Junkyard Find: 1965 Ford Thunderbird Landau

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
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junkyard find 1965 ford thunderbird landau

A perfectly restored example of a 1964-66 Ford Thunderbird is worth plenty. A beat-up example, even a non-rusty California car, on the other hand… well, it’s one of those cases where you can start with a thousand-dollar car, apply 15 grand to get it into pretty nice shape, and end up with a car worth $9,500. This cruel math is the reason that today’s Junkyard Find was spotted at a San Francisco Bay Area wrecking yard a few weeks back.

The body is rough (though not rusty) and the interior smells like a mixture of mildew and Porta-Potty, but this car still has much to offer someone restoring a nicer T-Bird.

Now this is a proper landau roof!

My ideal car interior would combine mid-60s Thunderbird and mid-80s Subaru XT controls. Throw in some early-90s Chrysler Whorehouse Red velour and it would be perfect.








Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Writer d'Elegance Brougham Landau.

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  • Honda_lawn_art Honda_lawn_art on Dec 23, 2014

    10-4 on T-Bird economics. Almost cheaper to buy three at $1,000 each, and mix and match until you have one $6,000 bird. Best deals from the '60's now seem to be Buick/Olds hardtop sedans and maybe an inline six B-pillar Impala or Chevelle, but then only because they're going to be the next big thing.

  • Akear Akear on Jan 07, 2015

    Bings back memories when America actually had decent auto and space industry. Everything stinks today........

  • MaintenanceCosts So there is no Sonata trim without some type of Theta engine.It seems like they've been doing a bit better when attached to a hybrid system, so that's probably the one to get, but they're going to have to go several years without further engine troubles before I'd trust a H/K ICE product again.
  • Lou_BC Full sized sort of autonomous RC's. Cute.
  • Art_Vandelay Autonomous capabilities are being deployed (or planned anyway) in multiple combat vehicles. Should be fun from my perspective
  • Drew8MR Interior is trivial now you can get repro everything in various levels of quality. Getting the top sorted will be a couple grand, but I'd drive it as it. I drove a $1500 67 GTO convertible for 20 years, not every old car needs to be like new.
  • John Not everyone pays that much for power. Mine is 10 cents per kw…..
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