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1. 2002 JOHNNY LIGHTNING 1962 FORD THUNDERBIRD UPGRADE
2. 2002 JOHNNY LIGHTNING 1962 FORD THUNDERBIRD FULL

The T-Bird’s 3.9 was rated at 252 horsepower for 2002, and the addition of variable-valve timing for 2003 raised power output to a solid 280 hp.ĭespite strong first-year sales, and plenty of publicity-including a special-edition T-bird being the featured car in the 2002 Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog-the momentum proved unsustainable. The standard powerplant was a 3.9-liter V8, which was a short-stroke version of the AJ-26 4.0-liter V8 available in the Jaguar.

2002 JOHNNY LIGHTNING 1962 FORD THUNDERBIRD UPGRADE

(Remember that Jaguar was a division of Ford at the time.)ĭesigned for relaxed cruising, the T-Bird was not offered with a sport suspension or an upgrade engine option. But given its shared mechanical underpinnings, it was likely less expensive to develop than it otherwise might have been-the T-Bird shared its basic rear-drive chassis with the Lincoln LS and Jaguar S-Type. Since Ford never shared sales projections for the Thunderbird, it’s hard to know whether or not the car actually met corporate expectations.

2002 JOHNNY LIGHTNING 1962 FORD THUNDERBIRD FULL

Similar in price to the Thunderbird, the SSR mustered only 9648 sales for 2004, its first full year on the market. Introduced for the 2002 model year, the first Thunderbird in five years-and the first T-bird convertible since 1966-sold surprisingly well out of the chute, claiming a solid 31,368 paying customers.įor comparison, the same-year Chevrolet Corvette racked up 35,767 sales.Ī more telling comparison might be Chevy’s similarly retro-themed SSR convertible pickup. The numbers really don’t bear that assessment out, however. Ask your average enthusiast about the relative marketplace success of Ford’s retro-themed 2-seat convertible, and you’re likely to be told that the revived T-Bird was a flop. History has probably been unkind to the 11 th-generation Ford Thunderbird.