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IT WAS BILLED as a brief but hot date. Twenty-four hours max. Not much for a test drive, since sleep and ablutions would take at least eight of those hours.

But I’m a sucker for the sleek look and the fast ride, and the 1987 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe is about as sleek and as fast as you can get. So I said “Yes.”

I sinned — and I’m smiling.

I mean, this car can move.

The Turbo Coupe goes so fast, it’s hard to believe it’s powered by a four-cylinder engine. You don’t feel the speed. You don’t hear it, either; this car slips through the air. You gotta watch the speedometer and tach.

I know this is bad stuff. And I can see Rosemary Dunlap of Motor Voters shaking her head. I can hear Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety cursing under his breath; and the folks at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety doubtless are twittering amongst themselves over this automotive profligacy.

They’re all good people, sensible and just in their pursuit of safer vehicles. But we’re not talking common sense here.

We’re talking Thunderbird. Real Thunderbird — powerful, passionate, graceful, a far cry from those junky T-birds of the 1970s that simply sported the nameplate.

Golly, you know, I never thought I would admit it. But I gotta say that those people at Motor Trend magazine were right to give this Thunderbird their 1987-model “Car of the Year” award.

Complaints: The test model, with its 190-horsepower engine and five-speed manual transmission, makes absolutely no sense in the city. The car grumbles and mumbles in the low gears, requiring constant shifting between first and third. The Turbo Coupe — which feels so precise and at ease on the open road — turns into a cumbersome thing in tight spots at low speeds. You feel all 3,133 pounds of this car in town traffic.

Also, Ford needs to get off this stuff about having cabin space for five people in the Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar. Five people might fit in the test model if at least one of them were a wafer.

Praise: Excellent engineering. That 2.3-liter, in-line, four-cylinder, intercooled, turbocharged and fuel-injected engine is a work of art. Turbochargers alone do a good job of packing more air into engine combustion chambers, thereby improving combustion and power with a minimum increase in fuel consumption. Using an intercooler to further increase the density of the air/fuel mixture produces even more horsepower — 15 percent more in the case of the Turbo Coupe.

And that gearbox! Short, quick strokes. Marvelous on the highway.

Ride, handling and braking: Excellent. Another good combination of sportiness and “boulevard” ride. In fact, the Turbo Coupe has an electronically controlled suspension that automatically adjusts between the two rides, depending on the speed of the car. This works well. Braking is tops, thanks to the Turbo Coupe’s antilock system, which helps to keep the car straight in panic stops.

Head-turning quotient: Automotive lust. No other way to say it.

Sound system: AM/FM stereo radio and cassette, electronic seek and scan, graphic equalizer. Ford Premium sound. Excellent.

Mileage: About 23 to the gallon (22.1- gallon tank), mostly highway driving with no passengers and the heater on.

Price as tested: $18,175, including $1,143 in options and $432 delivery charge. Base price is $16,600. According to San Jose-based Automobile Invoice Service, the dealer invoice price (an estimate of what the dealer actually paid the manufacturer) on the base Turbo Coupe is $14,223.