Supercharged 1956 Thunderbird for sale

[jobo]

I have found a Supercharged 1956 Thunderbird for sale and need to know all info that I can get to buy it. The seller told me that it has a 312 original motor and that the supercharger was dealer installed. Could this be ordered this way? Is there a letter designation on the firewall plate to indicate this option? I am interested in buying this car if it's original. Seller told me that this option was available. I would appreciate any help...........

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[74 Harley]

Dealer installed accessories may be original to the first person who purchased the car, but are not "factory" original. They will not show up in the vin codes.
It sounds like a very interesting car, a picture of the warranty plate will tell you a lot. Is the car complete and running? Or is it a project? Big difference in price.

 

[jobo]

Dealer installed accessories may be original to the first person who purchased the car, but are not "factory" original. They will not show up in the vin codes.
It sounds like a very interesting car, a picture of the warranty plate will tell you a lot. Is the car complete and running? Or is it a project? Big difference in price.

I have not been to view the 1956 Tbird, but was shown a pic. It is a complete running car with decent paint. The owner will send me more pics before I travel to view it in person. He claims to have some documentation. Thanks for the help.

 

[radar]

I believe the only factory supercharged early tbirds were the ‘57s. They were F code on the vin plate

 

[jimntempe]

I have found a Supercharged 1956 Thunderbird for sale and need to know all info that I can get to buy it. The seller told me that it has a 312 original motor and that the supercharger was dealer installed. Could this be ordered this way? Is there a letter designation on the firewall plate to indicate this option? I am interested in buying this car if it's original. Seller told me that this option was available. I would appreciate any help...........

I don't see how it could be truly "original" since it couldn't be ordered that way from the factory since they weren't supercharging them officially until 1957. What is mostly the case is that sometime in the cars early life the owner had a dealer install the supercharger. I'm not familiar with what, if any, differences there might be between 1957 factory supercharged engines and the non-supercharged engines. Sometimes the internal parts for supercharged engines are beefed up. I suspect that if it's a 56 312 it might have a different compression ratio than the 57 312 would have had but it's also possible that the supercharged 57 312 had a lower compression ratio than the non-supercharged version. That would be some things I'd be curious about but having the answers doesn't really say buy or don't buy. It's been running for 60 years so it must have held up. Something else I would want to try to determine is if the supercharger on it is the same one used on the 57 and installed the same way with same parts as a factory installed 57. You won't be able to determine anything about the SC from the VIN but you could verify whether the factory installed a 312 in it. It might be that the whole engine with supercharger was transplanted from a 57.

 

[55blacktie]

Radar is correct. A genuine F-code 57 is the only Thunderbird that left the factory with a supercharger, and it would be worth considerably more than a 56/w dealer-installed supercharger. The 56 cylinder heads , camshaft, etc. would not be the same as an F-code's.