The same car came back. Thirteen months after I photographed this 1961 Thunderbird convertible with the sun going down behind it, there it was again, same Monday night, same Canadian Tire lot in Richmond Hill north of Toronto, only this time it was twenty past six on the last Monday in June, the sun still high and white, the top down, a Canada flag on a pole off the back of it, and the owner nowhere I could see.
Same Plates, Different Light
I knew it before I got close. The North Carolina plate on the front that says 61 and AA-0000, the Ontario Historic Vehicle plate on the back, the wire wheels, the tonneau cover with its two headrests. What was different was everything else. The first set was all rim light and flare, the sun right on the horizon setting the flank on fire. This was a red car in hard June sun, which is the thing I know best how to photograph badly. Red goes flat and orange in that light, the paint stops having any shape, and every frame of the side of the car looked like a paint chip. I do not have a trick for it. I exposed under, let the shadows go black, and worked the chrome and the small stuff and the inside instead, because the flanks were not giving me anything.
The Year the 1961 Thunderbird Convertible Was Everywhere
The first set was about what this car is and is not, the tonneau and the wire wheels and the Sports Roadster it keeps getting mistaken for. What I did not get into is what a 1961 Thunderbird convertible was doing in 1961. In January it rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue in John Kennedy’s inaugural parade, and it cannot have hurt that Ford’s Robert McNamara had just been made Secretary of Defense. In May a gold one paced the Indianapolis 500 for the fiftieth anniversary of the race. Ford sold 73,051 Thunderbirds that year. It was a car that spent its first year in front of cameras, and sixty-five years on it is in a Canadian Tire lot with a flag on it two days before Canada Day, which suits it fine as far as I am concerned!
The Swing-Away Wheel and What Was Left on the Seat
1961 was the year Ford put the Swing-Away steering wheel in the Thunderbird. Put the car in Park and the whole wheel slides across toward the middle of the car to let you climb out, which sounds like a gimmick and was a real answer to a real problem, because this is a low car with a wide sill. The wheel itself is white with a chrome half ring for the horn, in front of a dash that is all ribbed brushed metal with a Thunderbird script across it and four round dials. Tan and white bucket seats with a console between them, and on the console a yellow cloth and a tin of polish, and on the passenger seat a water bottle and a magazine called Strada. So the owner was close. You do not leave your polish and your reading on a white seat and go far.
Round Lights, Small Fins and a Flag
I went round the back and got down to bumper height. The taillights are the thing, big round lenses in a ribbed chrome ring like a jet engine, one in each fin, with the Thunderbird emblem on the deck lid between them and a Thunderbird plate frame under that. Twin exhausts. The flag on its pole right behind the headrests, and the Canadian Tire sign across the lot, which is in half the car pictures I take and I have stopped fighting it.
Eight frames in two minutes on the Leica Q3, 28mm, f/8 at 1/250, ISO 100 to 250. That is faster than I usually work, but there was nothing to wait for. In that light the car was not going to change and neither was the sun, so I took what was there and moved on to the next one. The first set of this car, shot into the sunset from the same spot thirteen months earlier, is here, and there are more of these Monday nights north of Toronto in my street photography projects.
Thanks for looking!
