About the Thunderbird T-Roof...

Question:

My question relates to the 1977 Ford Thunderbird T-Top model. How many of the T-Top model were made just that year, and perhaps how many for that specific series?

I owned one from roughly 1987-93 and, sadly, it joined the rather large list I have of “cars I once owned and could shoot myself for getting rid of.” I ask because my personal research knowl- edge is lacking where it comes to such information (production numbers).

I also ask because after several years now of occasionally scanning the Inter- net for anything on these T-Tops, I think I’ve only found maybe a handful of pages related to this T-Top in any way, with no listings of sales, and essentially no information on them. Thanks in advance for whatever light you can shed on this subject.

Answer:

Aside from determining that no Thunderbirds with the T-Roof conversion option were produced in 1977 (the option was first offered partway into model year 1978) I had difficulty finding out much of anything about these obviously rare cars, so I turned to expert Don Holton. In addition to serving as the International Thunderbird Club 1972-82 Technical Advisor, Mr. Holton also happens to be the proud owner of a 1978 Thunderbird T-Roof Convertible model that his parents bought brand-new in 1978.

Here is the information he was able to provide: Mid-year 1978, the T-Roof Convertible option was made available on the Thunderbird line.

The T-Roofs were added to the option list in January 1978 and the project was handled in house by a company called Cars & Concepts at both the Chicago and Los Angeles assembly plants and the T- Roof conversions were then completed by Cars & Concepts. The actual T-Roof option production numbers have not been released by Ford Motor Co. With that said, however, a business by the name of Marti Auto Works has access to all of the Ford production records from 1967-79 and offers a complete breakdown of the statistics of how many Ford products were produced with a specific option.

As listed above, currently this is avail- able to owners of all Ford products from 1967-79 in the form of an Elite Marti Report. This report breaks down the production number of each option included in the covered model.