Detroit - With more than a century of making cars and millions of owners across the globe in that time, many of them passionate about the blue oval and amateur car historians, Ford has made more than 5 000 curated Ford and Lincoln photographs and product brochures available online to the public.
It spans from the company’s founding in 1903 to its centenary in 2003 and will be expanded continually.
Also added recently are 1 600 photos showing every car produced in Britain, with names familiar to South Africans, such as Anglia, Zodiac, Sierra Cosworth, Escort and Fiesta.
It can be found here and was created for fans, journalists and car enthusiasts to download, at no cost, for personal use.
The materials available were carefully curated by Ford’s archives team, graduate students from Wayne State University’s library and information science programme in Detroit, as well as Ford employees and retirees.
“We’re opening up in a way we’ve never done before,” said Ted Ryan, the Ford archive and heritage brand manager. “Our archives were established 70 years ago, and for the first time, we’re opening the vault for the public to see. This is just a first step for all that will come in the future.”
When we visited Detroit for the reveal of the new Mustang last year, we were given a glimpse of some of the documents, including the first memo by Lee Iacocca stressing the need for an affordable sports car that would appeal to the baby boomer generation. Initially it was going to be called the Cougar or Thunderbird II but soon became known as the Mustang after the World War II fighter plane and, as they say, the rest is history.
We also got a glimpse into the temperature-controlled rooms housing the original documents and videos over the ages. Like much in America, it’s big and impressive.
“Complementing all the vehicle photos available in the Ford Heritage Vault, brochures like these add so much more information and impact for people who want to learn about our products, heritage and accessories,” said Ciera Casteel, the processing archivist, who prepared materials for the Heritage Vault.
As you can imagine, much of the material was analogue but the Ford Heritage Vault has been created with accessibility features that translate photos, charts and graphs and other pre-digital assets for compatibility, with assistive technology now used by blind and visually impaired site visitors, such as screen readers, to interpret websites. Users can request remediated versions of additional brochures as needed.
“These assets were born analogue, and we have worked hard to bring them to the digital world,” said Casteel. “But digitising wasn’t enough. It was important to us that the Heritage Vault is accessible for everyone to enjoy.”