Shooting Cars YouTube - 1997 Ford Thunderbird LX Review - The FINAL Thunderbird! (Kind of...)

[Irv]

Saw this video in the end screen after the '96 dealer training video. Gotta love the 11th gen shade. I don't understand what the hell the owner of this car was doing with the badging. It (along with the wheel spacers) makes a car that's in decent cosmetic shape look like a hooptie.

 

[XR7-4.6]

He said the climate control was parts bin shared with other fords, it's not! Not even the base three knobber, only the knobs themselves interchange, and when it comes to the interior design itself being cheap 90s ford, you have to look at in perspective; This was premium in 1994...



And I'm not even throwing shade at BMW for once.

Segmented radio, segmented climate control, all plastic, function and form meshed together. Twas the fashion for the time. I have a real peeve when reviews call these or even SN95 interiors cheap looking judging them against the periphery of modern car interiors chock full of LCDs, plastichrome and fake stitching.

And by contrast most modern interiors have hard plastic door panels that aren't soft vinyl wrapped foam like these, and that is far more jarring to me than the aesthetic of the climate control and radio being rectangular and easily serviceable.

 

[Irv]

Even though this wasn't explicitly called out, I'm going to guess that the cheap feeling has something to to do with the shape of the knobs and buttons. It's evident in the chunky, bulbous look of the Ford switches compared to the the chiseled knobs and concave A/C dials in that BMW which aged better.

GM cars of this era were far worse than Ford in this regard, but '90s component design in general tried too hard to eliminate crisp lines and it culminated in the damn 3rd gen Taurus. The problem with that of course is, what's the shortest distance between two points? A line. Trying to gradually round off an edge or slope it toward the adjacent surface only makes the entire component bigger than it needs to be.

 

[XR7-4.6]

Even though this wasn't explicitly called out, I'm going to guess that the cheap feeling has something to to do with the shape of the knobs and buttons. It's evident in the chunky, bulbous look of the Ford switches compared to the the chiseled knobs and concave A/C dials in that BMW which aged better.

GM cars of this era were far worse than Ford in this regard, but '90s component design in general tried too hard to eliminate crisp lines and it culminated in the damn 3rd gen Taurus. The problem with that of course is, what's the shortest distance between two points? A line. Trying to gradually round off an edge or slope it toward the adjacent surface only makes the entire component bigger than it needs to be.

If one wanted to these older knobs are a direct swap

 

[Vicinity]

Let them shit on it I need to afford them. There's not much stopping citizens from Country X to put classics in their basement on the other side of the [planet]. The only reason Id ever want good publicity on these is for parts support, given that manufacturing a new thunderbird would be unlawful

 

[1997ThunderbirdLXV6]

If one wanted to these older knobs are a direct swap

View attachment 2269

And they are from what? Mustang? Explorer?

 

[XR7-4.6]

And they are from what? Mustang? Explorer?

90-93 Mustang