I'm new to these parts, but I'm not new to the badge. The first car I bought with my own money was a 1996 V6 LX. It was at a hometown used car dealer. You know the type. I was 19, a Marine reservist fresh out of MOS school, and I had two grand to burn for a car that would get me to my duty station once a month. Not particularly glamorous, I know, but such is the life I live. I was back home, and this was the coolest car they had. My mother was kind enough to call our family friend at his repair shop to get an in-depth once-over and it seemed fine, so I sprang for it and drove off. If memory serves it was somewhere approaching 190k. Not two weeks later the infamous head gasket issue reared its head. Miraculously, the dealer said they would pay for parts, and I paid my parents back for labor over the next couple months. Sometime in the next year, coming home from drill, I got my first speeding ticket - 95 in a 70. Then a tie rod blew, blessedly a block away from my parents' house. As if the never ending train of issues wasn't enough, while I was sitting in traffic waiting to go to a friend's house, I got low-speed T-boned. I was stuck in the line right in front of a McD's drivethru when someone decided they just couldn't wait to get some nuggets and turned left into me. Crunched up my door, threw the window off the track, messed up the trim... Sigh. So, of course, one night, hanging out with my buds, they suggest removing the door. So we do. And then we remove the passenger door for good measure. Bolted a truck mirror to the side for legal purposes and drove it for one glorious summer. I ended up leaving it at the summer camp that I worked at the year before I deployed overseas and that was the last I saw of it. I had so much fun driving it, despite how underpowered the plain jane V6 was, and the slushbox, and what seemed like endless mechanical problems. Maybe it was just youth, but maybe it was something about these cars. Last summer, I had a dream about the old bird, and got to craigslisting, and found what I always wanted, but never knew I did.
Here is one of the only pictures I know to exist of my old girl, and one of my SC.
Tell me your Thunderbird stories, whether you still have them, or if they're lost to time.
Here is one of the only pictures I know to exist of my old girl, and one of my SC.
Tell me your Thunderbird stories, whether you still have them, or if they're lost to time.