Fuel pressure regulator went out; easily and cheaply replaced.
This is a great car. It is very sleek looking and has a great aerodynamic profile.
The suspension is well designed; with the Programmable Ride Control (PRC), it *glides* over the bumpiest roads when cruising, and is nice and firm (but not harsh) during maneuvers and performance driving.
The seats are very comfortable with well designed headrests and bolsters. With 8-way adjustment, anyone can find the adjust the seat to suit himself perfectly.
The car is very tight and the interior is quiet. You'd never guess that this car is built on the same chassis as the creaky POS Mustangs of this era. It is very stable even at high (100+ MPH) speed. The (four wheel anti-lock) brakes will stop this car on a dime, and the anti-lock feature works well despite being a first-generation design. They are just well balanced and great driving cars all around; drive one, and you'll see what I mean.
The premium sound system isn't much by today's standards, but it is outstanding by 1988 standards; most importantly, all the speakers are in the right positions so you can easily upgrade the whole system with modern components and have great sound.
The engine is the good ole 2.3 which is a tried and true, bulletproof design. It has good power in stock form and a few easy and cheap mods can beef it up significantly. These cars are rated to run 16's in the 1/4 in stock form, but it's trivial to get one into the 14s, and 13s are not tough either. It doesn't take much work to get one to run with (and beat) 5.0s. While some of the electronics and gadgets may give you problems, the base engine is sound and will easily go 300,000+ miles (no joke) without major work.
The turbos are not problematic as some may lead you to believe; they work fine forever as long as long as you follow the cooldown procedures and oil change intervals described in the owner's manual. Simply put, after a hard drive, allow the engine to idle for a couple minutes to cool the oil down so it doesn't coke and clog up the turbo oil supply line, and change the oil at regular intervals using only high quality oil.
The manual transmission is the venerable T5, which won't give you any problems. The plastic hydraulic clutch line can be problematic and leaky; luckily parts are readily available to swap this over to a cable linkage. The automatic transmission can be problematic. If yours is in good shape, my advice is to install a shift kit to firm up the shifts a bit and increase transmission life.
These cars have a lot of gadgets. When well maintained, they are wonderful cars. When poorly maintained, they can be a nightmare. Be conscious of this when purchasing one. Avoid TCs with mechanical problems, especially ABS as the parts for this old system are very difficult to find and expensive. Spend the extra cash to get a super clean, well taken care of car--you won't regret it. On the flip side, this is one of those rare cars where it's actually worth fixing if you run into a high dollar repair, because it's just such a wonderful car.
In summary, these are great cars, especially if you are mechanically inclined and can fix the little oddities that come with owning a 25 year old car that has more gadgets than the space shuttle.
I have owned numerous Ford automobiles in my day. I will stand up and say that the 1987 and 1988 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe are the BEST modern cars Ford has ever produced! Even 20 years after the last Turbo Coupe drove off the lot, this is still to the day an awesome car.
The Turbo Coupe was way ahead of its time. Ford put the engine from the - can you believe? - Tempo under the hood and dropped in a turbo charger. Most like to say the engine was from the SVO Mustang. In reality - it was a Tempo engine before it was a Mustang engine. These engines are referred to as "I-4's" and are reliable, durable AND high mileage engines. If maintained properly, they will run for 300K plus!
I recently read an article relating to Us Automakers sales decline to below 50% of total market sales in the history of "modern" automobile sales. Should ever Ford decide to drag this Bird off the roost again, it will be able to be accomplished with minimal upgrades to the overall car. This car is definitly a legend!
Not to offend or leave anyone out....The Mustang is an awesome car. I own a 07 GT. However, given the choice I would have bought a
2007 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe any day over the Mustang!
Excuse me, does anyone know if the 2.3 in these was a turbocharged version of the 2.3 found in Tempos, or was it the German 2.3 turbo found in Merkurs?
I had an 85 turbo coupe that was really nice, other than being an automatic, but a friend had a Merkur XR4ti, and it was sooooooo much nicer.
When I was in the Army, a buddy of mine had one of these cars. It was my first introduction to a turbocharged 4-cylinder in a full size car, and I was quite impressed, even with being into V-8's at the time. Nice car.
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