Lake County >> Thanks to pop culture, the 1950s Thunderbird is an iconic car. In “Grease,” Danny Zuko and his gang call themselves the T-birds. “American Graffiti” sees Suzanne Somers driving a white 1956 Ford Thunderbird. In the mid-’50s, it was the car to have.
Peggy Choate has been dreaming of owning one since the seventh grade, when she first laid eyes on the then wildly popular model. “I said, ‘I’d like to have a car like that someday,’” she recalled.
Years passed, and Choate never got her Thunderbird. It wasn’t until June 2016 that her chance finally arose. The son-in-law of a good friend had a ‘56 Ford Thunderbird he wanted to get rid of. It had been sitting in a garage in San Leandro for 37 years. The oil hadn’t been changed since 1976, it had only gone 1,100 miles since that oil change, and it hadn’t been driven in three decades. Choate jumped on the chance to finally own the car of her dreams.
“For the last 60 years I’ve wanted one, and here it popped up,” she said.
She and Rick Bonds purchased the Thunderbird, and all they had to do was put on new tires, since the old ones had bald patches from sitting in one spot for so long. The car looks exactly as it did rolling off the lot in 1956, when the son-in-law’s grandfather purchased it brand new in Albany, California. The body is entirely stock, with its original paint job: a colonial white top with a buckskin body.
The way Bonds explained it, the Thunderbird was Ford’s response to the Corvette. Unlike the Chevrolet Corvette, it wasn’t marketed as a sports car, but a gentleman’s car. Rather than focusing on sportiness, Ford emphasized the vehicle’s comfort. The Thunderbird eventually went on to develop a new niche in the market: the personal luxury car.
Ford only manufactured two-seater Thunderbirds for the span of three years, from 1955-1957. In 1958, the car became a four-seater, making Chaote’s and Bonds’s model quite the gem. And though the 1956 Thunderbird itself isn’t extremely rare, finding it in the buckskin color is less common.
The two weren’t new to classic cars when they acquired the 1956 Ford Thunderbird. Bonds had his first classic car in 1976 — a model from 1932. Today he has two of his own classic vehicles — not including the Thunderbird — one of which is a 1965 Mustang that has been completely restored. But neither he nor Chaote get under the hood of the ‘56 Ford.
“I keep it clean,” Bonds said with a chuckle.
While everyone has a different philosophy when it comes to classic cars, some preferring to keep their vehicles as pristine as possible, which means staying away from the road, Chaote and Bonds treat the car as a daily driver. It sat in storage for 30 years, and they have a lot of lost time to make up for. “Miles is smiles” is Bonds’s favorite saying.
“They were made to be used,” said Chaote.
And use it they do. The Thunderbird has 77,000 miles on it, a number to make any American Graffiti fan proud.
