1971 Thunderbird two-door hardtop

This car was acquried in 1998 as a parts car for the 1971 Landau. (Which I rear-ended a Honda Accord with). After much consideration and with the encouragement of my friend and car buddy Jim Reid, I decided to keep this car.

Clockwise from top: 1971 Landau Special Brougham, 1971 two-door hardtop, 1969 Fordor Landau Brougham.

I have finally just finished a cosmetic restoration on this car. It took much longer than the Lincoln due to the perennial shortage of funds. The plan was to convert the car from a standard interior, vinyl topped car to a vinyl-less Special Brougham interior car.

As it turned out, that plan wasn't entirely feasible because the spare Special Brougham interior needed too much work to be correct. Consequently, I opted to keep and redo the original, standard interior and restore the rest of the car to its original condition, less the vinyl top.

And here's the result:

A 1971 two-door hardtop, with "rare" vinyl delete, standard interior, with A/C, power windows, vacuum locks (added), bumper guard package (front only), color keyed wheel covers (added), and body side moldings.

Along the way.....

Both birds in the nest while the fastback is having it's front end trim removed

Below, I've got the vinyl top pulled off (left) along with the driver's side trim.

I took every last bit of trim off the car, breaking only one piece. It was a pot-metal piece so repair was impossible. Though as it turned out, the break is nearly invisible when everything was reassembled. I also removed the decklid for easy access when painting around the trunk. One entire afternoon was spent just trying to remove the rear bumper. Access to the bolts is difficult. The trouble began when two of the capive nuts broke and the bolts just spun freely with the nuts attached. There was no easy way to grasp the nut to release the bolt. My stepdad fashioned a tool to fit through a tiny access hole and after much struggling we were finally able to loosen the bolts. I called it a day after that.

When the tailights were removed, mysterious factory marking were revealed. I was careful to instruct the painter to not paint this area. I also cleaned and painted the front wells and rechromed the rear bumper.

I spent an inordinate amount of time grinding and sanding on the rear vent panel behind the rear window. It is a piece that's embossed with the Cayman Grain pattern. In order to make this a vinyless car I had to grind the pattern out of the metal; easier said than done! Getting the pattern out took nearly two days of finding the right combination of tools and technique.

Here's the car coming back from the painter all naked of trim and interior:

All Done! Here I am installing the final piece on the car - the license plate!

When all was said and done, in addition to countless little things, it received new carpets, vacuum door locks, repaired windows, rebuilt antenna and clock, new factory AM-FM Stereo with hiddend CD Changer, color-keyed wheel covers, bumper guards, new chrome, repaired interior, and each piece of interior trim polished by hand.

More photos of the finished car:

October 2004: this car can now be seen in Alan Tast's new book, Thunderbird Fifty Years, page 99.