From the side view, that rear glass is unmistakably 90’s Thunderbird, and I think the profile is the least appealing view of this vehicle as a result. To me, it’s just that the front and back of the car both feature that kind of rounded, inflated sheet metal work of the older Ford, but the sides have the more svelte, slicked back look of a 90’s model vehicle. Still, I like the look of this body kit better than I like the look of a late 90’s Thunderbird or Cougar.
These kits could be had and used on Ford Thunderbirds and Mercury Cougars built between 1989-1997. The basic body kit costs between $2750-$3,500 from what I’ve found online, with options for things like a frenched rear license plate (recessed into the trunk lid) -which this one I saw at the car show had, by the way, for $275 extra. Also available are custom grille mouth inserts to fit the front fascia with a Mercury or even a Corvette style grille ($950), and fiberglass bumpers with molded in splash pans for $275. Some places offer to install the kits for anywhere from $1,000 to $3,500, and that doesn’t include any painting or chrome work.
So, let’s build ourselves a hypothetical T-bird with a ‘49-50 Ford body kit. First, we need a suitable donor car. Because we spent much of last week on Cougars, let’s leave them out of the picture for this project and focus instead on Ford Thunderbirds. For starters, we should probably decide what we want in our donor car. After all, it will serve as the platform on which all this will be built.
For the sake of simplification, we’re going to shoot for a 1995 model. It’s not a bad choice as it has the benefit of having had its interior upgraded the year prior to feature an instrumentation layout in a wrap-around design. Keep in mind too, that these cars, though not terribly exciting to behold, were technical darlings that featured four wheel independent suspension, disc brakes all around, rear wheel drive, and decent safety features (by 1995 standards, anyway).
In ’95, you had some choices for engine options. First, there was the base 3.8L V6 that made around 140-150HP. We’re not even going to consider that. If we’re going through the hypothetical hassle of building a car like our hypothetical 1949 body kit Tbird, we’re not going to settle for that wimpy stuff. No, like the Jeffersons, we’re “movin’ on up”..to that same 3.8L V6 with an Eaton roots style supercharger and intercooler that boosts output to 230HP and 330 lb ft of torque and has a 5 speed manual transmission. This set up was available on a Thunderbird called the Super Coupe, or Thunderbird SC for short. In fact, on MY hypothetical Tbird with body kit, my hypothetical donor car is a Thunderbird SC. Of course, there’s another option, and that’s what our featured real life Easy Rod T-bird features: the 4.6L V8 that’s good for 205HP and 256 lb ft of torque. Well, that’s his choice.. I still say the SC is the way to go.
Here’s a picture or two of a pair of ‘95 Thunderbirds I spotted in a used car lot just the other day. The red one is a V8, and the light silvery blue one is a V6 if I recall correctly, so forget that one.. I could be wrong, but just to be on the safe side, let's assume I'm not. It’s easy to tell that neither is the Super Coupe because the tail lights have that black paint along the bottom of them, and on a Super Coupe, there’s none of that.
Who care’s what the silver/blue one costs? I don’t. The red one didn’t have a price listed, but some shopping around on the internet reveals that you should be able to buy a decently preserved 1995 example of either a Super Coupe or a V8 Thunderbird for between $3,000-$4,500. Let’s peg it right at $3,500 and then add on the $3,500 for the body kit.
I’m quite the fan of working with fiberglass myself, but it’s seldom that I run into others who are, so you might have to tack on a hypothetical $1,000-$3,500 for install. As a little side note here, the elderly gentleman who ran a boat repair shop on 2nd Avenue in Des Moines, IA and taught me how to really work with fiberglass the summer after I finished grad school died just about a week and a half ago -saw his obituary in the paper, so now there’s one less person in the world who can do fiberglass work. Anyway, depending on your level of skill with installation of those body panels, we’re between $7,000-10,500 now for our kit car T-bird.
Now we have to worry about paint. This can vary greatly depending on where you go and who you know if you’re having somebody else do the paint work for you.. However, if you have a friend who has a paint booth, or you’ve got a garage, a decent air compressor, and a nice spray gun, you could try doing it yourself. So, let’s just say another $1,000-$3,000 for the paint job if you have somebody else do the work for you. If you do it yourself, you’re probably looking at spending about $500 at the auto supply store for primer and paint (assuming you’re going with a two stage paint which is clear coat over the body color). Throw in another $600 for chrome plating on the grille and bumpers -and that‘s if you chose to chrome them - I would. That‘s just an estimate based on some chrome work I had done some years ago at a small plating shop, so that‘s not a totally accurate figure, just a guess..
Optional now would be getting retro style wheels and tires. A simple set of chrome-finished smoothie rims will run around $100 per rim, and as long as we’re doing that, we might as well pop for some white wall tires to complete the look for around $200 per tire, so in total, another $1,200 for tires and rims. Of course, if you’re feeling like a risk taker, there’s a you tube video showing how to use a right angle grinder and an orbital sander to grind off the 1/64 of an inch layer of black rubber on the side of a regular set of tires with raised narrow white wall or raised white letters to make your own white wall tires. ***Disclaimer: I cannot vouch for the safety of an activity like this, so if you try it and it ends in disaster, don’t blame me.
What does that leave us with? For the Do It Yourselfers, a ‘49 Ford kit car Thunderbird will cost around $9,300. If you leave off the chrome plating, the smoothie wheels and the white wall tires that figure changes to $7,500. A compromise in which the DIYer keeps the chrome and smoothies but makes their own white walls from the tires already on the car brings the cost to $8,500.
But what if you don’t want to do it yourself, and you don’t trust the notion of skimming a layer of rubber off the sidewall of your tires? Well, the high end of our non-DIY kit car is around $15,300. Minus the chrome, smoothie rims and the tires, it’s down to $13,500. Low end estimates (these assume you find somebody to do the installation and paint for cheap) drops the cost to $10,800, or minus the goodies like chrome, smoothies and white walls, an even $9,000.
I had seen these T-bird kits, but hadn’t seen a completed example in person before last weekend. I think it would be a lot of fun to build one. Ranging between a basic $7,500 on up to a bit more than double that, the pricing doesn’t seem all that bad considering what you get, which is an out of the ordinary street rod that has fairly modern (or anyway, a lot more modern than 1950) safety features, independent rear suspension, decent power that still delivers decent fuel economy, and a heck of a conversation piece. I like this body kit, though I’m partial to the Mercury style grille insert myself.
Been trying to find where to buy these kits... Can you help?
ReplyDeleteI found a site for a business called Unique Custom Cruisers that has the kits.
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