![]() ![]() No matter where you look, the design is effortless and faultless, and the House Of Kolor paint makes Thunderflite look like it was fashioned from a solid block of aluminium.Miami Vice is an American crime drama television series created by Anthony Yerkovich and produced by Michael Mann for NBC. Not only did he find the focus to finish the car he’d dreamed up with Suzie but the dedication to do it perfectly. Obviously that was a crushing blow but with the help of his close friend Mark Schofield Dean managed to keep body and soul together. Tragically, Suzie unexpectedly passed away just as they got to that stage. “As time went by it started to become clear that we really could see the dream through,” Dean says. Stopping power comes courtesy of drums at the front and discs at the rear. The tranny is the original modified, and the independent rear is from a 1994 SHO Thunderbird. A Holley intake manifold and 650 carb sit on top while dual Cherry Bombs handle the exhaust. Unlike most concept cars, Thunderflite is a driver and runs a chromed 302ci V8 with red metalflake accents, Koolflex hoses and a Flex-A-Lite fan and radiator. I said: ‘Wait and see.’ Now everybody raves over it.” At the time people said the car didn’t need it and I was nuts for considering it. “The inspiration for that came from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. Take the drilled detail running between the bubbletops. Much of the car was handmade, including the fins and front bumper, Dean spending days shrinking, stretching and working with his English wheel to make his concept flawless and believable.Ī cursory glance tells you Thunderflite is as much about art as engineering. “Getting the panels smooth and flat is what took the time - and that’s before we got to the bubbletops!” Then he grimaces, remembers the thousands of hours that went into the build. “Getting the initial shape wasn’t the big issue.” A few years ago I built one using a ’61 Starliner roof - it was in all the magazines. He turned the sketch into a series of design studies until they had enough for the real work to start.ĭean’s been building cars for 40 years - he won his first trophies aged 13, for Best Paint and Best Upholstery at a soap box derby - and he knows his way around Thunderbirds. Don’s a consultant specialising in automotive and yacht design, and was the ideal partner to realise the Thunderflite concept. The drawing on the napkin and the fictional back story led Dean to Don Johnson’s door. The final piece of the puzzle is that Suzie and Dean Arnold discover the car and decide to restore it to original condition.” However, as often happens in reality, a legend built up around the project. ![]() “We came up with this imaginary scenario where Ford in the 60s realised that having built the car, they couldn’t show it because it would appear out of step with current thinking, so they mothballed it. Naturally the controls and gauges had to be equally flight-inspired, and the theme was rounded out with two glass canopies. Next they added thin seats that looked like they’d been plucked from a top secret fighter plane. What we ended up with was a fuselage-type body with fins sprouting from everywhere.” We imagined it as a sleek and clean shape on the outside with fenders enclosing all four tyres. “On that napkin we tried to draw that Ford concept. How would they have visualised radically new Thunderbirds for the 60s? “I kept wondering what it would have been like if Ford had built its own car of tomorrow. Sadly, spiralling costs and new marketing strategies put an end to all the fun but that visionary era provided Dean with his inspiration. Naturally, car design followed suit with concepts such as the Club de Mer, the Golden Rocket and the 1956 Buick Centurion. ![]() Having endured the Depression and World War II, America from the late 40s to the 60s was all about the future, nowhere embodied better than in the space race and that iconic trip to the moon. My wife Suzie and I sketched it on a napkin,” Dean Arnold says, after negotiating his way out of the car dubbed ‘Thunderflite’. “We were trying to capture what it might have been like in the 50s and 60s when GM was building its Dream Cars. This alien craft glinting on its way across the dry Californian lake - the sharp nose, the sweptback lines and clear canopies - was it a spaceship, a plane, a jet-powered car? This article was first published in the April 2011 issue of Street Machine Standing still, we eyed its relentless progress across El Mirage’s lunar-like surface. Second by second the shape at the head of it became clearer yet no more familiar. FROM out of the distance came a rolling cloud of dust. ![]()
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