Most of the world’s major auto manufacturers have long and rich histories. General Motors, Ford, Porsche, Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota, just to name those, have been in business for decades. In the case of American car companies, we’re talking about histories that stretch back more than a century.
Those histories are too often neglected, however; access to period documentation is not always easy. For car fans in search of information, or even automotive journalists wanting to obtain archival documents to better flesh out articles, finding them can be a time-consuming, sometimes fruitless experience.
Also frustrating, because we know that the information does exist, somewhere.
Congrats to Ford, then, for creating a website delivering easy access to documentation related to it. At www.fordheritagevault.com, users now have access to a huge stock of images, advertising material and other treasures. Initially, the site features some 5,000 documents.
Yes, you read that right: 5,000!
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Most extraordinary is that these archives cover the period from 1903 to 2003. There’s material on individual models, flyers, advertisements, etc. Everything has been digitized in high resolution and it is even possible for users to share the information contained in the brochures.
Everything is searchable and the beauty of it is that it's all free.
What’s more, Ford says it will continue to add material to the archive. That will mean more older material, but presumably also documentation dating from the years since 2003.
As an exercise, we visited the site to do some research with the keywords "Falcon Ranchero", "Phaeton" and "Thunderbird Turbo". For a car fan, the pull and attraction of digging through such a treasure trove of documentation makes it harder to leave the site than Tik Tok when watching cat videos!
In short, hours of fun for fans and professionals. We leave you with some of the images we came across.
