This 1959 Ford Thunderbird has been prepped for vintage rally duty, with plates and stickers showing it participated in the now defunct Monte Carlo Challenge series during the mid-to-late 90’s. Said to be making 420 HP from a later 390ci FE V8, the car is shown running and driving in a video linked in the ad, and the idea of this boat barreling around the hills of Monaco is wonderfully ridiculous. Find it here at autotrader.nl in Almelo, Netherlands for 26,950 euros (~$32,756 today).

​Though complete and pretty straight, the car looks just scruffy enough to be at home on a bumpy gravel stage—we bet it’d look spectacular coated in mud, suspension working hard and leaving baritone exhaust gases and a 30 foot roostertail of grit behind. Note the late 80’s California license plate, spotlights, and nicely executed stance. How many other 50’s Detroit sleds have you seen running Vredesteins?

​The interior is an interesting mix of stock and custom, the factory dash and door cards sharing space with a VDO tach, rally timers, and big, heavily padded and bolstered high back chairs with matching leather upholstery. The small steering wheel looks out of place but is certainly more practical in this application than the yacht-like OEM item would be. A tag on the partial cage shows the car last passed scrutineering in 2000, while a brake bias knob and sill-mounted hydraulic handbrake lever suggest a focused build.

​No suspension or brake specs are given, but the car is shown turning around at the end of a cul de sac pretty quickly and exhibiting a lot less body roll than we’d expect. 420 HP sounds like a good amount even in such a heavy car, and FE big blocks are good for low down torque as well. Transmission, differential and engine details would be nice, but as mentioned above the car doesn’t seem to have been put together with much compromise, excluding those already inherent in the use of a 17 foot long, two ton coupe as the basis for a rally car.

​We can’t imagine there’s much of a market for this kind of thing in Europe, and though it might not carry the same visual impact in Mexico as it would among an Alpine field of Issigonis Minis, Neue Klasse BMW’s and twin cam Alfas, it’d surely be better suited to the Carrera Panamericana. Anyone looking for a 2015 entrant?