A Collector’s Body Shop Bargain: $500 Bought a Unique T-Bird
The mementos of George Watts’ love affair with cars -- particularly classic Fords -- fill his daughter’s Villa Park garage.
There are folders full of car ads and magazine articles about cars. There are albums stuffed with pictures. One shows Watts with Jay Leno at a car show. There’s one of Watts with a group of Ford executives. Countless snapshots of Watts posing next to and inside of several generations of Fords.
On one side of the garage is a 1963 Ford Falcon that Watts restored for his daughter. On the other side is Watts’ prized possession: a gleaming black 1955 Ford Thunderbird with chrome headlight eyebrows and jet-like exhaust pipes.
It is no ordinary car.
The T-Bird, which Watts bought for $500 four decades ago and then devoted nearly a lifetime to restoring and showcasing, is the first Thunderbird to have rolled off the production line in Dearborn, Mich.
Original sticker price: about $4,000. Because of its singularity, its exact value today is unknown.
“His pride and joy,” said Leslie Paino, 40, Watts’ daughter. She and her husband, Rob, 42, inherited the car when Watts died two years ago.
The couple also inherited the torch. They drive or truck the vehicle to car shows throughout the state. They are scheduled to appear Sunday at the Palos Verdes Concours d’Elegance classic car show at Rolling Hills Country Club to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Thunderbird.
The car made Watts, an insurance executive from Santa Ana, a celebrity on the collectible car circuit and an informal pitchman for Ford.
The company invited Watts and his T-Bird to classic car shows. When Barbra Streisand was in the market for a classic Thunderbird, the company referred her to Watts, Leslie Paino said. Watts helped Streisand pick out a ’57 model.
“I still remember,” said Paino, who was about 5 at the time. “They took me to the kitchen while the adults talked. I am in the kitchen eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and my dad is in the other room talking to ... Barbra Streisand.”
Watts stumbled upon his jewel in 1965 in a Santa Ana body shop. He knew it was a ‘55, but the car had been in an accident and needed a lot of work. Already an experienced car collector, Watts checked its serial number: P5FH100005. The low final digit indicated the car was one of the first made. Watts paid the $500 and hauled the car home.
He wrote to Ford inquiring about the serial number. Months later, the response came. “Unquestionably ... your 1955 Thunderbird ... is the first production” car, reads the letter, which Paino keeps in a binder in her garage. The serial numbers 100001 through 100004 belonged to other models, Ford’s letter says.
Since then, some car enthusiasts have challenged that explanation, but Bob Kreipke, a historian for Ford, said Watts’ T-Bird, which rolled out of the factory on Sept. 9, 1954, according to company records, is indeed the first.
Nick Grudich, who runs greatoldcars.com, a website devoted to classic cars, said Watts’ Thunderbird -- a model that helped define a new era of American sports cars -- could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“A car like that, it is so unique it is a hard thing to put a price on it,” unless it’s put on the auction block, Grudich said. “It depends on how much someone falls in love with the car and how much they decide to bid.”
Leslie Paino said the car was insured for $500,000. But she and her husband have no intention of selling.
Growing up, Paino couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of her dad’s classics. Now it’s her children -- Brittney, 12, and James, 11 -- who can hardly wait.
The T-Bird rarely sees the road. Most days it is parked under bedsheets, and the carbureted engine needs coaxing to start. But once it does, its powerful V-8 fills the garage with a low and imposing rumble.
To Paino, the first T-Bird is a cherished link to her father -- the most important among the dozens of classic Fords he owned, including a couple of the early ‘60s Thunderbirds with long fins that her mother, Ruthie, used to drive.
“When I was in elementary school the other kids used to yell, ‘Your mother is here with the Batmobile!’ ” Paino said.
While her mother was battling Alzheimer’s disease for a decade, Watts cared for her until her death in 1997. The ’55 Thunderbird was his only respite, Paino said.
“This car was his therapy,” she said.
