Photo: Instagram | Jlord8
Save for the latest Mustang, which is about to blow eight candles off its birthday cake, and the GT, Ford has ditched all low-riding cars in the United States. As a result, their lineup comprises mostly of crossovers and SUVs, in addition to the electrified models, and commercial vehicles.
Still, not long ago, they used to have a mid-size car in their portfolio, the Fusion – aka the Mondeo overseas, and it was this one that was used as a starting point for a modern-day Thunderbird rendering by Jlord8 on Instagram.
On the visual front, it has a new face, with a Mustang-like flair, longer doors to facilitate ingress and egress, shorter roof, and redesigned rear three-quarter panels. If anything, the digital illustration looks more like a Fusion Coupe than a brand-new Thunderbird, especially since it would retain the mid-size model’s front-wheel drive architecture, but the artist behind it pretends it’s rear-wheel drive, and so will we.
In the short caption accompanying the social media post, he referred to the MN12 platform, which was used by the tenth-gen Thunderbird, sharing it with the era’s Mercury Cougar, and Lincoln Mark VIII. The car had a front-engine and rear-wheel drive layout, and packed two V6, and as many V8s, hooked up, depending on the configuration, to a four-speed automatic or a five-speed manual transmission.
The tenth-gen Thunderbird was retired in 1997, and four years later, its successor arrived, sporting a new construction shared with the Jaguar S-Type. It too packed a V8, mated to a five-speed auto ‘box, and remained in production until 2005, when Ford decided to pull the plug on it altogether.
Due to the round shape, the final T-Bird was definitely not our cup of tea, but some of its predecessors were, and we definitely would not have minded if they continued the tradition with a modern-day iteration, which would’ve been a breath of fresh air in the crossover-infested market.
On the visual front, it has a new face, with a Mustang-like flair, longer doors to facilitate ingress and egress, shorter roof, and redesigned rear three-quarter panels. If anything, the digital illustration looks more like a Fusion Coupe than a brand-new Thunderbird, especially since it would retain the mid-size model’s front-wheel drive architecture, but the artist behind it pretends it’s rear-wheel drive, and so will we.
In the short caption accompanying the social media post, he referred to the MN12 platform, which was used by the tenth-gen Thunderbird, sharing it with the era’s Mercury Cougar, and Lincoln Mark VIII. The car had a front-engine and rear-wheel drive layout, and packed two V6, and as many V8s, hooked up, depending on the configuration, to a four-speed automatic or a five-speed manual transmission.
The tenth-gen Thunderbird was retired in 1997, and four years later, its successor arrived, sporting a new construction shared with the Jaguar S-Type. It too packed a V8, mated to a five-speed auto ‘box, and remained in production until 2005, when Ford decided to pull the plug on it altogether.
Due to the round shape, the final T-Bird was definitely not our cup of tea, but some of its predecessors were, and we definitely would not have minded if they continued the tradition with a modern-day iteration, which would’ve been a breath of fresh air in the crossover-infested market.
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