QuestionThis question may not fit with your expertise, but I will ask anyway. A friend claims that some of the 1950's Thunderbird cars had aluminum body panels.
I don't believe this, but a bet is at stake anyhow.
Thanks for your help.
AnswerYou're right, this a little out of my line. I do know that Ford made a few very special high performance cars in the 60s that had every trick in the book used to save weight, including aluminum bumpers and body panels, for instance the "Thunderbolt" - a very special run of 100 63-64 Ford Fairlanes made for racing - perhaps that is what your friend remembers - the name is close.
To learn more about this project, see:
http://media.ford.com/newsroom/feature_display.cfm?release=18023
I sort of doubt any of that was done in the 50s, but that is only a guess.
The 57 T-bird is quite a slug as for high performance, even the famous "E" bird and "F" birds - they were really never intended to be high performance cars, they were built for the "personal luxury" market, and even with the so called high performance engine mods, they were still slugs on the road and track (sorry if I'm telling you something you didn't already know), so I rather doubt anyone would have gone to the expense of building up a racing capable version - maybe a private owner, but not Ford.
Of course, aluminum was used for body panels (and whole bodies!) way back in the earliest days of cars, so anything might have happened way back when.
Dick
