- Thunderbirds of Queensland Inc is now on. Facebook

Transcription

1 Volume 21 Number 3 November / December 2011

2 2 - contact@toqinc.org Thunderbirds of Queensland Inc is now on Facebook Login to your account and search for Thunderbirds of Queensland Everyone is welcome to join the group Your pictures and stories are most welcome The Thunderbirds of Queensland Inc. is a non profit organization dedicated to the restoration, preservation and enjoyment of Thunderbird passenger vehicles built by the Ford Motor Company.

3 Club Calendar November Fri 4th Sun 6th Sat 26th Committee Meeting & Social Evening Club Run - Annual Yankee Doodle American Car Cruise to Atkinson s Dam for the Meet BP Boundary Rd Rocklea 9.30am for 10.00am departure BYO Picnic lunch TOQ Christmas Party - Genghis Kahn Mongolian BBQ See flyer on page 6 for full details Please RSVP by November the 11th Sun 27th Club Run - Thanksgiving Lakeside All American Day Gates open 7.30am Parking allocated for TOQ in front of Café / Conference Centre. December Fri 2nd Committee Meeting & Social evening. January Sat 14th Club Run - Cruise to Scarborough for Fish n Chips. Meet Shell Nudgee on Gateway 3.00pm for 3.30pm Departure February Fri 2nd Committee Meeting & social evening. February Club Run - Bill s Breaky Bash Details date to be finalised 3

4 Designated Events November 6th The 11th Annual Wheels of the Century Automotive Show, Redcliffe Showground's, Scarborough Road, Redcliffe, open to all car clubs and private entries, live Rock'n'Roll music, food and drink stalls, gates open for stallholders and exhibitors at 7.30am, general public 9am, cost exhibitors $7 pre-pay or $10 on day, adults $5, children U/12 free, stall holders $50, for more info or Ph Brian or Cheryl th Sun Fun Run and Northpine Country Markets Show Combined #2, Harry's Diner, Newmarket Rd, Windsor, arrive from 7am (open for breakfast from 7am), leave for cruise to Northpine Country Markets (via Redcliffe) at 8.30am sharp, open to all Aussie and American muscle cars, tough streeters and hot rods, show and shine judging is only open to pre 1979 vehicles, ASMF and ASRF TC sanctioned run, market stalls, shops, kids entertainment, trophies, for more info P h Webby th Kawana Classic and Custom Car Show A fundraising event for the prevention and awareness of Men s Health. This is a registered event with the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, with all proceeds being donated to the foundation. Please show your support on the day, at 21 Premier Cct, Warana, Sunshine Coast and attend as an individual, family or organised club run. Entry is via gold coin donation, from 10 am. 13th Gold Coast Car Show, Mudgeeraba Show grounds, Mudgeeraba Road, Mudgeeraba, will also feature a showcase of bikes and trucks, public entry $5 from 8am-3pm, sites $10 prepaid via website or $15 pay on the day (gates open 5.30am) food, drink & entertainment, for more info Ph or visit 4

5 President s Report 2011 is fast slipping away and the festive season approaches. After consideration of several alternatives, a trip to Mongolia via the Genghis Khan restaurant at the Valley sounded like a new and interesting experience. See the flyer in this magazine issue. Hope to see you all there for some Christmas cheer and a night of fun of barbaric proportions. Club members have participated in some interesting events recently. A 10 plus car contingency attended the All Ford Day at Kedron. Congratulations to Russell Wood 1st place 59 Convertible and Robert Cupo 2nd place 63 Hardtop taking the trophies for best club cars. The Thunderbirds of Queensland are now officially affiliated with the Queensland Historic Motoring Council. An overview of the minutes from the Sept meeting can be found on page 18 Welcome to new members Maxine Sheppard with her Pontiac Firebird, Mark Hooper with his 1974 Ford LTD and John and Margaret Barker with their 1963 Thunderbird Hardtop. John has collected cars for many years and is a fan of Buicks as well as Fords. We have a busy schedule coming with our Yankee Doodle Dandy run, Christmas Party, then the Thanks Giving at Lakeside run, hope to see you there. Joanne and I have thoroughly enjoyed the many runs to different places, seeing some amazingly beautiful cars, but most of all value the friendships made with a really great group of people. Our wish for you all is that you have a happy, safe and blessed Christmas spent with those you love, and we look forward to seeing you on the road the rest of this year and next. Stewart Harvey. 5

6 Editor s Report Howdy Folks, just got back from the USA, and yes! Everything is bigger in TEXAS. Jenny and I visited with relies in the Longhorn state for a couple of weeks, then we hit the road and 2453 miles later we camped on the Queen Mary before our flight home across the big pond. Its good to be home and catch up with friends and I m looking forward to the next run! It was a great relief to find this next issue of the magazine was up and ready to go thanks to Johnny, Merron and Stewart. I ll have to go away more often! Well new members keep rollin in and some old ones just come on back. Welcome back Serge and Alfina Pagotto from Home Hill... and the events keep piling up.. I m sorry I missed the run to the Barn, although the Yankee Doodle country cruise will be great. How about the Mongolian BBQ Xmas Bash, and with another spin around Lakeside there is plenty of variety for the rev heads and cruisers amongst us. So get our the cob web broom.. Summer is here.. Lets go cruising Davo New Members Maxine Sheppard 1974 Pontiac Firebird John Barker 1963 Thunderbird Hardtop Mark Hooper 1974 Ford LTD 6

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8 Thunderbird Saturn II Concept Car

9 9 It was an fantastic turn out for the 29 th Annual All Ford Show. Nearly 500 cars ventured to Kedron this year for this event and by all accounts it was the biggest for some time. We hadn t done this one as a club for a while so I decided to rally the troops.. The troops responded with a total of 17 cars attending in some way or form. They included 7 Thunderbirds 57, 59, 62, 63, 64, 66, & 77 a 55 Ranch Wagon a 59 Skyliner Retractable a 63 Galaxie Fordor Hardtop 4 Mercury Cougars, 3 68s and a 70 a 72 Galaxie LTD and a 78 Ranchero. Now that shows you how diverse the car ownership of this club is now. Great to have you along guys, thanks for supporting your club. Russell Wood won the 1 st place Trophy for best Thunderbird Club car with his 59 while Robert Cupo took out 2 nd with his Hot Rod 63 well done guys! 1st 2nd

10 It can be the simplest thing, a sound, a smell, and we are hurtled back in time to a specific place in our past. Memories not forgotten but not often recalled. Such was the case recently when the Ding-Ding of a tram bell transported some of we Thunderbirders back to our youth. Instantly we recalled fond memories of Saturday morning Tram Trips to Brisbane City. The nostalgic journey was complete with uniformed Conductor and Driver doubling as Brisbane Tramway historians. A beautiful spring day, Thunderbirds 2 (Darren, Tania and son Kyle) and new members (John and Margaret), Galaxies 2 (Keiran) and (Stewart and Joanne) and 1 rouge Camaro (Dennis and Merron) met at Harry s Diner in Newmarket Rd then proceeded to the Tramway Museum at Ferny Grove. Amongst the trams we all enjoyed a picnic lunch then the fun began. We rode trams from many eras. From open trams of the early 1900 s to the comparatively modern streamlined trams introduced a short time before their demise. Reading their bill boards was a trip down memory lane. After over 80 years of running at a profit, the last tram pulled into the depot shortly after midnight 13 th April 1969 ending Brisbane s tramway era. From the youngest to oldest an interesting and entertaining day was had by all. Stewart & Joanne Harvey. 10

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13 By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor July 31, 2011 Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose books include "Late Edition: A Love Story" and "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams." There went July, for those of you keeping score at home And as another summer in the only life you'll ever lead makes its turn into the backstretch, perhaps we might pause for just a moment to reflect upon a glorious part of the American summer landscape that is no longer with us: Thunderbirds. Ford Thunderbirds. It's not just that they don't make 'em like that anymore. They don't make 'em, period. Born in 1955, the Thunderbird was instantly such a sensation that it seemed as if it would roll down America's highways forever. The first generation of Thunderbirds -- the ones manufactured in 1955, 1956 and 1957, and referred to as "Little Birds" by those who are devoted to T-Bird legend and history -- was a sharp, low-slung two-seater that was freedom and wanderlust incarnate. It was no wonder that in the movie "American Graffiti," the elusive blonde who represented summer dreams that always seem somehow just beyond reach drove one of the earliest Thunderbirds. Any other car would have seemed wrong. The next generation of Thunderbirds -- the ones built in 1958, 1959 and 1960, and known as "Square Birds" -- are, to many of us, not just the most beautiful T-Birds ever, but the most beautiful cars. The very name -- Thunderbird -- felt ideal for the nation's post-world War II self-image: confident and powerful and a little cocky, unworried about what was around the next bend, strong enough to roll over any obstacles that might arise. There were songs written about the allure of T-Birds -- the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun" is the most famous -- but the TBird song that is most evocative in its poignancy was an album track by Bob Seger. Called "Makin' Thunderbirds," the song celebrates the feeling of working on an industrial assembly line that is producing something special. In his lyrics, Seger paints a portrait of an America clear-eyed and optimistic and trusting in its ability to find its own way; he was singing about working on the line, but he was singing about the country, too: "We were young and proud, we were makin Thunderbirds." 13 Continued on next page..

14 Somehow, it got away. Ford decided to try to improve on the Square Bird; the cars got longer and heavier and more luxurious, and for a while they were still recognizably T- Birds. But then, by the early 1980s, Ford did the seemingly impossible: It made the Thunderbird ordinary. The car that looked like no other became the car that looked like every other. "That was awful," Elizabeth Werth told me the other morning. She and her husband Bill live in northern Illinois, and are members of Thunderbird clubs both locally and nationally. (Elizabeth is a past regional director of the Classic Thunderbird Club International.) When the Thunderbirds became little more than family sedans, she said, "You couldn't even tell, when you were driving down the road, if that car that was coming toward you was a Thunderbird. Our neighbor across the street had one. I looked at it and thought, 'What? That's a Thunderbird? Why?' " Bill Werth owns a restored '55 Little Bird, painted in the original Thunderbird Blue. "When I drive it, people pull up next to it and start taking pictures with their cell phones," he said. Elizabeth confirmed this: "People see it, and its thumbs up, smiles, waves, cameras being pulled out, people hanging out the window of their cars to get a better look." Ford fooled around with the design of Thunderbird for a while, then, in 1997, shut down the brand. It came back early in this century for a few years, but then was dropped again in There are currently no Thunderbirds being made, which seems a shame in a cookie-cutter universe of mundane cars that look like so many rounded-off shoeboxes. Car designers are always looking for the next great style concept, but Ford had it a long time ago -- that gorgeous Square Bird from 1958, 1959 and and threw it away in the name of progress. I've had a theory that I have been trying out on people for years. What if Ford were to take the chassis underpinnings and engine used in today's autos, complete with all the now-necessary fuel-efficiency and safety standards, and drop the old Square Bird body on top of it? A Square Bird body constructed of modern materials, brand-new and ready to hit the highway? Why couldn't that be done? In a world of bland and dull transportation options, people might snap it up. It would make them happy just to look at it as they climbed behind the wheel every morning. The idea is nuts, I have often been told, couldn't be done, unrealistic. But then, last week, I spoke with someone who said that it could, in fact, be accomplished -- and might be a fine idea. And he was speaking from inside the headquarters of the Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Michigan. "It's not nuts at all," said Bob Kreipke, Ford's official corporate historian. "The engineers and designers could come up with a way to make it work. I'd probably buy one myself, because it would be different from everything else that is out there on the road." Kreipke said that in his opinion, the Thunderbird may be dormant, but not buried: "That is such a great brand. As far as I'm concerned, that brand is far from meeting its death. That's a real powerful nameplate." In "Fun, Fun, Fun," of course, the Beach Boys sang that "Daddy took the Tbird away." In real life, it was Ford that took the Tbird away. But what Ford taketh away, Ford can giveth. Just the way it was: perfect. Summer and Thunderbirds, Sounds like a song. 14

15 Ever had that feeling that you have been there before, well the run out to The Barn just had that feeling about it. It was such a good run the first time a few Xmas s ago (except for the heat wave we experienced) we thought we had better pop out west again and see our fellow club member Scott Wright and his interesting piece of history. The sign on The Barn says circa 1887 if only those logs could talk! The January flood certainly left its mark on the surrounding area, especially Grantham which is only some 23klms down the road from The Barn. Luckily for Scott his property remained untouched by the devastation. Several members of the Aston Martin car club (though like us they have a variety of vehicles in the club) pulled into the car park behind us, thus adding a little bit more interest to the car park area. It looked like it was going to be a busy day in the kitchen so the Tbirders got in early which placed Scott right in the firing line he is the head chef it s terrific to see a man standing in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove! Terrific lunch thanks Scott. 15 Continued on next page..

16 After lunch the boys headed out to the car park wow, even more cars to check out, looks like the last large group of people also had an interest in cars. The girls well we just relaxed, chatted, wandered around the property and some of us had a quick look at the cars. Thankfully the weather was definitely much kinder than on our last visit. It was some years ago now but I was on a club run to Toowoomba and we just happened to drop by Scott s house, a) to catch up with Scott and b) to check out his small collection of memorabilia. Scott, looking forward to our next visit to The Barn when we can check out this small collection in your new, small shed. Great day out - thanks for your hospitality Scott look forward to catching up with everyone again soon. Stay safe. Cheers, Merron The run to The Barn took us out along the Warrego Highway to Gatton and Grantham then through to Flagstone Creek. We all know of the destruction and loss that Grantham suffered in January. As you pass through the attractive farmland in the Lockyer Valley it is very difficult to think that such a peaceful area could ever be threatened with annihilation from flood of all things. Puts your own matters in perspective and we trust recovery comes as quickly as possible to the area. Scott had a number of motoring groups visit on the day including a group of vintage and veteran cars and a number of great looking classic Fords. We liked the beautiful little 1930 Aston Martin. The owners had taken this car touring to Britain and Europe now that's a cruise!! In our own ranks it was beaut to see Tony come along in the lemon '69 T'bird Landau Hardtop. Great to see the T'bird in the club, its a beautiful classic car. Lunch was enjoyed by all in the 'classic' barn. Scott is working on the 'new' Barn, frame up, a mighty effort, but not surprisingly, progress of late has been held up due to circumstances in the district. Scott has one amazing memorabilia collection and it'll be great to be able to see his collection set up in the 'new' Barn when that comes to pass.. Bill 16

17 Queensland Historic Motoring Council News - Sept 2011 Late News. Following the letter to the Minister re seat belt laws, a meeting has been arranged with the Executive Director of Road Safety, within Qld Transport. Rod is still having on-going discussions with QT re a standard dating form. As noted we are hoping to have the North Queensland clubs take up the offer to run QHMC rallies in their area paralleling those run in the southern part of the state. I realise we could be asking a bit for it to happen for 2012 but maybe a club already has something in progress that could be adapted. If your club has a web presence please look at the QHMC web site to make sure your information is correct as we are developing a new site with this info. As part of this we would like a jpg format file of your club badge. We hope to use these badges in the site heading. I realise that we represent over 100 clubs but I am sure our webmaster can work his magic to make use of the badges. We would also like to include not just your coming events but links to any past events where you post the report on the web RACQ HMC Rally: Maryborough District Antique Motor Club will host the annual rally on the Queen s Birthday long weekend 9-11 th June RACQ is the major sponsor. Book your accommodation. Entry form on the club website Rally address is patandjoe1964@hotmail.com Rally phone number is QHMC Rally: Sunshine Coast Antique Car Club will hold its 50 th Anniversary week-long celebration in conjunction with the 2013 QHMC Rally in June Please lodge your expression of interest to attend with name, number attending, phone, address and address to SCACC PO Box 363 Nambour Special interest Vehicle - Tolling: Members with heavy vehicles 4.5 t and over on SIV registration who are being charged commercial toll-road rates are requested to contact Rod Graydon, QHMC s transport liaison officer, and give him details of the overcharging. Special interest Vehicle - Concessional Registration: QHMC has consulted widely during 2011 to determine whether changes are required in our existing SIV arrangements. There is mixed feeling in the clubs generally. Whilst the majority do not want to lose the benefits provided by the current SIV scheme, many clubs would like to see the existing arrangements remain and be enhanced with the provision of a number of personal use days each year. DTMR has been asked for its opinion on how such an extension of the SIV scheme might be managed. It is expected that it would be easy to implement such an extension to the existing scheme but regulation and enforcement might present challenges. Resource-neutral arrangements for DTMR and nil administrative overheads for clubs are important considerations. QHMC is continuing advocacy on your behalf. Seat Belts and Child Restraints: QHMC continues to negotiate with DTMR and advocate to the Minister for Transport to bring Qld Road Rules into closer alignment with Australian Road Rules in order to get families back into our club movement. Widely-held club opinion is that a reasonable point in time at which to apply an exemption to the age 7 to under 16 age group in pre-seat belt era vehicles would be for all pre-1960 vehicles. By the time you read this, another conference will have taken place between QHMC and DTMR, the outcome of which will be loaded onto the QHMC website Web Links: In order to get clubs interacting better, clubs have been asked to provide two or three open invitational events over a six month period for inclusion on the QHMC Events Calendar. If your club would like some company on its runs, it should notify QHMC via the link on its website 17

18 For Sale 55 Ford Thunderbird with Hardtop Body off OZ Rods resto to assembly point with csome component reconditioning required photos available. Near perfect body and paint RHD onversion with modern rack and pinion, suspension overhauled, new ball joints etc. Hidden vintage air a/c and heater with compressor bracketing completed. Mild custom look with spare tyre recessed drop tank to give practical boot space. Reconditioned Y block with recond FMX auto fitted. Custom made header pipes, new dizzy with taco drive and new 650 holley. Re trimmed eats and some other new parts. All non standard parts and modifications can be removed to take car back to original should you choose. This car has had an embarrassing amount of money spent on it, too many projects so car must sell. Ph. Kev FOR SALE 65 Thunderbird Hardtop Black, with black interior, new carpet and under lay. New seat cushions, new trunk mat kit. Rebuilt carby, heads and gearbox. Near new brakes, starts and runs real well,on club rego at present Contact Dave on for more information. 18

19 Web Links International Thunderbird Club Thunderbird Registry LOVEfords Thunderbird Headquarters Bird Nest Thunderbird Ranch Home of the Thunderbird Italien & XM400 Mercury Concept Car Squarebirds.org Automotive Mileposts Thunderbird Jim Wulf's Tbird Garage All American Auto Parts Ballarat Jim Osbourne Reproductions The Old Car Manual Project Vintage Ford Publications Auto Colour Library Historic Video Archive Plan 59 - Museum of Mid Century Illustration Original Auto Interiors The Thunderbird Registry exists as a tool for us to further our appreciation for The World s Most Wanted Car. The car everyone would love to own! This is the World s largest on-line database for Ford Thunderbirds. 19

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