PRICE RANGE: $35,495 - 44,000 Pricing and Options

CONFIGURATION: Engine, 3.9 liter, 252 hp V8; Front Engine/Rear Wheel Drive

FUEL ECONOMY: 17 mpg city / 23 mpg highway

SAFETY FEATURES: Driver and passenger airbags, standard; ABS, standard

Audio Interview: Brian Leshon talks with Mary Ellen Heyde, Vehicle Line Manager for Lifestyle Vehicles at the Ford Motor Company, from the introduction of the new Thunderbird in Monterey California,

Video: 2002 Ford Thunderbird. Click here.

IMPRESSION: Few attainable cars have captured the American imagination as well as the two seat T-Bird. The old magic is back complete with all the memorable features.

There are few of us who don't have some fond memory of the original Thunderbird. Those of us with gray up top may have had a love affair from the day the showroom opened in 1955. Our next generation fell in love with the unattainable white T-bird that the elusive Suzanne Sommers frustrated Richard Dreyfuss with in 'American Graffiti". ("I just saw a vision! I saw a goddess. Come on, you've got to catch up to her...This was the most perfect, dazzling creature I've ever seen...She spoke to me. She spoke to me right through the window. I think she said, 'I love you'" - A lot of guys thought Dreyfuss was talking about the car.) Even our current generation has been captivated by the images from old movies, TV shows and vintage car meets. On lots of lips is the question, why did they quit making this car?

This was Ford's answer to the dull car; their expression that we had finally shaken off the Depression and deprivation of WWII. It answered Chevrolet's Corvette and trumped the many sporty designs that were coming out of Europe. Movie stars swapped their Mercedes, Jaguars and Facel Vegas for the Thunderbird and even the colors seemed to reflect the fun and lifestyles of Hollywood and Florida. And it was priced to fit into most anyone's pocketbook.

Appropriately at the launch, Ford showed us a series of video interviews with early T-Bird owners. I was touched when a woman fondly remembered how her father told her that she could have any car for a graduation present if she maintained it and paid the insurance. Then he seemed a bit miffed at her choice of a T-Bird, but soon he would always find that it needed some little attention or a tank fill and drove it as much as she did. Then she reminisced how at a beach a guy fed its parking meter, telling her as she ran up that such a neat car didn't deserve a ticket. She married that guy, but realities of a family let the car go away. Then at the end of the video she reappeared to relate how her husband had surprised her recently by secretly tracking down and finding that exact car and having it restored. It got kind of humid, as a bunch of jaded journalists got seriously misty-eyed.