A Thunderbird's Tale

Well, the Thunderbird is finally sold!  It's time with me has been long and unexciting, but it's finally over.  A review of the "Teal Mobile" can be found elsewhere, but I plan today on clearing my head and recounting the tale of a 1993 Thunderbird LX.

I originally bought the T-Bird after my 1985 Cadillac Eldorado died on me.  I was going to college at the time and in dire need of a car.  It just so happened the shop mechanic was selling this car.  The mileage was high, but the motor had recently been rebuilt.  It was ugly, but mechanically reliable. And I absolutely needed a car!  With no real other option, I bought it after a quick test drive.

So, the Thunderbird became my only ride for part of my college expedition.  It was a rather good car, but a few mechanical problems (two alternators died in 6 months, a bad water pump, a nut fell off INTO THE ENGINE, not in that order) in a short period of time caused me to search for a new ride.  That's when I bought the 1999 Cadillac Deville Concours and became a Cadillac owner once more.

For some time, the Thunderbird sat unused.  Then I decided to fix whatever issue killed it (I'm honestly not sure what it was now) and get it back on the road.  And I did, and it was good.  I used the T-Bird as my daily driver while saving the Caddy for dates and special occassions.  Somewhere in this time the Caddy was sidelined with the dreaded Northstar head gasket issues and I drove the T-Bird exclusively.

Later on, I bought the Allante convertible for sunny days, and decided to buy the Mazda.  The Thunderbird was getting long in  the tooth and I was getting tired of it.  I sold it to a coworker.  It was his ride for about a year, until he expressed interest in selling it back to me.  He was in desperate need of cash, but first I needed to see if anyone else would be willing to purchase it.  I wasn't going to get stuck with a 5th car (I had just bought the Bricklin).

The caliper was leaking brake fluid pretty bad, so I had to fix that before I could even offer a test drive.  I deemed the car to dangerous to drive before that was fixed.

Turns out there was, so I bought it back and spent the next few weeks trying to get the new buyer to close the deal.  He's a good kid, but needed two test drives and a lowering of my initial asking price to finally OK the deal.
The previous owner is happy to have it off his hands, the new owner is happy to have a car, and I have a little extra money in my pocket.  It's a good situation all around.