As it turned out, Elwood Engel’s design proposal lost out to the winning one by Alex Tremulis. There were several designs on the drawing board for the 1961 third generation Thunderbird. Chevrolet Corvette went the sports car route and never looked back. Ford called their Thunderbird a personal luxury car. The Ford Thunderbird was always considered somewhat sporty but in a luxurious way.
After several years each model went their separate ways.
Thunderbirds were the cars from Ford which in 1955 started out competing directly against the Chevy Corvette. The first Ford Thunderbird was introduced at the 1954 Detroit Auto Show. Ford of course wanted to follow suit and did so with it’s first Thunderbird. 1961 Ford T-BirdĬhevrolet was the first of the Detroit automakers to test the sports car market with the introduction of their Corvette. The 1961 Ford Thunderbird represented the beginning of the third generation Thunderbirds and they were sleeker than the ones before them.