1960 Ford Thunderbird & Engine start up

This 1960 Ford Thunderbird sat in storage from the 1970s until 2002, then spent thirteen more years in restoration before finally starting up again at the World of Wheels show in West Allis, Wisconsin. Owner Mike Adam’s wife Lynne learned to drive on this exact car decades ago, which makes its Monte Carlo Red return to running condition a family milestone as much as an automotive one. The third-generation ‘Squarebird’ rarely gets this kind of spotlight. Watch the full engine start-up and hear the whole story.

Some cars sit in storage for a few years while an owner saves up for parts. Others sit long enough that the person who learned to drive on them has grandchildren by the time the engine turns over again. This 1960 Ford Thunderbird belongs to the second category, and the gap between when it went quiet and when it finally roared back to life spans more than four decades — long enough that the story behind it matters just as much as the car itself.

A Thirteen-Year Restoration, Decades in the Making

The Thunderbird appeared at the World of Wheels show at Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, filmed for the “My Car Story with Lou Costabile” series, finished in a deep Monte Carlo Red that immediately marks it as a third-generation “Squarebird,” the generation that traded the original two-seat Thunderbird’s sports car pretensions for a longer, more formal four-seat body while keeping the model’s signature blend of style and comfort. Owner Mike Adam brought the car out for its first show appearance since coming out of a very long sleep, and the engine start-up captured on camera is the payoff of a restoration that took over a decade to finish.

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Meet the Squarebird: Ford’s Third-Generation Thunderbird

What makes the car’s history genuinely personal is the detail Mike shares about his wife Lynne: she learned to drive on this exact Thunderbird, back when the car was still in regular use rather than a show piece under a cover. That kind of connection changes how a restoration gets approached — this was never going to be a flip or an investment purchase, it was a family car being brought back for reasons that have nothing to do with resale value and everything to do with keeping a specific memory roadworthy.

The Personal Detail That Changes Everything

The Thunderbird went into storage sometime in the 1970s and stayed there until 2002, when the restoration finally began — a project that would not be completed until November of 2015, meaning this particular Squarebird spent roughly thirteen years actively under restoration and closer to thirty years total off the road before anyone saw it running again. That kind of timeline is not unusual for a labor-of-love restoration squeezed in around a working life, and it explains why the first-start footage carries the weight it does; this is not a car that came back quickly, it is one that came back because someone refused to let it stay gone.

From the 1970s to 2015: The Long Road Back

The third-generation Thunderbird occupies an interesting spot in Ford’s lineup history. Introduced for the 1958 model year and continuing with updates through 1960, the Squarebird moved the nameplate decisively away from its two-seat roots and toward the personal luxury car formula that would define Thunderbirds for decades afterward — unibody construction, a big 352 or 430 cubic-inch V8 available depending on the year, and styling that leaned into chrome and length rather than the sportier lines of the original 1955-57 cars. Purists still argue about which Thunderbird era got the formula right, but the Squarebird’s sales numbers at the time spoke for themselves, outselling the two-seat generation it replaced by nearly four to one — 198,191 Squarebirds built against just 53,166 of the original 1955-57 two-seaters.

Where the Squarebird Fits in Thunderbird History

Cars finished in Monte Carlo Red tend to draw a crowd at shows like World of Wheels precisely because the color does exactly what a factory-correct hue is supposed to do on a car like this — it makes the Thunderbird’s length and chrome trim work together instead of disappearing into a more common shade, and it signals to other owners in the crowd that this is a car being shown the way it would have looked rolling off the lot in period-correct condition.

Why Monte Carlo Red Turns Heads at Shows Like This

What a Squarebird Like This Commands Today

The “My Car Story” Format and Why It Works

Lou Costabile’s “My Car Story” series has built a loyal following by doing something surprisingly rare in car media: letting owners tell their own stories at length, on camera, at the exact show where their car is sitting, rather than cutting to a scripted voiceover. That format is a big part of why details like Lynne learning to drive on this Thunderbird ever made it into the video at all — a five-minute unscripted conversation with an owner surfaces the kind of history a standard walkaround video never would. For a car with as much sitting-in-storage time as this one, that format is arguably the only way its full story gets told.

Well-restored 1958-1960 Thunderbirds have become steady, if not spectacular, performers in the collector market, with clean examples in desirable colors like this one’s Monte Carlo Red typically landing in the mid-five-figure range at auction, and exceptional documented restorations pushing higher still. What tends to separate a good sale from a great one is exactly the kind of provenance this car has — a known ownership history, a documented multi-year restoration, and a story that gives a buyer more than just a color and an engine size to point to. Cars that come with photographs of the “before” and a family narrative attached almost always outperform equally clean examples with no history behind them, because collectors are ultimately buying the story as much as the sheet metal. and a reminder that the best car-show stories are rarely the ones printed on the dash placard.

Long-slumbering restorations like this one carry a particular kind of collector significance that a car bought already finished never quite matches. Anyone can write a check for a completed Thunderbird; far fewer people can point to a car and say their family kept it, lost momentum on it, and then found their way back to finishing what an earlier generation started. That continuity, more than the paint or the numbers under the hood, is what made this particular first-start moment worth filming in the first place.

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