Then, just as competitors started following in Fords footsteps, Ford took another gamble and released the 1958 Thunderbird as a four-seater only, which did extremely well on the market. Other manufacturers were making cars bigger and bigger, whereas Ford went smaller. Retrospectively, releasing a small sports car in the middle of the 1950s went very much against the grain at the time. The Thunderbird was so easily accepted by the public because it strongly resembled other current Ford models. However, Ford engineers noticed the growing trend of war veterans importing many of the stylish sports cars being driven around Europe at the time, and decided to begin designing their own domestic variation. The decision to begin production on a small, two-seater sports car was a very risky move by Ford, as the public was deeply enamored with very large and over-the-top automobiles at the time. The first Thunderbird chassis left the factory for the 1955 model year and were already considered to be better engineered than their Chevrolet counterparts, due to their all-steel bodies in comparison with the fiberglass bodies found on early Corvettes. Ford was testing out the waters in the sports car world, as Chevrolet had also recently released the first Corvette with moderate success. The first Thunderbird made its debut as a concept car at the 1954 Detroit Auto Show. Transmission: 4-speed manual A Little History

68 thunderbird convertible