- 2002-2005 Thunderbird Grilles – Stock or Aftermarket?
The 2002-2005 Thunderbird’s ‘eggcrate’ style grille recalls the grille of the original 1955-57 T-Birds. While the original Thunderbird had a metal grille, the 2002-2005 features a chrome-plated plastic grille … less refined and ‘chunkier’ than that of the first Thunderbirds. Some critics and observers think the plastic grille is one of the weaker points of the new Thunderbird, designed to save money on the production of an already expensive car.
Within a year or two of the introduction of the first production Thunderbirds in late 2001, aftermarket companies began to re-think the stock grille design and created a wire-mesh grille and a billet-style grille. Both of these styles were already established as popular custom aftermarket accessories for other cars and trucks.
The wire-mesh grille featured a very tightly woven, interlocking mesh pattern, reminiscent of cars like the Jaguar ‘E’ Type. The wire-mesh grille was popular with some Thunderbird owners, who considered it an upgrade and improvement over the rather cheaply-constructed stock plastic grille.
The Billet-Style grille, first introduced around 2004, became quite popular with many Thunderbird owners. It offered a custom, refined appearance, and was a reasonably priced alternative to the stock factory grille.
Unfortunately for Thunderbird owners, production of both the Billet Style grille and the wire mesh grille have been discontinued, and are no longer available.
Frustrated by the lack of alternatives to the stock grille, many Thunderbird owners experimented with new grille treatments, including stripping off the chrome plating and painting the stock grille black, while others used black tape to mask of portions of the grille to create a more refined appearance. A few very creative and adventurous Thunderbird owners created unique, one-off custom grille designs. Such designs were both time consuming and expensive.
It was not until 2014, nearly nine years after the last of the 2–5 Thunderbirds rolled off the Wixom assembly line, that a new, and even more distinctive aftermarket grille was introduced by Powersport/Thunderbird Specialties. The idea for the ‘California Custom’ Aluminum Grille dates back to 2010, but Powersport was unable to find a manufacturer who could produce a high-quality, limited-production grille to their specifications. The ‘California Custom’ aluminum grille was inspired by Ford’s 2002 Supercharged Thunderbird, which was introduced in 2003. The Supercharged Thunderbird featured a distinctive aluminum grille that resembled the factory production grille’s ‘eggcrate’ design, but was much more refined. The metal fabrication of the horizontal and vertical bars were much thinner than the stock plastic grille, which required extra thickness for rigidity and support.
Powersport located a small custom grille maker in Pennsylvania that had extensive experience building grilles for Hot Rods, Street Rods and one-off custom cars. Work on the first prototype of the ‘California Custom’ grille began in August of 2013. It took a full eight months to engineer and build the first of these all-aluminum custom grilles, and the jigs and tooling required to reproduce them.
Finally, in April 2014, the very first Powersport ‘California Custom’ Aluminum grille was unveiled and delivered to a Thunderbird owner in New Orleans, Louisiana to be installed on his 2004 ‘Merlot’ Thunderbird.
The new grille was an instant sensation among Thunderbird owners, and got rave reviews from Thunderbird owners and non-owners alike. The Powersport ‘California Custom’ grille is crafted from nearly 40 individual pieces of high-quality aluminum, requiring over 100 separate welds, and is then polished to a high luster. The grille frame contains all the correct mounting tabs and points, which makes installation smooth and seamless. The finished result is a stunning and distinctive grill that looks like it was created by Ford, and bears a striking resemblance to the custom grille made for the 2003 Supercharged Thunderbird.
The ‘California Custom’ Aluminum Grille is available from Powersport/Thunderbird Specialties on a special-order, limited run basis.
