Equally impressive: Ford's 180 watt, eight-speaker audio system. Turn the engine over and you are greeted with a rich V8 burble. The ‘Bird's foot well leaves no spot for the left foot to rest, and the elbow rest on the center console is too high. The T-Bird's switchgear and gauges are fashioned from cheap brittle plastic that could have been recycled from a bin of '88 Tempo parts, that were (in fact) shared with the already ageing Lincoln LS. But then you begin to notice that the Blue Oval beancounters wreaked haptic havoc. The dash is organized with elegant simplicity. Embossed leather seats comfortably coddle. Literally.įrom the first glance, the interior impresses. But the models were so stylistically removed from their classic ancestors that they defied comparison. During the eighties and nineties, T-Birds regained some lost ground. And then the seventies happened.īack when bottoms had bells, Ford sacrificed art for gargantuan proportions, crude boxy angles and shameless badge engineering. It is hard to argue that the "Classic Birds," "Square Birds," "Bullet Birds," "Flair Birds" and "Glamour Birds" of the fifties and sixties aren't momentous automotive designs. The history of the T-Bird is littered with hits and misses. Sadly, the 2003 Ford Thunderbird falls into this latter category.
The human psyche doesn't like to be disappointed. The converse is also true: we reserve our most negative assessments for someone or something that we loved at first. After spending some time driving various Hondas, the brand earned my no-longer-grudging respect. Psychologists say humans develop their strongest positive feelings to someone or something if they hated it at first.
0 kommentar(er)
