Bill Elliott and his Ford Thunderbird put an end to Chevy’s fantastic run with its Monte Carlo. It was during the 1988 season that Million Dollar Bill Elliott won six races and finished in the top ten an impressive 33 times.

Times have changed since then – Bill now straps into a Dodge and the Thunderbird he left behind has been absent from the NASCAR scene for years. But in 1988, the T-Bird was a four-passenger, two-door, rear-wheel-drive coupe offered with one of three engines in four trims: Base and LX models featured a 140-horsepower, 3.8-liter V6 with 215 lb.-ft. of torque; Sport models were powered by a 155-horsepower, 5.0-liter V8 with an impressive-for-the-day 265 lb.-ft. of torque; and the memorable Turbo Coupe came with a turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine good for 190 horsepower and 200 lb.-ft. of torque. Ford’s 1988 T-bird looked much like it had since its redesign in 1983, a year that marked the transition from a big, boxy coupe with concealed headlights to a much more aerodynamic, smaller coupe with the option of turbocharged power. Slight changes, including revised front and rear fascias, debuted for the 1987 model year. The price for driving the civilian version of Elliott’s #9 Coors Thunderbird ranged from about $13,000 for the Base model to more than $17,000 for the Turbo Coupe.