Used Car of the Day: 1988 Ford Thunderbird

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

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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  • Wjtinfwb 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.

  • Kwik_Shift Kwik_Shift on Feb 23, 2023

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

  • Zerofoo BYD, a huge Chinese car company, admits that autonomous driving is impossible: https://insideevs.com/news/663811/byd-spokesperson-autonomous-driving-basically-impossible/
  • Jagboi The Canadian Mark VI's had the "Electronic fuel injection" badge on the side, but had the Ford Variable Venturi carb. The Canadian brochure for these cars does not have the portion about EFI that the US brochures have. A bit of false advertising for sure.I've seen a number of these cars up to 1983 and none of the Canadian market cars had EFI. The US cars had a crank triggered ignition systenm, the Canadian cars had the Duraspark just like the carbed Ford and Mercury Panthers.
  • Syke Back when BMW actually made ultimate driving machines.
  • Alan Many Ford designs that are manufactured in China are designed in Australia. Ford just fired hundreds of engineers. That only leaves engineers to keep on designing the Rangers, Bronco, etc.
  • Alan Big Al,Seems the author has confused horsepower and kilowatts. Check out what the Aussie Ranger Raptor power output is.The VW Amarok is the 2.3 Eco Boost, I think its about what the author wrote.To be fair, the author may be quoting EU hp.
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