Nancy Gioia

[SixPac]

A special guest at the Big Teasy in New Orleans this past week was Nancy Gioia and her husband (I didn't get his name). Nancy was the Chief Program Engineer for the 2002 Ford Thunderbird.

During the auction at the Wednesday night banquet, Nancy told us that she had some Thunderbird items in the basement at her home. She is going to go through them and send them to the Thunderbird Nest for future auctions at TBN events.

[StevenM]

And I am very pleased that Nancy “signed” my 02 that Wednesday evening. Thanks, Nancy!

[4LOWBIRDS+7]

That would be Tom and Nancy Gioia.

[BLACK BEAUTY]

We had dinner with Tom and Nancy..boy can they dance!

[pzierden]

Nancy:
Very nice meeting you in New Orleans and a big thanks for autographing my Inca Gold 05. Hope to see you in Milwaukee in the future.

[BirdsAndBugs]

I'm still surprised she sold her 2002 Thunderbird to Ron. I figured being one of the key leaders on the Thunderbird project would have been one of the highlights of her career at Ford. Was definitely one of the more special and unique cars in the Ford product line during it's time and it seems like bringing back something that was such a classic for Ford in the past would have been a lot of fun. It was a car that generated a lot of excitement at the time, even though it wasn't the overall sales success Ford had hoped for.

[wcoates]

We had dinner with Tom and Nancy..boy can they dance!

Asked Nancy if she was a Ford executive or a professional dancer. answered immediately that
she was a Ford exec. who wanted to be a professional dancer. You are correct Greg, they sure could dance.

[carntz]

Nancy told me she sold the 02 to buy a horse..

[SixPac]

Spence, did those gifts from Nancy ever come in?

[Gobird]

Haven't heard a word from her after we met. I have no contact info. for her. Maybe Ron can contact her.

[4LOWBIRDS+7]

Haven't heard a word from her after we met. I have no contact info. for her. Maybe Ron can contact her.

I was not in on this, but I will bring it up when I invite her to the next event. She did ask several questions about where the money from the auctions went.

[BLACK BEAUTY]

Very good question Nancy

[steelblue5505]

I appreciate inquiring minds wanting to know where the money raised at the Big Teasy event went. It all went to paying for the event. We calculated in the registration fee what our expectations were going to be from the auctions based on what we experienced at our other events with similar items. Then we set the registration fee.

[tbird3127]

Has Nancy ever addressed any of the issues plaguing TBird owners? Just curious

[2K2BIRD]

Has Nancy ever addressed any of the issues plaguing TBird owners? Just curious

Such as ...

Some things to consider is that Nancy wasn't starting with a clean slate. She had to use as much of the LS underpinnings and drive train as possible. Nor was she the one that picked the suppliers of the hundreds of parts and pieces of the car. Given the limitations, I'm sure she, the designers and project managers did the best they could to produce a good car. It's not perfect, or maybe even close, but it sure has been fun.