Gold Bird History

[YellowRose]

Gold Bird History

That was an interesting story! I can imagine the look of surprise when "Santa Claus" drove up with the drunk driver in tow! I would have loved to have seen the look on the drunks face when he realized he was being pulled over by Santa! Keep 'em coming! These are so neat to get accounts from the original owner of the history of his Tbird!

[Anders]

GREAT STORY!
What a scene! Would love to see that live

[Guest]

Hey Tom,
Interesting! Keep-em coming!!!
Richard D. Hord

[tbird430]

Yes Tom Sr., keep what you can coming!

I know you said you never had a lick of trouble from this Bird when you bought her new. But were there ever any driveability problems, such as, did she ever overheat on you back then? I know you live way up there- compared to a Texas heat down here, but I was just curious if you ran into any small problems like that...

-Jon in TX.

[Original Goldbird]

reply to tbird 430

That is a good question. Truth is that I cannot recall ANY problems until gold bird grew up. Minor annoyances were that car did not have a trip odometer, even my 36 Ford had that. Fuel economy was and is terrible( 10 mpg in town, 12 to 14 on highway) At 20 cents a gallon no one cared. fuel gauge never worked properly even when new. When it showed empty it was about half full.
had to stop every 100 miles to fill up which was a pain on a long trip. AM radio had lots of static interference when car was moving.
Tried lots of solutions and then one day that problem went away.
The truth is cars were simple those days, not a lot of things to go wrong compared to my 2004 retro bird which I really like but lots of service required. I have always thought Ford should do a retro on the square bird with convertible hard top and improved top mechanics. I hope other club members will try to jog my memory with more questions...FIRE AWAY

[YellowRose]

Gold Bird History

Thanks for the additional historical comments regarding Gold Bird, Tom, Sr! It is good to know that fuel gauge never worked right from the beginning! Like you, I still never know how much fuel I have in the tank. In fact, that is the next project to work on again. We are going to try again to do the adjustments and see if we can get it to register correctly. It is a pain not to know how much gas you have left in the tank and have to stop and fill it up often so you don't run out of gas!

[bird 60]

Hi Tom sr, Ray, & everyone else that has a Fuel Guage problem. Mine isn't running right also but it doesn't fluctuate. Three simple ways to check to see exactly how much Fuel you have in your tank.

(1) Find out the Tank size eg., 20 gall or some after market which might be different.

(2) Fill the tank to the very top (which is a pain in the butt).

(3) Fill the tank again next when the guage shows pretty well on half full & see how much fuel it takes to top up.
Do it again at 1/4, & also see how much fuel it takes to top up.

With mine I know that I still have 2 Gallons in the tank when it hits the empty dot, although I generally fill up between 1/4 & 1/2 full.

The only time this practice wouldn't work is if the guage is all over the place.

Chris....from the Land of OZ.

[Original Goldbird]

Gold Bird history X

I have been saving this to pass along. gold Bird is a
CELEBRITY CAR . Richard Nixon rode in her while campaigning for President against John F Kennedy in 1960. Unfortunately I do not have a photo to prove it but Tom Jr is working on that and you guys will be the first to see it if he can come up with it.

Here are the details: Nixon made a campaign sweep in Michigan in September of 1960 and on Sept 20th visited our town of Bay City. A huge rally took place in our high school football stadium
and 5000 people attended the rally including my wife and I (sans camera). The local Ford dealer drove into the stadium at the south end with Nixon seated on the trunk with his feet on the back seat and flashing his famous "V" with his fingers. They drove him completely around the track and then parked at the 50 yard line where he gave his speech.

I purchased Gold bird a couple of weeks later in mid October.

[Anders]

Edit......

[Original Goldbird]

Gold Bird History XI

This will be my last entry about Gold bird memories except that later I will probably post remarks as to whether the time and money spent to keep her was wise.

In 1967 my wife and I had air reservations to fly to Chicago for a gift show. We awakened to a fog filled day and were notified that our flight was cancelled. It is only about a 350 mile drive from Bay City to Chicago but I had loaned my 64 country squire to my cousin for the weekend and the only car we had available was the 60 Bird. At that time I put her away in the winter and only drove it in the summer.

We decided to uncover the bird and take her to Chicago. The fog lifted and we arrived without incident and checked into the Palmer House towers. When we awakened on the morning of our departure for home there was a blizzard raging. We had to check out or stay in the lobby. While our trunk was open it gathered about 1/2 inch of snow. There was no traffic in the loop but i made it to a gas station and then out to the expressway where the snow was then about 3 inches deep and falling rapidly plus winds of about 40mph. There were no cars on the road and no tracks in the snow and my wipers could not remove the snow a fast as it fell. My speedometer registered about 4mph but going into the wind it felt like we were going 50 or 60. Sally had the passenger window open and trying to guide me steer by the road markers. We started to look for an exit and I tried to slow down because I was convinced the speedometer was frozen and we were going much faster than registered. When I slowed down a loaded semi hit me from behind and jack knifed blocking the road for the next several days. I got out and listened to his cussing me out for a moment. He had no damage and I told him forget an accident report I am going to try to get off.

We exited into La Porte Indiana and found a small older hotel downtown called the Rumley. It was located on a typical multi lane street and I tried to get to the curb I became hopelessly stuck in the snow out in the middle of the street and abandoned the bird there in about 8 inches of snow where it stayed for four days. We got the only room they had left. The hotel filled with people whom they lodged on cots in the lobby.

We met many nice folks all of whom helped each other. We let a young couple with a baby use our room for several hours each day and everyone did things like that to help each other. One of the guests was Peter DePaulo who was a famous Indy racer and the first driver to win averaging just over 100MPH. After 4 days the hotel was running out of food and the storm subsided. Peter and I made it to an auto supply store, bought a gas can and other emergency supplies and then he and I dug out his car , ours and several others and took off for the expressway again.
We were advised not to try because the ramps were mostly closed but with Peter leading me we found an entrance and got to ST Joseph Michigan where we stayed for 2 more days until it was safer to drive home.

This storm is still recognized as the great blizzard of 67 and the worst and most damaging in the history of that area of Illinois and Michigan. Gold Bird was never designed for that kind of travel but Sally still gives the car credit (not me) for getting us through it

Now you can understand the bond that we had with this car and still have today and one of the sentimental reasons we kept her.
My mother taught me at an early age that one should never love an innate object. But gold bird is not an innate object. She has a personality and we love her.

[Dan Leavens]

Tom Sr. your stories blow me away not only for their detail but the passion with which you type them. I especially like the part of Sally having her window down and playing co-pilot during the blizzard to your TBird navigation. She sounds like a fine lady, so that means you have two of them, with Goldbird.

[YellowRose]

Gold Bird History

Tom, Sr., Sir! I HOPE you have more stories to share with us! That was an excellent one! I have been in a snowstorm of similar proportions, but not as bad as that. I was driving an early 90's Lincoln Towncar though and we made it through the snow back to Texas. A lot of people spun out into the center section or off the road though. Please, if you can think of other neat things to post, we would love to hear them! Certainly, there must be some more stories to tell!

[Original Goldbird]

Final goldbird history

I have to say that it has been fun for me to share my recollections_of 50 years ownership of Goldbird and I appreciate the many comments my new square bird friends have made.
Any future postings by me would have to be recollections of the later years and those would be the same as most of you have encountered . So this is my last posting though I will continue to log into the site every day.

Now this is a different approach. How many times has someone who is admiring your car said this to you? " I had one just like this and should have kept it" In truth I would have to say that you are
lucky you didn't. First of all where could you store a car while waiting for it to be of value and not just an old car? The biggest draw back to what I did in keeping gold bird all those years is expense and I mean a lot of it. If you could keep a car in an air conditioned environment which would be almost impossible it would continue to deteriorate because that is what all metal objects do.

I really kept gold bird because I preferred it's style over subsequent models. In hindsight I would have been wiser to have kept it three years and moved on . Having decided to keep it required me to spend thousands of dollars over the years.
In fact right now even though everything is nearly perfect some small rust areas have surfaced and Tom is spending mega bucks to repair and paint again. The car deserves to be maintained and we both feel that has to be done. Probably neither of Tom's sons have much interest in gold bird including his son Tom
Tabor V so the day will come when it will be gone.

ON THE OTHER HAND I do not regret one bit that I kept her.
At one time goldbird was our only family car and the memories
are wonderful. I also have to admit bragging about being the original owner and ENJOYING the attention she gets. So all in all I guess I did the right thing. For one thing Tom IV is glad I did.

I am glad to have met several of you over the internet because of our common interest in beautiful square birds and even though I am in my 87th year I expect to be around for a while and always willing to try to answer your questions

Happy Birding to all Tom Tabor III

[tbird430]

Thank you so much for your input Tom III.


-Jon in TX.

[Dan Leavens]

Tom Sr. It has been OUR pleasure and honour to have you tell the stories in text about the events of your magnificent car. As mentioned earlier, your passion not only for Goldbird but obviously your wife and family, appears to be coming back to you. Please visit us often and add comments with your experience, on our fast growing international site.