Thunderbird was started as a boat company by Woodie Woodson in 1956 in Miami, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

. The primary design for Thunderbird boats originally consisted of a tri-hull or cathedral hull

Cathedral hull

A cathedral hull is a hull shape used in modern boats, usually power-driven. It can be thought of as a kind of vestigial trimaran in which the center hull has two smaller side hulls which are so close to the main hull that there is no longer any open space. In fact a cathedral hull is a...

 design.

History

Thunderbird was purchased by Alliance Machine and Foundry in 1961, later combined with Formula Boats

Formula Boats

Formula is a boat brand owned by Thunderbird Products. Formula was originally a company founded by Don Aronow in 1962 in Miami, Florida. The first successful model was the original 233 Deep-V hull....

, and then sold to Fuqua Industries as Thunderbird/Formula in 1969. Vic Porter purchased Thunderbird/Formula from Fuqua in 1976. Vic and his children still own and operate the company today. Formula is now the brand of boats sold, and Thunderbird is the company name itself.

A Thunderbird boat was featured on the original television series Flipper

Flipper (1964 TV series)

Flipper, from Ivan Tors Films in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television, is an American television program first broadcast on NBC from September 19, 1964, until April 15, 1967. Flipper, a bottlenose dolphin, is the companion animal of Porter Ricks, Chief Warden at fictional Coral Key Park...

.