Hi. I found you guys when doing research into the 11th gen Thunderbird and over the last month or so I’ve been finally actualizing my teenage dream car ever since I became enamored by a blue 1960 Squarebird on someone’s lot almost 8 years ago. Now being a recent college graduate with a full time job I can afford the debt of taking on an auto loan and while it’s no ‘57 or ‘63, I’ve settled on a triple red 2003 Premium from a private seller.
The car drove great when I tested it out earlier this week and aside from a minute chip here or there in the paint (likely from rocks) the body and interior are in excellent condition. There’s less than 29,000 miles on the OD and the car’s been garage kept as well as never driven in icy/dusty conditions nor on dirt roads. Included is the
hardtop rack, convertible cover for driving with the top down, and a cover for the windshield when outside. I’d be the third owner as the first put in the most mileage, and the second barely scratched 1,000 before he put it up for sale. Currently we’re settled on a price after I talked down a couple grand. That and I just checked out an abysmal 2002 Lemon of a car With a blown spare tire, no cover for the battery & spare in the trunk,
rust along the edge of the
hardtop, multiple scratches along the rear fenders and on the aluminum trim inside, not to mention it’d been definitely repainted in the back and bondo’d on the inside of the trunk compartment. The cherry on top being their price floor of $12,000; bullet dodged.
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Anyway, here’s an image plucked from the ad to give a visual on. All that’s left now is to double check with credit unions to see just how much I have to pay up front before I
I had the same dream - except mine involved my friend's 1960's blue thunderbird and then the re-issue, my mother was involved in the engineering and design process so I was kept up to date about the reissue years before it was reissued. I actually had my own, new from the lot, tweety yellow one in 2002, also - but lost it in the split up! Yet, now I own my very favorite of all colors, well, of 2 colors, 'whisper white' and it was hell dealing with my dealership purchase.
My car had but about 19,000 on the od and the cost was just over $18,900 - it WAS in mint condition when I purchased it except for some indenting on the brushed metal piece on the interior of the driver's side door (little key marks when driver was opening the door - seen it many times before over the years when shopping for one) and then there was originally an issue with securing the
hardtop.
LEARN MY LESSON:
They assured me before I purchased my ww 2002 that this latching issue would be fixed. I should have simply brought it home and paid my local Ford dealer to fix it - but since they assured me that they would fix it at this dealership (Ford) in NW Ohio City, I went with that option since it was charge free. Their version of fixing the roof was to lay the
hardtop on the chipped up blacktop all day long while the used car manager attempted to "adjust" the latch with the problem side. Then, he would place the
hardtop back on the car, (dirt, dust and debris on the little latches that went into the slots - filthy process since they didn't allow the shop to take 15 minutes to fix it for that would actually be billed against the used dealership
part of the Ford lot - and then he had other used dealers come over and they used full body force to press down on the top, to shove it left, then right (back and forth) which then screwed up the working latch on the passenger side. Little did we know that all of this manly, brute force was actually totally compressing and ruining the rubber drainage system on the
hardtop roof.
After we discovered the additional damage that was now done to the ORIGINAL and previously functioning drainage system, they only repaired HALF of the damaged drainage system and adjusted the latching system on the
hardtop. Had they simply just allowed the shop to adjust the
hard top screw in sections, it would have been nothing but 15 minutes of work - but they were penny pinching and ended up causing nearly $3000 in damage to the roof alone.
The dealership insisted on keeping the car, supposedly in the locked in parking section and then in the garage on rainy days (neither of these things happened) while they were "ordering the
parts" for repair of drainage system and to replace the now stripped out bolts on BOTH side of the misadjusted
hardtop lock down system, they were actually using it as a personal vehicle for the Ford Dealership - driving it an additional 330 miles during the 3 months over the summer that they kept it. I did talk to the outside shop that they sent it to for the repairs and this man had it for just one 18 hour period - working on it during Monday afternoon for 4 hours and 2 hours on Tuesday morning installing the
parts that the dealership supplied - which were only for the passenger side and not for the driver side of the drainage system - and after Spyros returned it to the NW Ohio Ford Dealership he parked it in the repair shop lot (which is locked at night) with windows rolled up. This was in September, 2019 and they had the car since I bought it in June, 2019. When I came to pick it up, it was retrieved by the assistant manager of used car sales and the dealer in that same department -but they had to literally UNLOAD boxes of
parts that they had driven my car to pick up and they had to empty out this particular dealer's used coffee cups and personal items from it, too. They car was not where Spyros had parked it, in the back lot of the dealership but it was now, windows opened, on Friday at around 1pm, sitting in the used sales lot. Additionally, since the car was not originally from NW Ohio, none of the stations were set on ANY of the FM or AM options except the one station that I listen to (NPR) and it was a devil to program. This salesman used my car as his personal chariot so much that he had programmed every FM station, both A and B FM to his preferences. So I was stuck with 70's-90's mainstream rock blaring and couldn't reprogram my one station (at least not yet as it now is sitting stored for the winter).
They obviously didn't realize that I had reset Trip-meter #1 and when I picked up the car that early Friday afternoon, the car now had 330 miles on it, and a very odd looking rear quarter panel. The car had actually been in an accident while they were out joyriding in it one weekend. I had to pay for a new tail light (cracked), a new rear end (internal "halter" piece that cracked when it was hit) and then I had to pay for the other, driver side, drainage system to be REPLACED after they completely crushed it when trying to rig the driver side
hardtop latch.
This to look out for - make sure the roof doesn't LEAK! The
hardtop drainage system is terrifically difficult to repair since there are no longer many people that are actually in the workforce that know how to repair these things. I had to use THIS SITE for research and MY Ford dealership in a different city NOT located in NW Ohio. Run it into one of those pressure washers and wash it and make sure that this
HARDTOP doesn't leak. If it does leak, I now know how to fix it, what
parts are required and have a legitimate Ford Technician that knows how to repair it! Just respond to me directly as a reply to my response to your post. Also, my guy knows how to repair the rear, interior halter piece that hold the rear bumper up and keeps it attached to the side quarter panels (I believe that it also attaches to the side quarter panels) - either way, they claim that it is very fragile and a design flaw and their tech at my local dealership actually knows how to repair it so that it is structurally sound. Finding a technician that can actually work on the re-issued T-Birds can be hard to do and driving to another place to find a competent repairman may be something that you need to do if something eventually fails on your Gorgeous Red new baby.
Again, simply reply if you have any other questions about anything that I might be able to help you with - I'm more than glad to share my experience with you if you run into any problems!
I contacted the State of Ohio oversight agency and we received most of the money back from the repairs, but I was never compensated for the miles piled onto my car
