The Ford Heritage Vault – an official Blue Oval online resource full of photos, design sketches, and various other cool pieces of history – launched just a couple of weeks ago, and immediately attracted quite a bit of attention from eager fans. In fact, the response to this new site was so overwhelming that many had difficult accessing it as the Ford Heritage Vault has garnered a large amount of traffic, to the point where it’s been down quite a bit over that same time span, as Ford archivist Ted Ryan explained to the Detroit Free Press.
“We created demand for people across middle America to go see the cars they grew up with,” Ryan said. “Unfortunately for us, everybody went at the same time and it took the site down. I warned everybody this would be popular. No one believed me. I got a note from (Ford CEO) Jim Farley that said, ‘Ted, thanks for breaking the internet.’ He gets it. People love their cars.”
Ryan knew that the response to the Ford Heritage Vault would be massive, even going so far as to warn the site’s host – a software company called Minisis – to be prepared for a tremendous amount of traffic. Regardless, within three hours of the site’s launch, that company’s servers were overwhelmed, causing it to crash. In just two weeks, a grand total of 64,000 users have generated 750,000 searches at the site, which launched in conjunction with Ford’s 119th anniversary.
Regardless, with some help from Ford’s IT department, the Heritage Vault is now up and running without a hitch, according to the automaker. There are currently around 3,000 images and 3,500 vintage brochures available to peruse, with many more planned to be added in the future after Ford spent a grand total of two years putting it all together.
We’ll have more on the Ford Heritage Vault soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.
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