By A.J. Baime 

Lonny Paul Johnson, 50, a musician and songwriter, on his 1955 Ford Thunderbird, as told to A.J. Baime.

My wife, Jody Hamilton, who is a daughter of Carol Burnett, and I love classic cars and we love our home of Los Angeles. We already had a 1929 Ford Model A, and one day I asked her, "What is your favorite classic?" She said, "I always loved the early T-Birds." I started doing research and I fell in love with the 1955.

Model year 1955 was the first of the Thunderbird. Ford created it as direct competition to Chevrolet's Corvette. It's funny. Even today, you have two kinds of classic car fans: people who love Corvettes and people who love Thunderbirds, and they rarely cross over. I have a friend who owns 30 Corvettes and zero T-Birds.

One day a friend told me, "Hey, I found your Thunderbird. It's perfect, flawless. You won't have to do any work on it." So we went to see it, and the moment we did, my heart skipped a beat. I knew it was the one. It's small; I'm small. It's black and kind of dark. Everything on it looked pretty original, down to the nuts and bolts.

The car had been restored in 2008, and when the man who restored it passed away, his daughter inherited it. I bought the car from her this past January for roughly what a new BMW sedan would cost. The car had a fascinating history.

According to a pamphlet that came with the car, the first owner was Maxene Andrews of the singing group the Andrews Sisters, who had purchased it new from Santa Monica Ford. After her, Friz Freleng -- animator of many early Warner Bros. cartoons -- owned this car. [Freleng either created or developed many famous Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, such as Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.]

I did some research myself and while I was not able to find any family members of Maxene Andrews [who died in 1995], I did find Freleng's grandson and his wife, and the couple confirmed that Freleng had owned a black 1955 Thunderbird and that they had heard that Maxene Andrews had owned the car before him.

The T-Bird has drawn a lot of eyes at local car shows -- Friday nights at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, and Supercar Sunday at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Until recently [before the coronavirus lockdown], I would drive it up and down Hollywood Boulevard and tourists would take pictures with their cellphones. If I was a tourist in Hollywood, that is what I would want to see on Hollywood Boulevard.

To me, everything about this car is cool.

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 24, 2020 09:42 ET (13:42 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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