In 1989, Motor Trend awarded the Ford Thunderbird SC its prestigious COTY (or car of the year) award and this is why it makes an appearance every so often on this I-80 San Francisco Billboard. Unfortunately, this is the last time.

A billboard with an original ad for the 1989 Ford Thunderbird SC displayed on I-80 in San Francisco came down earlier today (Mar. 26, 2019.) If you’ve ever driven towards the Bay Bridge from South San Francisco or San Mateo, you’ve seen this billboard off Bryant St. advertising anything from soft drinks to medicine. But, if billboard workers don’t put up a new ad quick enough, for a few brief moments, commuters get to see the original Ford ad underneath, put up in 1990. Apparently, this ad has seen its last. Check out the post from Twitter below and what I learned about this iconic ad.

This is not the first time this ad’s been spotted. According to a couple of twitter posts from 2017, billboard workers revealed this ad at least once before. There’s a simple reason this particular ad hasn’t been peeled off, it’s hand painted. That’s right, in 1990 Ford hired someone, probably through an ad agency, to climb on top of that billboard and, in so many steps, hand paint a sign that probably took the better part of a weekend to get done.

Ford Thunderbird ghost sign on 101 in downtown San Francisco. Circa 1990? pic.twitter.com/G94WCL4yqw — Todd Lappin (@TelstarLogistic) June 11, 2017

KALW.org did a small investigative piece on hand-painted billboard two years ago.

“Before printing and pasting billboards became the norm, artists were enlisted to paint each billboard, and I had yet to see one of these older artworks in the wild.”

It’s hard to believe for a lot of younger folks out there but billboards where, and in many ways, still are, an important advertising technique for companies. By 1990, the Bay Bridge had been open for 54 years, establishing that billboard as an important traffic choke point for several decades. As people drove home, traffic would build up close to there before entering the Bay Bridge with motorists looking out there windows, oftentimes, at that billboard. An ad on that I-80 billboard meant literally hundreds of thousands of “impressions” a day from people who drove by it.

Here’s the Billboard on Google maps advertising for the Stanford Children’s Hospital.

Ford was proud that their Thunderbird SC won MT’s COTY, just check out this commercial form Ford back in the day. The whole point of their 30-second ad was to point out that they’ve won Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award more than a handful of times.

Hand-painted billboards like the one torn down today probably peppered the American highway system.

It’s almost a shame that the original billboard is being torn down but I suppose after 30 years, it’s done its job.

For a few brief moments, Bay Area drivers this week got a blast from the past as they drove home. Cars have come a long way since the Ford Thunderbird SC. If you’ve got forced induction under the hood, you’d better be making more than 201 HP.

Did you see this billboard? Come across any other billboards like this hand-painted one? Let me know in the comments below!