Photos / Supplied
If you’re looking for a rabbit hole to disappear down over the holiday season, this could be perfect. Ford’s Heritage Vault is live online, expanding regularly and available to everybody, covering the Blue Oval’s entire history with more than 10,000 brochures and curated photographs. The assets are available to download, with more than 3000 requests per day from users.
Ford has spent most of 2022 digitising heritage material for the Vault from the “first century of the company’s history”, for public use (mostly US market stuff). It’s a just fraction of the millions of individual items stored in humidity controlled premises in Detroit, but the work is ongoing.
The company says it’s the one of the largest automotive-industry databases in the world. It will ultimately cover Ford’s product ranges from many markets, with more than 1600 assets from Ford UK added last month. So if you’ve been looking for a brochure for the 1982 Sierra wagon you used to own, you’re in luck.
Check it all out here. But be warned, you may not rejoin the world for a while.
Sadly, what you won’t see (but would almost certainly love to see…) is much from Ford Australia’s history. Not for lack of trying by the company, locally or globally.
When Australian manufacturing shut down in 2016, Ford Australia moved almost 100 years of archive material to a warehouse in Melbourne. According to Ford heritage manager Ted Ryan, who spoke to journalists during a media day in Detroit earlier this year, Ford Australia would love to the send the documents to Detroit for digitisation and Ford head office would love to have them.
But Australian law prevents the export of historical or culturally significant materials; ironically, there is no law that says Ford Australia must preserve them, either.
Ford says it’s too expensive/logistically complicated to digitise in Australia, and would like to call the precious material home to Detroit to join the rest of the company’s history. Currently, it’s a stalemate.
Keyword: Ford Heritage Vault: classic brochures and pics free to download (no thanks to Australia)