OK , HERE WE GO AGAIN...57 (ONLY LATE IN THE BUILD) had the 57-58 mercury 'seat-o-matic as a option..it came about as a 'come-on' to buy a 2 seat bird...the cars were not selling (hard to beieive now!!) as the 4 seat t-bird was not ready for production in july 57..everyone wanted the 4 seat bird--nobody wanted the 2 seat bird.....not until late jan. 58 was a 4 seat bird ready to sell..( no convertible until june 58)...the 'problem' was the car was 'breaking in two' over the rough part of the test track in dearborn,mich.(my hometown)...the engineers had never tried to build a large car with a uni-body.....finally they figured it out with the addition of 'TORQUE BOXES' installed on the underbody...but the size, placement, thickness,ect. had to be worked out..this took time...(like i said,jan 58)..meanwhile they just kept building 57 t-birds..to get people to buy them, they 'loaded' up every bird with all the options they had ..(for next to nothing )..and 'stole' the memory seat-o-matic from the mercury division...so, they built 57 birds for 4 more months..(to dec. 23 57).that's why there are 21k+ 57 birds and on ly 16k+ 55's and 15k+ 56's...i have a memory seat in my 55 bird (the seat frames are the same (4-way pwr.) on all 55-57 birds..the stuff bolts right in..if anyone would like to try this install..i will help with 30+ photos and 20 pages of text...i can e-mail it to you...at
[email protected] bye ed