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It's a gas in a period correct 1955 Ford Thunderbird 'gasser.'
Several years ago, John Tinberg sat calm and collected in a folding chair in the lobby of the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill. He was parked with a 1955 Chevy 3100 pickup and 1947 Westwood Tahoe camper trailer that was creating a buzz among visitors to the Muscle Car & Corvette Nationals (MCACN). Tinberg had created the package to resemble a vintage race team setup with period signage, and it was the NicKey Chicago sign on the '55 Chevy pickup that piqued my interest.
After taking in the display, I made my way over to Tinberg and introduced myself. He asked if I wanted to sit down and take a load off and I obliged. We talked for a while and I asked him about the NicKey Chicago sign on the door of the truck. That's when he explained that he built vintage gassers under the NicKey Chicago name and extended an invitation to visit his shop and collection in central Illinois.
The little pony that could. Ford's economy car rolled off the assembly line in 1971 and still holds a special place in the hearts of many old car collectors.
In the fall of 1959, Ford opened a new door for its sales staff with the smart-looking and totally new Ford Falcon compact for the 1960 model year. 1960 also saw compacts from General Motors with the Chevrolet Corvair and from the Chrysler Corp. with the Valiant sold by Plymouth dealers. These cars joined the already-popular Rambler American and Studebaker Lark domestic compacts. Falcon was the sales leader, but through the 1960s, the Falcon grew and put on more weight. By the late 1960s, a new breed of smaller "subcompact" car was coming to market and selling well. Many of the subcompacts arriving in the United States were from Japan, and those little Japanese cars kept taking a bigger piece of the sales pie. In the Spring of 1969, Ford countered with a rebirth of the compact car idea by presenting the Maverick. However, it was not lost on Ford that the new subcompact market was calling. Thus was born the Pinto.
A 1955 Ford time capsule has been parked since the last owner parked it.
In the fall of 2019, I learned about "Nellie's" 1955 Ford Tudor while working in Brick, N.J. I met her grandson, Bill Chandler, and was informed that his family had an old car that his late grandmother once owned, and it was still in an old garage on the family farm. The car had been parked there in 1968.
