Naturally all the media attention was on the Super Coupe. Power for 1989 was ones choice of 3.8 liter V6 – either supercharged as seen in our featured Super Coupe or naturally aspirated in other models. With a wheelbase stretched 8.8″ to 113″ while still being shorter in length by 3.5″, its appearance was likened to that of the BMW 6-series but the new Thunderbird was obviously related to its predecessor as well as the original Taurus. As a point of clarification, the later Lincoln Mark VIII was similar but based on the FN-10 platform (Full-sized, North America Project 10).

Standing for Mid-sized, North America Project 12, the Thunderbird (and Mercury Cougar sibling) arrived on the scene in 1989. It was time for a new platform.įor 1989, Ford introduced the Super Coupe on the new MN-12 platform. For the direction Ford was wanting to take the Thunderbird in the eleventh generation, the Fox platform was limiting. Seeing new nose and tail treatments for 1987, the Turbo Coupe had performance quite remarkable for the time. Essentially the same engine used in the Mustang SVO, it was not the most refined engine for its first few years but it was able to fully demonstrate one didn’t need a mega-cube engine to solicit performance. Powered by a 2.3 liter turbocharged four-cylinder, it was both the first four-cylinder Thunderbird ever as well as the first turbo-charged one. Not only was the Thunderbird redesigned with aerodynamic clothes free of tacky accoutrement, the top-tier Turbo Coupe injected some exotica (for the time) into the Thunderbird. Looking like the victim of a botched liposuction, it simply didn’t work and sales reflected it.ġ983 would see a continuation of the Fox platform beneath the Thunderbird, but in a way to exponentially increase the desirability factor. Arguably, the low point for Thunderbird aspirations happened for the eighth generation introduced in 1980 when many design elements of the previous generation were dumped onto the smaller Fox platform.

This isn’t to say that the aspiration was more pronounced at some points than at others. Through it all, it did manage to present itself as the aspirational vehicle in the Ford lineup.

(first posted ) During the life of the Ford Thunderbird, it dived in many varied directions and often with staggeringly different results.

94 thunderbird super coupe