Ford opens its vaults with new digital archive
The Ford Heritage Vault aims to share all the information the automaker has on vehicles dating back to the company’s 1903 founding.
1964 World's Fair Exhibit 1965 Shelby GT350
Ford Motor Company has launched a new website — digitizing all the historic information the automaker has been holding in vaults and making it free to the public. That includes things like brochures from past and present vehicles, concept car information and more.
Ted Ryan is an archivist and heritage brand manager for Ford. He says the website has more than 6,000 assets at the time of launch.
“We get thousands of letters from students, enthusiasts and media requesting content … So we’ve known there’s a demand out there.” — Ted Ryan, Ford archivist
Listen: Ted Ryan discusses Ford’s new digital archive.
“We actually did Ford, Lincoln and Edsel,” says Ryan. “We didn’t quite get to Mercury but that’s coming soon.”
Ryan says there is plenty of remaining content that is yet to go on the website. He says Ford has three different vaults of negatives that his team is working through.
“We get thousands of letters from students, enthusiasts and media requesting content,” says Ryan. “So we’ve known there’s a demand out there. The question was how to best fill that demand and we decided to make it available online.”
Click here to check out the Ford Heritage Vault.
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