Every time I see a picture of one of these early-to-mid-1970s Thunderbirds, I’m struck by how absurdly long they are. Like this 1974 one here. That’s a two-door car, and I’m pretty sure there are buses in operation in the world right now that aren’t as long as this thing was. These land yachts were dramatic machines, and I think so much of that drama is just the drama of holy shit, that thing is long. So what if we quickly de-longify one of these?
For whatever reason, that’s the idea I couldn’t get out of my head, which is why and how we ended up here:
Wow. I don’t exactly dislike it, but you do lose the drama when you lose the length, that’s proven now. You know what it reminds me of? One of these:
A Leata Cabaleo! The only Chevrolet Chevette-based luxury car! Still loved by ones and ones of people!
I’m not exactly sure what point we’ve proven here just now, but we did it. Length=drama? Is that it? Length=presence? Is that the shortcut we’ve all been seeking? As a short person, does this mean I’m kinda screwed? Because for people, height is equivalent to length, isn’t it?
Man, now I’m more confused than when I started.
The depressing thing is that you probably could shorten up the hood about that much and still fit the fan and radiator in front of the engine. There’s a lot of empty real estate behind the grills on those cars.
Over the years I have found the trick to appreciating 70’s car design is to focus on their shape, not the detail. A lot of 70’s cars have very pleasing shapes to them, which were then ruined by tacked on 5 mph bumpers and then buried in fussy vinyl tops and slathered on chrome gingerbread work.
If you take that Thunderbird and ‘shave’ the bumpers back to a more contour-hugging shape, lose the vinyl top and hood ornament, you’ll start to find a pretty elegant car under there, where the coke-bottle curves of the 60’s are modified with starched creases, lovely fine-boned A pillars, and dramatically raked windscreens. I prefer the next generation 77-79 body style which takes all those cues even further (though I am a bit biased there) but you get the idea.
I’d like to see some love given the late-70’s Mopar cars that previewed the cleaner, faceted design of the 80s, but got crushed by the sudden shift to the K car platform. I’m thinking the Dodge Magnum and Mirada, maybe even the Volare and Aspen cars, too. They may have had crap build quality, but their styling was notable, IMO.
To be fair, not just 70s cars. Next time you walk through a parking lot, look through some grilles and see the distance from the bumper to the condenser. One some cars like Toyotas, it’s literally exceeding 18 inches. There’s a foot and a half of empty space hanging off the front of the car.
The Cabalero was Leata’s second attempt, they had previously tried building a small luxury car with their own 2-seat design which was meant to resemble a miniaturized 1940 Lincoln Continental. Pickup versions of both it and the Cabalero were offered, but one variant that you’d think would be obvious never was – there was no 4-door Cabalero because Leata shut down before the end of the 1977 model year and the 4-door Chevette didn’t appear until 1978.
Those things where like 19 ft long which is about the length of a short f-350 today.
19 feet is also like not even a foot longer than my Honda Accord, and the same length as a 2023 Civic. These cars were only log compared to how little space they had inside, because they weren’t that long in the grand scheme of things.
I remember working on these big Fords when I was a teenager. The hoods are soooo ridiculously long. The fan is like half-way back, so there was always this very elongated fan shroud that bridged the chasm in between the radiator and the fan.
So much room that if the shroud were removed, you could easily stand inside. Just don’t let anyone start that fan twirling so close to your junk.
counter-argument. . . Make it Longer
Long long bird!
That Leato Cabalero is priceless. What fever dream did that emerge from? And who bought them? Pimps who wanted good mileage?
It was the fever dream of a father and son from Idaho. And almost no one bought them. But they are glorious.
Move the rear wheel up a bit and you have a winner.
To my eye, it’s almost entirely about the front and rear overhang.
Actually it would look like a Mustang II w/ wire wheel hub caps, a hood ornament and leather seats that look like a couch (bench of course!)
I was expecting a joke where a gif swapped the T-bird for a Mustang II. If you shrink the cabin on Torch’s edit, it’s pretty much on-target.
Actually, it reminds me of an 80’s era Cadillac bustleback.
i know Ricardo Montalban was a Chrysler guy, but I DO think you’ve just designed the perfect car for Hervé Villachaize!
That’s definitely more of an Underbird than anything else.
Also, this:
https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1977-LEATA-CABALLERO-PICKUP-96979
That Photoshop reminds me of walking into a cold swimming pool.
It’s shrinkage!!!
Like a frightened turtle!
I feel that if you’re going to shrink a car like this you almost have to keep the proportions. That’s where the drama comes from, and without the drama, this is just an under-powered, poor handling, ostentatious POS.
I wonder if in 40 years, people will be saying the same thing about ’20s SUV design, just height instead of length?
I walked next to a new Escalade in a parking lot the other day, and it still amazes me how large they are. Even standing (and I’m fairly tall), I couldn’t see a thing around it in any way.
It always blows my mind at the other end of the spectrum, I walked past an older Cherokee the other day and thought there’s no way anyone would buy something that ‘small’ anymore. It’s insane..
One of our grad students recently paid what was intended to be a compliment concerning my 1970 3/4-ton long- and wide-bed International by saying it was a “nice mid-sized pickup.” I have to admit this is not an unreasonable opinion by today’s standards.
Saw a first-gen Explorer parked next to a current Toyota Sienna recently. The size differential was draw-dropping.
Neat fact: my boyfriend’s condo has a height limit of a bit over 6ft. for parking. They did not anticipate the SUV era when they built the place.
Ha! I live in a building with an underground garage…the lowest level has a fair amount of exposed overhead pipes at such a level that makes it difficult for many of today’s SUVs (esp if they have a roof rack) to get by. No problem for anything from previous eras.
I often see drivers of these inching very slowly forward if they have to park down there. It’s fairly comical.
The parking garage at YYZ’s terminal 3 (circa early 90’s, I think) is maybe 6’6″, certainly low enough driving a full-sized pickup is nerve wracking.
Two door land yacht drivers would pull up to a parking spot until their wheels hit the curb and the front overhang would block the entire sidewalk. Then they would open their 4 foot long door and slam it into the adjacent car. Just horrible car designs.
Recently parted with a 1971 Coupe deVille. I can relate. 200lb steel doors. Extra care required if windy. On the plus side, it wasn’t my car that got dented.
Had a legit 5 body trunk, still with the full size spare. I think the surprising thing is how low these cars are. The roofline is well below that of the hoodline on a contemporary pickup/SUV
instantly reminded me of the Roadkill episode with a shortened Mark lV. They ran it in a Gambler, I think?
Never heard of a Leata Cabalero, but now I weirdly rather want one. I know the Chevette was crap, but the one I knew-hitched rides in to work in for almost a year-was the epitome of a cheerful shitbox: absolute miserable vehicle that just. kept. going.
I would probably hate it as nostalgia smooths over the bad stuff, but I still yearn. I would autocross it just for laughs.
The Missing Linc! Man, that was a pile. A waffle filled pile.
That shortened Thunderbird is actually reminiscient of the Mustang II. Ha, that would’ve served better as a sacrifice for Charlie’s Angels than those poor hapless 60s Mustangs…
I thought exactly the same thing.
My mom had a ’76 Thunderbird that I took to prom my senior year. My ’60 El Camino didn’t have AC, and going anywhere all dressed up in May in west Texas wasn’t a good idea.
It was two-tone yellow and gold with a white leather interior. It was pimp-tastic!
And yes, the length is for drama. Every parking job is high intensity.
I’ve often thought a 70’s land yacht would be an interesting choice to convert to an EV. Cheap platform, comfortable, and plenty of real estate for batteries. Plus it wouldn’t be too hard to get more power than an emission choked V8.
Wish I could upvote this comment 5 times just for that last sentence
I threw one on for you!
A motivated hamster in a wheel has more power than those V8s. How you choose to motivate the hamster is up to you!
Quiet down, that was supposed to be my big idea!
Donor cars with low miles on the body are cheap.
Sell the lightly used big block 455 or whatever to a muscle car guy.
Use 2 or 3 Nissan Leafs (Leaves?) worth of batteries under the hood and you’ll still have room for a frunk.
Nobody cares about the handling anyway so who cares that all the weight is on the front tires.
Now you have a comfortable, quiet, cheap to operate, cruiser with style for miles.
I’d question whether the suspension could handle the weight, it was softly sprung to begin with, and adding enough batteries to get a usable range will likely have it squatting down on the bump stops before you add people and cargo. Also, the brakes were just adequate for the car’s weight from the factory, would need an upgrade there, too. Granted, these did weigh 5,000 lbs from the factory, but that’s not that much more than a lot of much smaller modern EVs
I know for certain cars of that era, there are “towing kits” available with stiff springs and better brakes that EV modders use.
Obviously it’s more work than just slapping in batteries and a motor
With body and batteries you’d put the new Hummer’s weight problem to shame.
It would be hard to approach the Hummer level of weight problem. The battery pack alone of the Hummer EV weighs about 500 lbs more than my entire MGB.
The Leata Cabalero seems to be a Panther Rio knock off of some sort.
That is not a sentence that I ever imagined writing, ever.
“Chevette-based luxury”
For a minute I thought I was having a mini-stroke this morning. Then I remembered 1980 (I was in fact alive back then).
The Panther Rio was a luxury car based on the Triumph Dolomite, actually quite luxurious with most of the body panels replaced with coach-built aluminium, and an interior that was more Rolls Royce than British Leyland. Yours for the price of two Jaguar XJ6.s.
“Height is equivalent to Length.”
“That’s what she said Trebek.”
I owned this exact car in 1980. A guy paid off a weed debt by giving it to me.
There were some really good drugs to be had that summer. Never drove it more than 10 miles or so as I was usually too wasted to be behind the wheel. The car sat in the front yard, straddling the side walk, as parking was non existent in the area.
One day came home from the beach and the car was gone. The cops had it towed and impounded.
Should have tried to get it back, it was perfect and only needed a battery.
But shit happens, and dealing with the cops was never a thing that seemed to be a pleasant experience. YMMV.
Did you just low-key confess to being a weed dealer back in the day? That’s a total boss move. Much respect.
Humble brag??
HA! The FEDS and DEA both raided our home which held me and about 6 other college kids that Sept or so. They had a problem with my roommates selling of large quantities of coke, which he would fly into the country with his small airplane. After a crash in a farmers field the Feds became very interested in our “summer of fun.”
I was lucky though and was never charged, although everyone else was facing federal charges. Some times knowing when you are screwed and not trying to bullshit the authorities in the process pays off.
It was a different world then.
The Feds weren’t interested in you selling weed because your roommate was literally flying plane loads of Columbia’s finest into the country. That’s like getting away with going 10 over the speed limit because the cops were too busy chasing the guy who was hitting triple digits.
Exactly.
Was there, perchance, a bear involved in your friend’s plane crash?
Rawr! https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Cokebear_final2.jpg
Pretty much the same proportions as a Chrysler 300. Not bad overall, but definitely lessens the impact/drama of the exaggerated length. But then, the 70s were a decade that gloried in excess.
Also, I think we need a deeper dive into the Leata Cabalero. A Chevette-based luxury car has to have some kind of deeply cocaine-fueled history and enquiring minds want to know. Behold: the subcompact luxo-shitbox the world has been waiting for!
That’s kind of what’s always bugged me a little about the 300, the proportions just seem a little too squashed, like they were going for a traditional full-size sedan, but at the last minute realized it needed to be under 5 meters for German reasons, and did a quickie edit. Sort of seemed like more of a successor to the medium sized M-body Fifth Avenue than the fulll size LH platform LHS and Concorde
I actually thought the preceding LH based 300M was a better looking car.
100% agree.
It’s not the size, it’s how you use it.
Also, if we shrink a Thunderbird can we call it something like a Rumblebird instead since it’s not the full-blown thing?
“I’ll take Bent Carrots for 400 Alex.”
“Thats the way your mother likes it Trebec!”
Sean Connery mooing in response to “This is the sound a doggy makes.”
“Well that’s the sound your mother made last night.”