it’s fair to say that up until 1953-1955, the American auto industry was pretty bland.

General Motors was clearly the leader, selling approximately twice as many vehicles as Ford, and Ford was selling approximately twice as many vehicles as Chrysler. All three companies built nice family cars — sedans and wagons, with the most glamorous always being a convertible.

Then General Motors upset the apple cart when in January 1953 the first Chevrolet Corvette was introduced at GM’s Motorama Show in New York. It created a lot of excitement and interest around the world, and I suspect it also created some panic at the Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford set a goal for a true sports car for the 1955 model year.

The idea for the Thunderbird came from George Walker and Louis Crusoe. Their concept was a two-passenger car with a convertible top using as many off-the-shelf parts as possible. It wasn’t to be a radically styled car but one that would have the Ford look so car people would immediately recognize it as a Ford product.

A normal challenge when a new model comes out is what to call it. Some of the thousands of rightly rejected names were Beaver, Detroiter, Runabout and Tropicale. Louis Crusoe proposed a contest for the name and promised a $250 suit ($2,882in 2023 dollars) to the winner. Ford stylist Alden Giberson won with “Thunderbird” and probably became one of the best dressed men at Ford.

Thunderbird made its first public appearance on Feb. 20, 1954, at the first postwar auto show in Detroit. It was priced at $2,695 to $4,000 ($30,836 to $45,768 in 2023 dollars), and it was an immediate hit. It wasn’t like a Corvette at all but was more of a personal luxury car that created a new marketing segment separate from Corvette.

This was the first generation of T-Birds, from 1955 through 1957. According to automotive experts, there have now been 11 generations of Thunderbird, but I disagree. I consider only the first and 11th generations true Thunderbirds. The first and last generations are the only ones in which the Thunderbird is a two-seater. The rest are nice cars with the Thunderbird name on them but, in my book, not true Thunderbirds.

I think Pleasanton’s Ronald Wacek, who owns a first- and last-generation Thunderbird would agree. He has been a fan of the T-Bird since he was 7 years old. At that time, he was living with an aunt and uncle who owned a café/gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway.

“One day a cool car drove in, and a Navy officer got out and went in for a bite to eat,” Wacek said. “I went over to check the car out. It had no back seat, and it had a big black phone in it! It must have been for military communications. I just said, ‘Wow’ to myself and thought that one day maybe I could have a car like that with a phone in it.”

The dream never left him. While in high school in 1967, Wacek borrowed $1,200 from his stepmother.

“I bought the first early ‘Bird that I saw. It had a dull red paint job, the driver’s door was stuck, but heck, I could call the car mine, so I slid in through the passenger door and drove it home.”

It had the model’s standard 292-cubic-inch V8 engine with a three-speed floor-manual transmission plus overdrive.

“But it was tired,” Wacek said. “It needed paint and an interior. It was needy.”

The owner had his share of mechanical challenges. The self-taught mechanic did most of the work himself. He did about 10 transmission jobs before learning of a defect in the bell housing. It has been painted four different colors.

“In the ’80s, I went to a GM light yellow paint color. I also put a porthole kit in and continued to use it as my daily driver. The ’80s also found me with a starter wife and mortgage, so car activities were curtailed.