This is a model that I’m still slightly angry about and have been since I bought it, second hand, from eBay. Owning as I did already another model by Beanstalk, the superb Ford GT, I was intrigued to see what their other early-Millennial Ford offerings were like. The Thunderbird was one and it was on eBay for a sensible price. I bid, I bought.
When it arrived I realised that I really never liked Ford’s final Thunderbird, so why the hell did I buy it? It stayed in its box and I didn’t look at it again for a few months.
When I finally came to revisit it I found that the previous owner had obviously broken a wheel off and glued it back in place so it no longer turned. It was also dirty and dusty from prior display. I was cross. So here we are now. Well, we might as well 1ook at the bloody thing again now.
I suppose.


What can be said of the eleventh-gen Thunderbird? Well, I’ll leave that up to you. My take on it was that Ford, on a bit of a J Mays related high were caught up in the retrofuturist buzz a little too heavily. They released one show-car after the next, to wide critical acclaim, so they started looking through their back catalogue to see which of their historic releases they could “do a Beetle on”.
They chose the Thunderbird; specifically the first 1955 generation to reinterpret. J Mays and his buddies got the markers out and before we knew it there was a Thunderbird show car. The public went wild with enthusiasm, Ford green-lit it for series production and the rest is history.
But somehow it didn’t quite hit the spot. It was nice enough, looked good, the porthole windows were cool, but it didn’t really achieve anything. The Re-imagining of the Beetle had been overwhelmingly successful because it appealed for both nostalgic and fashion reasons and was affordable to a large slice of the population. The Thunderbird…. well, there were many generations of that car that nobody really WANTED to remember, the nameplate was only killed off five years earlier and it was released at a price which didn’t suit anywhere near enough people. You had to really want one, and rather fewer people ended up wanting one than Ford had hoped, with sales declining year on year.

Then there was the disappointment of the car itself. Based partially on the same DEW platform as the Jaguar S-Type and Lincoln LS there was nothing remotely innovative about it, it was all style and not a huge amount of substance. To compound this, when the driver was inside the car and couldn’t see the retro flourishes of the exterior (which J Mays would take great pains to explain weren’t retro, the lying bastard), there was virtually nothing that told him he was driving anything special. It was just another blow-moulded Ford dashboard.
Ford could have used the New Thunderbird to show the world something really special, like they tried to do in the ’60s with the release of every new generation. Personally, I think they should have taken inspiration from the ’66 and gone super-luxury, and done it with confidence. That would have been a great chance to take the brand upmarket, and I reckon it would have worked.

So, to the model. Well, it’s alright. It’s accurate in shape, the detailing is nice, the grille is perforated and the headlamps look convincing (if you tell yourself that the mounting stubs are lightbulbs). The little Thunderbird tampos are cleanly applied, if a little simplistic and the Coral paintwork is good and not too shiny

There are a few issues with fit and finish; the bootlid leaves a gap when it closes around the rear lamps and the removable hard-top (which is a nice idea) doesn’t quite mount flat against the rear deck (which kinda ruins the effect).
When the hard-top is off there’s a plastic cover which simulates the look of a folded soft-top and probably looks a bit more convincing than when the hard-top is in place, just because it’s a more accurate fit.

Under the bonnet lurks a reasonably detailed 4.0 AJ35 V8, which is probably no more interesting to look at in the 1:1 than it is here, so we’ll lay off a little bit. It’s an engine, it’s there. Pass.
What else?

Oh yeah, the interior. Well, it’s crappy and plastic. Which means that the crappy plastic here hits the nail pretty much on the head. Credit to Beanstalk, though, it’s very accurately modelled. If Ford DARED produce an interior like this on a “Statement” car like the the Thunderbird today, it would be met with ridicule, contempt and no little mirth. Mind you, I’m sure they wouldn’t fit the instrument cluster (represented here as a sticker) in a position 20 degrees off the horizontal.
So that’s it then. A less than stellar model of a slightly ill-concieved car.
A car which, I’ll be honest, I’d rather like to own. Yep, I guess you were expecting me to say that.
(All images copyright Chris Haining / Hooniverse 2015. Doesn’t photograph terribly well, does it?)