1958 Ford Thunderbird: The Square Bird's Four Seats and Three Production Counts

This record's own overview states directly that the 1958 Thunderbird became a four-seat car on a 113-inch wheelbase, built at Ford's new Wixom, Michigan, plant; Old Cars Weekly dates coupe production from January 13, 1958 and convertible production from April 15, 1958, with convertibles reaching dealers that June. This record's own dek calls the car the "Square Bird" and notes it sold well in a recession year despite the January production start, a nickname this record's own text uses only in that dek rather than repeating it through the rest of the record.¹

This record's own overview gives the standard engine as a 352 V-8 rated 300 brake horsepower, offered with three-speed manual, overdrive or Cruise-O-Matic transmissions; it cites Byron Olsen for shipping weights of 3,870 pounds for the coupe and 3,895 pounds for the convertible, figures this record's own specifications section repeats alongside a separate, lower pair of shipping weights, 3,708 and 3,903 pounds, sourced to the Over-Drive Magazine production table.^1,2

This record's own production section leaves the total-production row disputed rather than settled: Old Cars Weekly gives 37,392, Wikipedia's own citation of Hemmings Motor News gives 37,892, and the Over-Drive Magazine production table's own hardtop-plus-convertible rows, 35,758 and 2,134, add to 37,892, siding with the higher figure. Every source does agree on 2,134 convertibles, this record's own overview states, a figure that began production only in April 1958.^1,3,2

This record's own conflicts section adds a third figure to the dispute: John Gunnell, writing in Old Cars Weekly, gives Thunderbird sales at 53,400 in a recession year, lifting its share of Ford's output from 1.3 to 3.8 percent, but this record's own treatment note explains that Gunnell states no basis for the number and that it is not a model-year build count, so it sits apart from the 37,392-versus-37,892 build-count disagreement rather than resolving it.¹

This record's own options section prices Cruise-O-Matic at $197, overdrive at $108, the Ford-Aire suspension at $156, and air conditioning in two forms, a $271 Polar-Aire conditioner and a $395 Select Air conditioner, both including tinted glass on their own. This record's own paint table carries 16 colours, three of them, Cascade Green, Monarch Blue and Peach, sharing the single code letter X, and a final colour, Platinum, listed without a code letter at all.²

This record's own specifications section gives a 205.3-inch overall length, a 76.9-inch width, a 52.5-inch hardtop height against 53.1 inches for the convertible, 60.0-inch front and 57.0-inch rear track, and 8.00x14 four-ply tubeless tires, these dimensions all credited to the new Wixom-built platform in this record's own overview. This record's own unpublished-leads section flags Olsen's listing of a 430-cubic-inch Lincoln V-8 at 375 brake horsepower as a 1958 option, noting other accounts place the 430 only in 1959-60, and separately flags Wikipedia's own $3,408 base-price figure, citing nadaguides.com, as a tertiary source citing a valuation site rather than a primary price list; this record's own prices section instead carries the Over-Drive Magazine compilation's own factory prices, $3,630 for the hardtop and $3,914 for the convertible.²

This record's own interiors section carries 17 entries from the Automotive Mileposts interior trim page: four nylon Highland Tweed cloth combinations coded XA, XB, XC and XK, six Softextured all-vinyl combinations coded XE through XM, and seven convertible-top codes numbered 1 through 7 that pair a top colour with a lining and a frame colour. Those are the codes the page publishes for the year. The page separately notes an all-leather option priced at $106 on the price list that was not installed until 1959, so no 1958 leather trim is recorded here, and the interiors are the only rows in this record that rest on the archived Mileposts page.⁴