This 1956 Ford Thunderbird was purchased new by George and Peg Crockett, founders of Alamo Airways and owners of Alamo Field, the predecessor and site of today’s McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Beach Boys may have “fun-fun-fun” in their Thunderbird, but the Crocketts’ car had a more serious purpose: it was their support vehicle, used to race at high speeds across the tarmac, rapidly bringing supplies and, occasionally, fire-fighting equipment to and from planes. Yet it also fit the flamboyant image of an airline that carried visiting celebrities to and from Alamo Field in a V-16 Cadillac and whose owners were literally high-flying friends with Howard Hughes (more on that later).

The Thunderbird was famously used to keep a Cessna 172 aloft for 64 days, 22 hours, and 19 minutes in late 1958. With the fuel tanker designed to feed gasoline up to the plane out of commission, George Crockett drove the T-Bird along a dry lakebed near Primm, Nevada, keeping up with the plane above while feeding several 5-gallon cans of gasoline up to it using a rope. Reportedly, supplies were sent up to the pilots (and waste sent down) using the same method. Today, that Cessna still holds the world record for longest-duration continuous flight.

The car was sold along with all other Alamo Airways assets to Howard Hughes’s Hughes Tool Company in 1967; the Hughes Tool Company property tag is still present on the firewall. Hughes, in turn, sold the Thunderbird in the mid-1970s to his personal pilot, John Seymore, who passed it to a boat dealer in 1981. The boat dealer used it as a trade-in on a new car at Sunland Motors in Las Vegas. John and Marian Vetterli, of Wisconsin, acquired the car in 1983 and owned it for 22 years, completing its restoration to original condition using the original engine, colors, and equipment, as well as numerous NOS parts, in the early 1990s.

The car’s restoration has held up extremely well and still shows to a very high quality, including near-perfect paint over a very straight and well-fit body; accuracy and authenticity is obvious throughout, including the use of proper hoses and clamps under the hood. Features such as the soft and hard tops, power steering and brakes, and Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels shod in wide whitewall tires are authentic.

Today, McCarran International Airport holds a replica of the Crocketts’ Thunderbird. This car is the real thing—a part of Las Vegas and aviation history, as well as the most interesting “fire truck” ever built!