Ford Thunderbird Nascar Race Car Up For Auction

Those in the market for a former NASCAR racer have had plenty to choose from thanks to various online collector car auctions over the years, and that includes the Ford Thunderbird that made many a left turn (and a few rights) in that series over the years. Those offerings have included everything from smaller competitors with no-name drivers to big time stars and teams that competed for and won both races and championships, too. Now, NASCAR fans have another Ford Thunderbird racer to bid on – this example from the early 1990s.

This Ford Thunderbird competed in around 10 NASCAR Winston Cup Series races with team owner Mark Stahl behind the wheel before it was ultimately retired. On the outside, this racer features Ford Thunderbird style steel bodywork donning an orange #82 Hooters livery, cooling inlets, brake cooling ducts, an adjustable spoiler, and pretty much everything else one would expect to see – including 15-inch wheels wearing Goodyear Eagle racing slicks. Riding on a tube frame chassis, one will also find Penske adjustable shocks and Wilwood/JFZ brakes underneath.

This cabin of this Ford Thunderbird NASCAR racer is all business with a quick-release steering wheel, a ton of gauges, a roll cage, a Butlerbuilt racing seat, multi-point harnesses, a driver-side window net, and a fire extinguisher. Power comes from a recently-rebuilt 358 cubic-inch Ford C3 V8, which is mated to a Jerico four-speed manual transmission and a Ford 9-inch rear end. The T-Bird comes with a full racing history, but as one might imagine, isn’t legal for road use.

This is just one of several Ford Thunderbird NASCAR racers from the past that we’ve seen surface for sale at auction recently, including a 1989 model piloted by Mark Martin, a 1993 stock car in NAPA livery, and a 1994 Ford Thunderbird that’s a replica of the car once owned by Travis Carter Racing in the early 1990s and driven by Greg Sacks in the 1994 Winston Cup Series Brickyard 400.