“The styling and contours were on another level compared to what we had in the UK at the time,” John laughs.

Although I knew I was unlikely to see these cars in action, I took a great deal of interest in their technical details and how they achieved so much power.” Alongside the motorsport-related content of these publications, the relatively standard Buicks, Chevrolets and other Detroit metal of the era featured elsewhere had begun to catch John’s eye too. “This would have been back in the Sixties, making the speeds they’d achieve seem even more impressive. “The magazines I’d buy often covered drag racing and American stock car racing,” John explains. Predictably, John soon had ambitions to race those same stock cars once he was old enough and although work and family commitments sadly never allowed for this to come to fruition, his fascination with V8s remained ever strong. “Once they’d begun racing, you could feel the vibrations of the engines going right through your body,” he recalls. “I’ll never forget running up the embankment to witness my first sight of the F1 stock cars on their parade lap, snarling and roaring with long blue flames shooting from their unsilenced headers in the fading daylight.” This almost surreal spectacle certainly sent John’s senses into overdrive. “I would have been around 10 or 11 years old when my parents first took me to watch stock car racing at Long Eaton stadium where most of the cars ran GM, Chrysler or Ford V8s,” 70- year-old John recalls. Unusually, John’s fascination with American automobiles began not with the cars themselves instead it was their legendary V8 powerplants which initially sparked his interest. But once he’d clapped eyes on this stunning unrestored 1960 example in Adriatic Green, he knew impulsively it was the right car for him… John Thorpe spent years searching for a second-generation Ford Thunderbird without success.

60 ford thunderbird