This is a project I've been thinking about for a couple years now. Originally I was going to swap the formal '69 roof with the fastback '71 roof but I see that's been done already and I wanted to do something I hadn't seen before.

SO, I'm doing a convertible in the vein of the '62-'66 where the top hides under the hard panels behind the rear seat instead of just being covers with a boot.

I'm using pieces from a couple kits. The body wasn't too bad but I only have one spare chassis for this generation Thunderbird kit to use and it's a major glue bomb. I do love a challenge.

The custom front and rear ends are from the '68 kit. The front pan is the same as the one in the '69 kit but the rear is quite different as the '69 went from the '67/'68 full width tail lights to more common rectangular units. The '68 custom tail light and front grille features huge Thunderbird crests which I love the look of and is the main reason I wanted to build this.

So, here's what I'm starting with. An original '69 body and interior and the glue bomb chassis.

, , and what the custom front and rear ends look like.

The roof cut off, ,

I cut the package shelf from the interior bucket and glued it in place in the body then added some sheet plastic to fill some gaps then puttied it all up.

I scribed new panel lines in the deck mimicking those in a '64-'66 convertible.

and in primer almost ready to start painting.

That was the easy part, now to start on the chassis.

I did get it all cut apart with the help of a X-acto saw blade.

, , All for now.