Did You Know...(T-Bird Trivia)

D

Dan Lineback

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Did You Know...(T-Bird Trivia)

I'm sure that many of you are already familiar with this, but I thought I would share it with y'all any way. Just a little piece of trivia I stumbled across a while back.

The Super Coupes were not the first T-Birds to come from ford with super chargers. On the '57 model, Ford offered the "F" engine: an 8.5:1 312 CID V8 with a McCulloch/Paxton single stage, variable ratio centrifugal super charger Model VR-57) that blew into a 4bbl Holley, producing 300hp @ 4800 rpm. They reportedly could be tweeked and tuned to boost output to 340-360 hp. Only 208 of these "F-Birds" were produced. Talk about a rare bird!! I'd freakin' kill to have one of those!!!
 
Did You Know...(More T-Bird Trivia)

I guess y'all can tell that I've pulled out the T-Bird textbooks, drooling over all the Birds that I'll never be able to own. I found a few options that were available on some of the early Birds that were quite uniqe for cars of that era. One was a speed sensitive radio on the '57, which used a capacitor wired in series with the distributor to raise the volume of the radio, to keep it at an even level when moving or stopped. I'm not sure if anything like this was available on other cars, even in later years. I think that some newer (~99 models)GM's (and probably others) have sound systems that compensate the volume for speed.

Another option available on 57 models (which actually proved to be unpopular) was the Dial-o-matic seat. The driver used buttons on the dash to adjust the power seat to his favorite position. Then when the ignition was turned off, the seat would move to its rear most position to make entry and exit easier. When the ignition was turned back on, the seat returned to the set position.
 
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