Despite their image, four-seat Thunderbird hardtops are not expensive collector cars, so it makes little sense to buy a rough one (not all of us make sense, however, thank goodness). According to the seller, this 1966 Town Landau has had a recent restoration. Everyone has a different definition of “restored,” but this one looks like a nice driver with a decent paint job, and with an asking price of $10,000, you really can’t beat it if a Thunderbird is your kind of car. Let’s give a shout out to Bruce M. for sending it our way, and let’s try to find this ‘Bird a buyer: It’s on Marketplace in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Although the 1966 model was the last of the unibody T-Birds (until 1980, anyway), it was the first of the Town Landaus, which featured an extra-wide C-Pillar. To me, it mimics the beautiful first-generation Lincoln Continental Cabriolet, with similarly deleterious effects on rearward visibility. You can see how the missing quarter windows create a cocoon-like atmosphere for rear passengers; in a way, it was a harbinger of the opera-windowed personal luxury coupes of the 1970s. You have to give it to them, when Ford hit on a market niche, they did it right; out of 69,176 T-Birds sold in 1966, a full 35,105 of them were Town Landaus, more than half. Not bad for a first-year model.

The interior images show no obvious flaws, perhaps a tear in a driver’s seat seam. The classic parts store steering wheel cover is no great deficiency for those of us who dwell in this corner of the collector car market. A pleasant surprise for an upper-crust car like the Town Landau is the lack of options. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a booster of simplicity; therefore, I actually prefer my cars (even cars like T-Birds and Rivieras) without power windows and air conditioning. This one has neither. I know that these days, that limits the number of buyers for a car like this, and that may be why it’s still on Marketplace a week after the ad was posted.

The seller does mention that the heater and gas gauge do not work, but a new heater core will come with the car. I’ve replaced one on my ’63 Thunderbird, and it was a far easier job than you’d expect; I knocked it out in a morning.

Under the hood is the base 315-horsepower 390, which is a good engine, but a bit of a letdown when the optional 345-horsepower 428 was a $64.30 upgrade (almost a no-brainer). The engine compartment has been painted along with the exterior, and they sprayed everything. All T-Birds had disc brakes in 1966, and you can see the disc brake master cylinder attached to a booster that appears to be rebuilt (or at least painted a color other than red). Nice.

Out back are those wide sequential taillights that made the T-Bird stand out at night. It really was a flashy car, well worth the price if you liked to be seen. A nice ’60s T-Bird is a fun car to own (but not so much to work on, aside from the heater core). Being located in Massachusetts, it would be best to see it in person, especially since there are no undercarriage pictures posted in the advertisement. If it checks out, you can hardly go wrong for the asking price.