Thunderbird

THUNDERBIRDS ARE SLOW.
 
The Great White Shark has a bite pressure of three tons per square centimetre. Its favourite meal is seal. It attacks from directly below said hapless snack; 2500lbs and more of bunched muscle propelling a mouth full of serrated teeth the size of a shot glass vertically upwards at a good 30mph. It kills with one massive, eviscerating bite, before returning to dine at leisure.
 
You cannot reason with a Great White. If it decides you are lunch, you’re unlikely to change it’s mind by throwing a Frisbee for it to chase or offering it a Bonio and ordering it to sit. From directly below, a surfer lounging on a board looks exactly like a particularly clumsy seal -the one that always gets picked last for a playground kickabout. Which is why, the world over, surfers are accidentally tasted on a regular basis. I’ve seen surf-boards sporting bites of a radius so big you could comfortably cradle a cow’s belly in the cavity.
 
Which is also why, wrestling for ascendancy over my own surf-board some 30 yards off the coast of Newquay in Cornwall, my long suffering instructor is benefiting from somewhat less than my undivided attention. For, lest you consider such incidents to be the exclusive preserve of Malibu, Durban or Sydney, I should point out that only the other day, in 1935, just such a shark sank a dory minding its own business off the Lizard Point in Cornwall, and ate the contents…
 
The Ford Motor Company are entirely to blame for my present predicament. Offered the opportunity to wobble off for a few days in the only extant, British based sample of their 2002 Thunderbird, but one location springs to mind: Grainy, Beach Boy harmonised, black and white memories of pneumatic California squeeze clustered round a late 50’s T’bird, copping an in-depth ocular rummage over some bronzed beefcake armed with a huge, pointy plank, wall-to-wall muscles and a face like a bag of sticks make Newquay, the UK’s own surfing Mecca, the obvious hope for a hotbet of similar indulgence. As my epitaph will one day read; it seemed a good idea at the time…
 
Though Ford cites the ’57 Thunderbird as the inspiration for this latest retro’ outburst, I first saw the original concept parked outside London’s Royal College of Art, nose to nose with a 1955, 4.7 litre V8 T’bird. And there seemed precious little to chose between the two Birds custard yellow offerings except the daft Brussels food colouring directive that has since turned both concept, and custard, anaemic.
 
But whichever late 50’s Thunderbird you choose for comparison -Ford were stamping out a new model every year in those days- closer inspection reveals the newcomer to be a somewhat watered down specimen; like a well sucked sherbet lemon, all the knobbly bits have vanished: The bonnet mounted air intake lacks suitable stature, the side vents to the front wings are but feeble facsimiles, and even vestigial tail fin extravagance has vanished altogether to be replaced by a rounded Boxsteresque synergy twixt bows and stern. The optional hardtop in matching ‘Inspiration Yellow’ does, I understand, boast the traditional portholes of yore, but it’s absent. It weighs 83lbs and I suspect the good burghers of Ford became fed up with lugging it round at some previous point in proceedings.
 
Notwithstanding the requirement to sand off all the rough edges in the quest for pedestrian safety -an objective which would, surely, be better served by simply asking them to stick to the pavement- some of the detailing is a tad clumsy to boot. The downturned maw is grilled with over-chubby chromework; egg-crate ribs that should be Stetson brim thin here appear fat as a T-bone steak and combine with curiously lidded headlamps to present a face with all the menace of a faintly curious guppy.
 
The 55 T’bird interior is, of course, a riot; hand made, milled aluminium dashboard, switchgear that would pass muster on the tail of Fireball XL5, fairground attraction steering wheel and a playpen of chrome and bright, body coloured panelling. But what surprises about the 2002 car is that, perversely, the finished article proves far livelier than the unremittingly grey, flush fitting, original concept cockpit. Though the current clunk of American switchgear is very much in evidence, both a fair splash of body coloured panelling and a tasteful, aluminium cummerbund have made the cut. Furthermore, lest both that and a matching gearknob fail to remind you of what colour car you chose, even the seat leather has been artfully stained to resemble the most sought after armchair in an old people’s home.
 
Love it or loathe it, the Thunderbird is right up there with celebrity pole dancing in the attention seeking stakes. And most people, it transpires, love it. Overt adoration starts early. 3.00am early, in fact. Lying in bed the night before this novelty drowning exercise begins, I am awoken by a loud, nasal outburst. “OH…MY…GAWD… A THUNDERBIRD… Ruddy motoring journalists…” I don’t know who you are, American person, or how you know where I live. But it’s three in the morning, so please shut up.
 
Such disruptive incidents aside, however, the Thunderbird’s rarity and novelty value work entirely in our favour. Rumbling down a soggy, afternoon M4, this is the first car I’ve driven in a decade causing sufficient curiosity to displace car after car from the tedious, only-the-British-could-be-so-belligerent, “I was here first” outside lane convoy without recourse to headlights, indicators or a PIAT rocket launcher. For that alone I warm to it considerably.
 
Under the bonnet lurks an all aluminium, 3934cc V8 which this beach bum dressed as a banana shares with Jaguar’s S Type. But 252bhp at 6,100rpm and 267lb/ft of torque at 4,300rpm imbue the Jag with a considerably greater sense of urgency. However at 15′ 6″ long and weighing in at 3775lbs, this is a big, heavy machine and, in that context, quoted performance figures of 0-60mph in 9.8 seconds and a syrup threatening 127mph seem respectable enough. Via a 5-speed automatic ‘box driving the rear wheels, the car pulls smoothly enough for cruising purposes and is, if anything, too quiet at speed. My criticism being a lack of sufficiently sonorous exhaust thrub to reinforce that T’bird pedigree.
 
Mercifully, the Thunderbird has not suffered the frequently awkward, German sourced, “sporty” European road-cogniscent undercarriage re-tuning which so often blights automotive migrants to these shores. So I’m packing a supply of Kwells in anticipation of a ride akin to a storm tossed trawler. Actually, if a little peculiar, it’s not so bad. Imagine running a waterbed mounted on castors over a thick layer of over-ripe plums; a heady blend of waft, squish and judder. Yet, via the installation of at least three whole box-girder bridges below decks, scuttle shake, hood up or down, is surprisingly well controlled and puts the likes of Saab to shame. Then again, doesn’t everything?
 
All of which would make life on board entirely pleasurable, were it not for an electrically operated seat evidently designed by the same numbskull who dreamed up the woeful British railway carriage offering; a lack of lumbar support matched only by a headrest which forces the face uncomfortably downwards at an angle more usually associated with a reluctant paramour.
 
For such a big car boasting only two, spoilsport single seats in lieu of the traditional, American, tonsil-hockey friendly bench, the Thunderbird offers surprisingly scant accommodation. A minimal bay behind the seats has room only for something small and squashable like, say, a dachshund, whilst the boot, though children’s paddling-pool wide, is equally shallow. Although this necessitates travelling west with most of our luggage lobbed into the bay reserved for the folding hood, I’ll forgive the boot anything for housing one positively sublime detail; a thoughtfully luminous grab-handle illustrated with a picture of a bloke hopping out of the open trunk and running away. Any hood who seriously believes you can shoehorn a victim in here has either kidnapped a remarkably tiny man, or is simply out of their tiny mind.
 
Nobody’s quite sure where surfing began, but it certainly wasn’t Newquay on a windy, rain lashed, June afternoon. The Polynesians are reputed to have been at it for centuries, and it first came under Western scrutiny with the arrival of Captain Cook in Hawaii in the late 1770s. At the time, surfing was such a hit it formed part of both the local religion and class system. The arrival of Christian missionaries soon put paid to that. Quite why the Hawaiians allowed a bunch of humourless, religious zealots to substitute church and school for good, wholesome fun is beyond me. But it took the locals over 100 years to realise they’d been well and truly had, and climb back onto their boards. By the 1950s, surfing had quietly metamorphosed from a sport into a California cult, and quickly went global.
 
On Newquay’s Fistral Beach this afternoon, however, there’s little sign of the archetypal, perma-tanned, thousand mile stare, surf dude in evidence. And the glazed expressions on the contents of the lone VW microbus parked at the top of the beach may be largely attributed to the peculiar smell emanating from the interior. Not surfing, gentlemen? “Too rough, man” the eventual reply.
 
Next morning conditions are better. The wind has dropped and it’s barely raining. Bugger. My lesson’s booked for midday and it seems there’s no way out. Electric hood peeled away, the Thunderbird laps the town centre in search of a little surf culture immersion. Something’s wrong. Unless the average age of surfers has risen by a good 60 years overnight, substituting blue rinse for bleached blonde, we appear to have come to the wrong place. And the only other species in evidence has booked in at the Salty Towers B&B, shaved off all its hair, painted a red cross on its face and, at 10 in the morning, is positively hosing down lager in the interests of football enhancement.
 
Finally, a lone wetsuit pads down to the town beach slipway. Nick is from Zith Ivriga. He can’t quite remember why he’s wound up here, man (that’s more like it), but he does know surfing isn’t what it used to be. The sport’s none too “chilled” these days, and incidents of Wave Rage are becoming commonplace: Traditionally, surfers hunt in well acquainted packs, instinctively knowing whose turn in is catch the best wave in the next set. Today, however, all too many interlopers ride rough shod over the pecking order, and it isn’t unusual to see the Marquis of Queensbury’s guidelines being put into practice in the shallows…
 
Worming into a damp wetsuit is about as easy as pulling a surgeon’s glove seasoned with a handful of sand over your whole body. In anticipation of Polar temperatures, I don two. This takes a while. You can hide nothing in a wetsuit. Dave, my instructor, looks suitably Adonis-like in his. I merely look as if I’ve inhalled a Space Hopper. Initial instruction takes place ashore and, floundering helplessly about on my board, I’m seriously concerned lest passing members of Greenpeace try and push me back into the water.
 
On days this cold, most people pee in their wetsuits to warm them up. Concerned (entirely erroneously) at the quantity of effluent I may already be wading into -not so much swimming as going through the motions- I decline. Huge mistake. Striding manfully into the waist high surf sporting the traditional array of lolling wedding vegetables, the internal water level creeps sadistically northwards until the numbing shock of first contact yelps my testicles back into a location hitherto vacant since before puberty. And I’m left with nothing more than a diminutive, duck-egg blue cashew for company.
 
Within five minutes, all notions of “hanging ten” have been washed away by a relentless tide of freezing surf. It’ll be a miracle if I don’t simply end up hanging motionless, face down in the water. This is, frankly, impossible. I had, at the very least, expected to be able to stay on top of the stoutly greased piglet that is my surfboard and catch the occasional wave. But, as with any sport, the learner’s tendency is to substitute technique for brute force, and I’ve expended so much energy just fighting my way out through the waves after each abortive run that I’m completely knackered by the time the immeasurably patient Dave suggests I try “popping up.”
 
Fat chance. The only popping up I’ll be doing today is to my hotel bedroom for a crafty kip: Wetsuits, especially when worn double, have a relentless elasticity which makes even the simply bending of the arms an act of increasingly strong will-power. And each commensurately feeble effort to rise from the board merely finds me, once again, stiff as a dead fish, ingesting gobbets of Atlantic from a range of new and exciting depths beneath the surface.
 
An hour and a half later, emerging majestically from the sea on hands and knees, a conciliatory Dave reassures me that if I persevered with this near death experience for a solid week I’d be “popping up” with the best of them. A kind man, but a bad lair.
 
He lied about the hot shower too. Which means I’m in for a cold, soggy ride home, stiffening quietly behind the wheel like Lot’s wife. Oh to be in California. Notwithstanding, of course, for the sharks.
 
 
 
BOX OUT:
The 2002 Thunderbird, currently retailing in America for a somewhat stout $36,000, is not available in shops or record stores. But to reserve your copy in either Inspiration Yellow, Torch Red, Evening Black, Whisper White or Surfer Genitalia Blue, simply contact specialist importer ??????.
 
If you wish to learn to surf, get fit. And then, via the Newquay Tourist Office (01637 854020) contact any one of the numerous surfing schools available. It’s always busy, so book early to avoid staying warm and dry. My thanks (I think) to the good people of Fat Face for organising my lesson through the Lifeguard hut on Lusty Glaze beach, who provide expert, long-suffering tuition and all equipment except a stiff brandy.