Used Car of the Day: 1988 Ford Thunderbird

by Tim Healey

Published: January 27th, 2023

used car of the day 1988 ford thunderbird

Today's UCOTD is a project car. It's a 1988 Ford Thunderbird that the seller is asking just $1,000 for.

There's little info in the listing. The seller writes a variation of the famous line "ran when parked" and furthermore indicates that there are 155,000 on the clock. He or she also says that the reason the car is for sale is that the seller has too many projects to work on.

Since we don't have a lot to work with here -- though the pictures do show the car is in rough shape -- I am going to tell a quick story. Someone who lives or works in my neighborhood drives a 90-something T-bird and it's in pretty fair shape. It's making part of me want a Thunderbird to tool around in.

Maybe not badly enough to buy this car -- $1K is cheap, but a drop in the bucket compared to the money needed to restore it -- but at least enough to get me to spend some more time on this forum.

Click here if you're itching for a new project car.

[Images: Seller]

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#UCOTD #Ford #FordThunderbird #UsedCaroftheDay

Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

More by Tim Healey

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2 of 27 comments

Wjtinfwb on Feb 17, 2023

Looks like a decent foundation for resto-rod T Bird. Yank the weak turbo 4, drop in a hotted up 347 Windsor, clean up the interior and exterior and kill the rattle can'd black wheels. If the underpinnings are sound, you'd have a cool and fast T Bird for under 10k.

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Kwik_Shift_Pro4X on Feb 23, 2023

As a fan of G-Bodies, this Thunderbird profile is a beaut!

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