“Exhilaration of flight without leaving the ground in its grace and movement.” Don’t forget your barf bag just in case. And “distinctive” if you wanted the distinction of looking like a fool. “Luxury” if you liked the tufted, overstuffed, Barcalounger look. “Few cars in America will reward their owners with as much luxury and distinction as the new Thunderbird Town Landau,” advertising blared.

You can’t sell a more expensive car that looks like a lesser model. It was very hard to tell the difference between the two. The first problem with it was that it looked like a Ford Granada. With that, we got the terrible Mustang II and then this. Where to begin? There is so much wrong with the 1980 T-Bird it is hard to know where to start? As with the Mustang, Ford thought it needed to downsize everything. So much wrong with the 1980 T-Bird it is hard to know where to start?

That’s why the dismal, dreary, 1980-82 Ford T-Bird is the perfect Worst Car Wednesday profile. Or what we refer to as the “Thunderturd.” How anything that looked this bad, ran like crap, and was built this poorly could get the green light is a mystery. But Ford did one hell of a job of doing just that with the all-new, downsized 1980-82 Thunderbird. The original personal luxury car was a hard combo to screw up.

Ford always had a winner with the Thunderbird.

The new thunderbird