Gerry Goguen has quite the special ‘Bird! I can only imagine pictures don’t do this T-Bird justice. The creativity, craftsmanship and execution are phenomenal.
A little behind the special Ford from Gerry himself…
Gerry Goguen
First Love
I started working for my father in his shop when I was thirteen making a dollar an hour, and when I was 14, I had saved enough hours of work up and my dad brought home my dream car, a 1962 thunderbird coupe. We went to work restoring it. For my 16th birthday my dad gave me the last piece of trim, the chrome trim for the front of the hood.
I spent all my spare time customizing the ‘Bird, honing my skills while using the car for my daily driver in high school.
I’ve spent most of my life doing restoration and custom work. Six years ago I started the restoration process, creating a one off, all steel power retractable hardtop with a retractable tonneau cover, incorporating many custom touches I added when I was in my teens (Mickey Thompson Indy Profile tires rear with Firestone Wide Ovals front with chrome “smoothies”, 10″ steering wheel, Thrush sidepipes and the quick fill gas cap and 4-speed I scavenged from a wrecked Mustang GT when I was 16).
In designing the retractable hardtop I tried to mimic the Ford design style of the day in making all the components for the car from scratch. None of the retractable components were scavenged from existing cars. Then entire chassis from the firewall to the taillights was handmade and features a narrowed/ tubbed rear end, custom made gas tank…. The pictures tell the rest of the story.
– Gerry Goguen
Gerry Goguen
Gerry Goguen
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