Turbo Coupe Drawing

I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for malaise-era cars, and especially the subsequent box-mobiles of the 1980s. Performance was just starting to reappear after the dismal CAFE-era of the late 1970s. Styling was…square…but there’s also something lovable about the Tron-esque futurism. Fuel economy was still a big deal, but performance was too – so why not have both? Ford did just that with the turbo 2.3L four in the Mustang, Merkur XR4Ti, and the Thunderbird. One of the coolest performance cars of the ’80s was the T-Bird Turbo Coupe, which I hopped up just a bit in the Turbo Coupe drawing.

The Thunderbird rode on the same fox platform as the mustang, and in the case of the Turbo Coupe, shared the turbo four with the early Cobra/SVO. The version I’ve drawn here is track-prepped like what you might see at an SCCA event.

This car has extra-wide tires to keep the car planted, and to fill out the wide fender flares. A quick-disconnect plexiglass spoiler keeps the rear planted, and a bolt-on front lip keeps too much air from going under the car and creating aerodynamic drag.

I started with a rough pencil sketch. I actually really like the way this sketch turned out. I could have stopped here and been happy.

Next, I re-traced with Micron pen and filled in the shading with Sharpie. I added the nuts holding on the splitter.

Finally, I added a thin red outline to the body of this Turbo Coupe drawing to make it pop.

She’s lifting a little on that front right corner. If you squint, you can kind of hear the turbo whistling.

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