[John Malpais]

blucar, I like your 'import frame' version better. An old movie we all know and love has the following line it it. "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Screw the bean counters, fact checkers, and those who want to show the superiority of the collective and destroy what I thought was a damn good story with more class than statistics in it, especially since the history of the vehicle is intertwined in the telling of it. From an outsider's POV, CTCI as a group, seems little more than fascists; especially if they snubbed the 'Bird' with painted feathers, that to them was too different to roost on the same power line with theirs, and didn't want you to bring it back, and possibly contaminate 'the purity of their essence', to quote a Brig. General Jack Ripper, who told more truth about the American psyche, as he unleashed a nightmare on it, than we might want to admit. What someone, directly connected to FoMoCo told you, and you have thought was true, may well be more to the legend of the Thunderbird than what zoegrant claims is factually correct. Just as the variations in the story about 'why' FoMoCo's adverts told the public the 'kit' was to gain more space in the trunk. In fact it did gain more space, right? But, the 'why' of their telling it may also go directly to another aspect of the 'why' you were given the information about the 'export' frame. Thus, I would say the 'Roshomon effect' is in play here. Perhaps, the data CTCI has is in fact just more of FoMoCo's disinformation? Your version is as true as you want to think it is, or was, and has more color about it than the anemic facts that rebut it.