Ryan allows his students to pick the color of the car, and the favored color this year is Thunderbird Blue. It was used and sorry looking, but now it's a sparkling example of Ford's greatest attempt at capturing the sport car market. That's not to say it was a cream puff, because it wasn't. The good thing is none of Ryan's classes had tackled a Thunderbird, and the better thing is the car had been driven only 73,095 miles and was in storage since 1974. Ryan explained that Stan had a few cars, and the process of elimination meant the T-Bird wasn't making the Florida trip. Ryan Beckley, who chairs technology education at ESM, said the stars aligned for this year's build when the '55 Bird was donated to the program by Stan Neu, a former resident of Manlius, N.Y., who, along with his wife, Diane, was moving to Florida. But in an attempt to capture a wave of nostalgia, the T-Bird returned as a two-seat roadster in 2002, but was discontinued again in 2005. In total, the Thunderbird was in production from 1955 until 1997 when it was discontinued. The Thunderbird survived for three years as a two-seater, then became a four-seater for several years, then it was also a four-door sport sedan and finally a roadster again. The rest is history the Corvette went on to great success and has been in production since 1953. The '55 Bird rolled into showrooms for $2,944, $170 more than a '55 Corvette. No one, or company was more interested in the public's reaction than Ford, which immediately went to work on its own two-seater and had the car ready for 1955. While the auto show Corvette was a suggestion of sorts by Chevrolet, the public quickly clamored for a production car, which resulted in 300 built that year. The first Corvette made its debut in the Motorama display at the 1953 New York Auto Show. The "T-Bird," as it quickly became known, was two years behind Chevrolet's introduction of the Corvette.
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