I ran into a 1986 model at the US-127 cruise up the gut of the Lower Peninsula last year, and immediately, that funny feeling came over me: Bill Elliott’s Coors Cup car at Talladega, Bob Glidden’s Pro Stocker, my own forays into three digit “I don’t do this now that I’m an adult” speeds in my Dad’s hand-me-down ’87 5.0 ‘Bird. If I said I wasn’t a T-Bird fan by that point, I was lying through my teeth. I vividly remember a test ride in an ’88 model, 5-speed equipped, gold, with Dad taking a freeway entrance ramp a couple dozen miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit, the boost needle swinging to the starboard side of its small gauge. So maybe the street Turbo Coupe didn’t quite have the effect on the drive train or psyche that a mountain motored door-slammer did, but even factory ‘Birds pervaded my pre-adolescent gray matter. Even as a kid, I’d feel a pang of sadness for U-Joints and ring gears as I cheered on one of my racing heroes. The skinny front tires of Glidden’s Chief Auto Parts/Motorcraft T-Bird would trip the stage lights, the engine would scream, and potential energy turned brutally kinetic in an instant.
In between those peregrinations to the dealership, however, I was glued to our console Zenith, watching Bob Glidden smack down those Reher-Morrison Camaros in NHRA Pro Stock drag racing.