Ford’s Top-Secret 90s Sports Coupe That Never Saw The Light Of Day. Here’s Why

Summary

• Ford’s proposed SVE Thunderbird concept car, which combined the T-Bird with a Cobra Mustang, could have potentially saved the iconic car from discontinuation due to sagging sales.
• The SVE Thunderbird was a high-performance machine, featuring a supercharged 4.6-liter V-8 engine, a five-speed manual transmission, and sleek design elements borrowed from the Mustang.
• Ford ultimately canceled the SVE Thunderbird project as part of a larger plan to eliminate the Thunderbird entirely, due to dwindling sales. The concept car could have reignited public interest in the model.

Automakers build crazy concept vehicles all the time, with the vast majority never getting past the single prototype stage. The reason for concept cars is to, duh, test out concepts. Designers want to push the limits of their imagination and hopefully stumble upon something with a practical application. Sometimes elements from a wild concept will make it into a production model, but mostly they are exercises in creativity. Then, there are concept vehicles grounded in reality with mass market appeal, that for whatever reason, never get made.

Such is the case with the 1990s Ford SVE Thunderbird concept car. The proposed vehicle was a two-door coupe that was a merging of the T-Bird with a Cobra Mustang and would have been the high-performance ride the Thunderbird was always meant to be. In retrospect, it seems like a no-brainer that Ford should have gone ahead with this can’t-miss concept, but the inner workings and politics of a major corporation don’t always make sense to the average Joe.

Ford probably has hundreds of concept vehicles they never built, and those decisions obviously didn’t have much of an impact, either way, seeing as, according to Investopedia, they are the fifth-biggest automaker. Pushing ahead with the SVE Thunderbird, however, could possibly have saved the iconic car. After being in continuous production since 1955, sagging sales forced Ford to discontinue it in 1997, but maybe a high-powered version would have moved some units.

In order to give you the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, the data used to compile this article was sourced from various manufacturer websites and other authoritative sources, including Ford, Acceleration Times, and Barn Finds.

1990s Ford Coupe Landscape

Looking For A Winner

Back in the 1990s, Ford built three coupes: the Thunderbird, the Mercury Cougar, and the Lincoln Mark VIII. The Thunderbird and the Cougar were virtually identical vehicles, while the Mark VIII rode on their chassis, so this was Blue Oval offering basically three of the same thing.

These vehicles were not flops, but they also weren’t anything that was wowing the vehicle-buying public. Engineers thought they had a solution for a ride that would get consumers pumped, and it rested within their existing line-up. Sometimes the most brilliant ideas are the easiest and most obvious.

Ford Models With The Longest Production Runs

• Country Squire (1950-1991)
• Thunderbird (1955-1997, 2002-2005)
• Bronco (1965-1996, 2021-present)
• Mustang (1965-present)
• F-Series truck (1948-present)

The Thunderbird and Cougar had as their biggest engine option a 205 horsepower 4.6-liter V-8, which was a gas-guzzling dud that scared away buyers in droves. The Mark VIII had a 32-valve DOHC version of the engine that produced a more respectable 280 horsepower, and over in Mustangland, they popped a supercharger on it to crank out 305 ponies. Ford’s Special Vehicle Engineering started thinking about how cool it would be if they could shoehorn that powerful engine into a Thunderbird and a concept was born in 1995.

The SVE Thunderbird

No More ThunderChickens

For most of its history, Thunderbirds were cool-looking rides that were inexplicably always a bit underpowered, leading to the sarcastic designation as “ThunderChickens.” In the mid-1990s, Ford engineers took four Thunderbirds and fitted them with supercharged 4.6-liter Modular V-8 engines, which was enough to chase the fox(body) out of the hen house.

No longer the butt of any jokes, this concept T-Bird was a real-deal performance machine. Making things better and faster, the prototypes were equipped with Tremec T-45 5-speed manual transmissions. This ride was mechanically identical to a 1996 SVT Mustang Cobra, which doesn’t suck.

Est. Power And Performance

(Based on ’96 SVT Cobra and sourced from Acceleration Times)

Improving performance is a plus, but only half the battle in creating a cool set of wheels. The tenth-generation Thunderbirds, while not ugly, weren’t anything special either. It is a fact that upgrading the rims and adding spoilers can make even the most mundane vehicle look hot, and that’s what the SVE team did.

First, they slapped on 17-inch, five-spoke Cobra R wheels and used the Mustang bumper as well as front fascia elements. Next, they put a unique spoiler and finished off with chrome dual-exhaust tips. Suddenly, the sluggish, fuddy-duddy ThunderChicken was a slick high-performance SVE T-Bird.

Thunderbird History

T-Birds Through Time

To understand why the SVE Thunderbird concept car was significant, it’s helpful to look back on the model’s history from a hot sports car to the forgettable 90s disappointment it became. Launched in 1955 as a two-seat convertible, the T-Bird was an instant hit and the biggest threat the Chevrolet Corvette ever faced.

It was considered a personal luxury vehicle for which fun was more important than performance, so while it inspired songs by the Beach Boys, it was never intended to blow doors off, at least not in the first-gen. By the second generation, it got back seats as well as more powerful engine options, and by the mid-1960s it could be configured as a factory drag car or NASCAR racer, with the mighty 426ci V-8.

Thunderbirds In Popular Culture

• The subject of the Beach Boys hit “Fun, Fun, Fun”
• Dean Martin had a gold ’66 Town Landau in Murderer’s Row
• James Bond was chased by a T-Bird in Goldfinger
• Suzanne Somers was the “Blonde in a T-Bird” in American Graffiti
• Thelma and Louise drove off a cliff in a ’66 T-Bird

The late-60s saw the Thunderbird grow in size and by the 1970s it became a luxury land yacht with detuned, underpowered engines. It’s hard to pin the exact date, but somewhere around 1976, the Thunderbird became the ThunderChicken and would essentially never recover. In the 1980s, it joined the Fox Body platform but wasn’t as cool-looking or fast as the Mustangs.

The eighth, ninth, and tenth generation (1980-1997) Thunderbirds were the complete opposite of the stylish sports cars and proto-muscle models from their beginnings. There was the 1983 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, which was similar to the Taurus SHO, but it was ugly and didn’t sell. A slick and quick SVE Thunderbird could have really saved the nameplate, but it wasn’t meant to be.

SVE Thunderbird Crashes Back To Earth

Ford Discontinues the T-Bird

The SVE Thunderbird had all the ingredients to succeed, from true performance to attractive styling, but Ford saw it differently and canceled the project. It turns out the concept car was the victim of a larger company plan to eliminate the T-Bird entirely. Due to slumping sales, Ford discontinued the Thunderbird in 1997.

It tried to make a comeback in the 2000s as a proper two-seater again, but by then the public was no longer interested, and it was put to rest permanently in 2005. Ford claims the eleventh generation T-Bird was intended to be a limited run to celebrate the car’s 50th anniversary, but had it sold well it would have never been mothballed. Supposidly, the nameplate is just on hiatus and could make a return in the future.

Important Thunderbird Production Stats

• 1955 – 16,155 units sold
• 1964 – 92,465 units sold
• 1978 – 352,751 units sold (highest year of production)
• 1997 – 36,582 units sold (last effective year of production)
• 4.4 million total units sold in 45 years of production

As for the fate of those four SVE Thunderbird prototypes, which could have renewed public interest in the model, three of them were destroyed and one ended up in private hands. A guy posting on the TCCoA forum claims his uncle had the one survivor and traded it at a dealer for around $12,000.

AutoBlog reported that the car was for sale on eBay Motors, but the car in the now-deleted posting didn’t have a rear spoiler and was listed as a “Thunderbird SVT,” not SVE, so it probably wasn’t the wayward prototype. Lastly, BarnFinds, located someone selling the alleged prototype on Craigslist but had serious doubts to its authenticity. Tracking down the sole surviving SVE Thunderbird might make for a good Indiana Jones reboot, as it’s more elusive than the Ark of the Covenant or the Dial of Destiny.