My brother and I were in the back seat thinking this is really neat neat, and people are going to think we're pretty cool.' It was a treat, darn it! Here we were, riding around in these little beater Nashes, and Dad would say, 'Let's take the Thunderbird out and go to Grandma's.' Well, now we can actually sit in it for a couple of hours. So Art's dad used only rainwater, which he collected in a 55-gallon barrel set under a sawed-off drainpipe.Īs you might imagine, there were rules for Art and his brother, Greg, on those rare occasions when they got to ride in the Thunderbird. The city's tap water was hard, and left visible mineral spots behind on the black enamel, despite his best efforts with the chamois. 'That car got washed once every two weeks, and then waxed with Simoniz once a month in the summertime. Naturally, he did all of the maintenance work himself, and Art was forbidden from putting a wrench on the car until he had turned 18-and even then, only under his dad's supervision.Īrt's father had a carefully thought-out program for keeping up the Thunderbird's looks. He had already been mechanically inclined when he enlisted in 1942, and found himself maintaining and repairing Curtiss SB2C Helldiver and Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers as a Marine Corps crew chief in the South Pacific. 'When he saw my dad, he said, 'Son, are you sure you have enough money to be able to afford this car?' My dad, being an old Marine.I know that comment gave him the incentive to really take care of it.'īeing an ex-Marine, Art's dad also had the skills to properly care for the car. Not long after buying the car, Art's dad had a pivotal encounter with the previous owner, who was the police chief of a Chicago suburb. I found out that day that Thunderbirds really do fly!' We stopped right at the stoplight, with both of us 16-year-old idiots hootin' and hollerin' at the experience. then hit 'em as hard as I could without lockup. 'I got the car easily up to over 100 MPH, and then found out that a stoplight had turned red in front of us. 'When we first got the car, Dad let me take it out for a spin with a good friend of mine.

'This is the closest he ever got to a new car in his life,' Art said.įor a car-crazy kid in 1966, especially a kid who had visions of a new Rangoon Red 1962 Sports Roadster he'd seen at a dealership dancing in his head, there could hardly be anything better than having your dad buy a Thunderbird. With just 26,600 miles on the odometer, the T-Bird was, in the parlance of the day, a creampuff. V-8, making a more than sufficient 300 horsepower, and a Cruise-O-Matic three-speed automatic. It was equipped with the Z-code 390-cu.in. 'He probably got between $50 and $100 for it because it was pretty rusted out, and Chicago winters are not very kind,' Art said.ĭepreciation had done a number on the original $4,667.30 sticker price, which included such major options as a radio, a heater, fender skirts, an electric windshield washer, white sidewall tires and an outside rearview mirror. Art's dad negotiated $200 off the asking price of the '62 model, and traded in the family's white and gold 1957 Plymouth Belvedere. There were two used Thunderbirds on the lot: A 1964 Landau in blue priced at $2,450, and the immaculate Raven Black hardtop at $1,450. He found what he was looking for at Westfield Ford in Countryside, Illinois, a Chicago suburb about 15 miles west of the shores of Lake Michigan. But for some reason that remains a mystery to his son, this child of the Depression, a World War II veteran, made up his mind one day to buy 'one car in his life he could be proud of-he wanted a Thunderbird. Art's dad, a fire captain at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, knew the value of a dollar, and tended to favor well-used sedans for transporting the family. The story begins in early 1966, when Art's dad, also named Art Kastl, got it into his head one day that he had to have a Thunderbird. It could not have happened without pride, skill and determination. That Art Kastl's 1962 Ford Thunderbird Hardtop has survived in such time-capsule condition is anything but an accident. V-8 that remains just as it was when they assembled it nearly five decades ago. You can see the inspection marks they daubed all over the engine compartment and the chassis, the unmarked red vinyl upholstery they carefully installed, the 390-cu.in. You can see the Raven Black enamel they applied, both marvelously glossy and wonderfully imperfect with a smattering of runs and fisheyes that no present-day restorer would tolerate. You can still see the fruit of their labor, those long-ago workers at Ford's Wixom Assembly Plant.

1962 ford thunderbird gray interior