Could this be Marilyn Monroe’s Ford Thunderbird?
It would be hard to think of a car more closely associated with pretty girls than the 1955-57 Ford Thunderbird. In the movie American Graffiti, the mysterious blonde played by Suzanne Somers drives a white ’56 T-Bird. And does anybody think the girl in the Beach Boys song, Fun, Fun, Fun isn’t driving a two-seater?
The ’57 owned by Trevor Dumville might fit right into the T-Bird-and-prettygirl tradition. There’s a chance, and some evidence, that Dumville’s Baby Bird was once owned by Marilyn Monroe.
According to Dumville, the car was acquired many years ago by a Calgary collector who paid what was, for the time, a very high price because of the Hollywood connection. When the car was delivered, the paperwork didn’t absolutely prove that the car had been Monroe’s. The decision in the resulting court case, however, was that there was no proof that she hadn’t owned it, either.
In the early 1950s, North American manufacturers began to worry about the sports car segment and the fact they didn’t have anything to sell to someone who wanted a two-seater sporting machine.
GM was the first out of the gate, with the Chevrolet Corvette appearing as a 1953 model. Ford’s entry, the Thunderbird, was a 1955. Although it used many parts from the regular Ford lineup, a strategy that would be used again for the Mustang, the T-Bird created a sensation when it appeared.
Actress Jane Wyman was the very first person to take delivery of a new Thunderbird and drove it right into the middle of a party she was giving to celebrate the event.
Some changes were made for 1956, most notably the addition of portholes to the removable hard top and engine compartment vents on the front fenders to reduce heat in the cabin. For 1957, the car’s styling underwent bigger changes, the rear deck was extended and grew small tail fins while wheel size dropped an inch.
Dumville remembers when the Thunderbird first came out, and how it was less of a sensation in Saskatchewan than it was in Hollywood.
“The lady whose husband owned the dealership where I worked got one but didn’t keep it,” Dumville recalls. “There weren’t many in small-town Saskatchewan. They were kind of a useless car. They were overpriced and they only had the one seat.
“You didn’t see them for years,” the Calgary collector continues. “Then they started coming out of the woodwork. I can remember seeing them for $3,000. Then they were $6,000. They went up to crazy dollars — as high as $70,000 before they dropped off.”
Dumville’s T-Bird was once part of a private owner’s collection, and when the collection was to be sold, the ’57 two-seater was one of the pieces that Dumville wanted.
Well optioned for the time, the Thunderbird has a 245-horsepower 312 V-8, power windows, power brakes, power steering, an automatic transmission, a power seat and a telescopic steering column.
“It has every option except air-conditioning and the soft top,” he says.