THE AIR DAM ANOMALY

1955 T-Bird

A hood scoop (also known as an "air dam") is provided on a high performance car (and sometimes on a not so high performance car) for usually one or more of the following reasons:

1. It forces additional cooler (and hence, denser) air into the carburetor which then supports the burning of additional fuel with a resulting increase in power.

2. It looks studly.

3. On a few models of autos, it allows cooler air to bathe the engine and reduce the chances of overheating.

On the 1955-57 Thunderbirds, the hood scoop was installed for a more prosaic purpose. Quite simply, the body stylists designed the hood so low that there was no room for the air cleaner on the top of the engine. The addition of a hood scoop provided the necessary extra few inches for the air cleaner and also, as a side benefit, achieved Reason No. 2 listed above.

Ford provided these early Thunderbird owners with a metal plate to block off the hood scoop in cold weather so that the engine could achieve ideal operating temperatures as soon as possible.

Tests performed in a wind tunnel in the 1970s revealed that the Thunderbird hood scoop actually interferes with the proper distribution of air around the engine and into the carburetor and that the car ironically always runs slightly better with the scoop blocked off.