The word “archive” conjures up images of shelves upon shelves of dust-covered books and photographs, but the Ford Archives are anything but. Sure, The Blue Oval’s annals include physical records and pictures, but there’s a lot more to be seen on-site. Thanks to a recent virtual tour, Ford fans can check out what’s behind the doors of the automaker’s archive.
Guided by Ford archive and heritage brand manager Ted Ryan, the short tour walks viewers through the highlights of the Ford Archives, which are located in Dearborn, Michigan. There are over three miles of shelving housing over 16,000 cubic feet of paper materials. There are also 3.5 million photo negatives in storage, which are kept in a climate-controlled room for preservation. They’re kept alongside 10,000 film feels and almost 20,000 video tapes, to boot.
There are more than just documents, too. The Ford Archives collected hundreds of employee badges, vehicle badges, gear shift knobs, and more. There are even a handful of original Norman Rockwell paintings, including one of the three generations of Ford, painted for the automaker’s 50th anniversary celebration.
View this post on Instagram
Sculptures are stored in a different wing of the Ford Archives. These models provide the bones for future production line vehicles, allowing designers to work out the kinks and fine-tune the sculpt before they’re sent to the clay model. From there, Ryan walks viewers through the Ford Times, which wasn’t about the automaker specifically – it presented readers with points of interest, including aquariums and ghost towns that they could visit. There are also a handful of Ford vehicles, both past and present.
One of the more interesting pieces of Ford history housed at the Archives is a scale model of the Lincoln Futura, the vehicle that served as the basis for the Batmobile in the original, live-action Batman series from the 1960s. There are also a number of extremely rare photos, like this one of the Ford GT40 MKIII.
Comments
It is far more interesting in that you can search the archives on line for many interesting things. For example, in 1940-1941, Ford built the Ford GP, a prototype “jeep”. You can find the drawings and blueprints on line. Really cool.
You can search the archives online as well. 1940-1941, Ford built the Ford GP which was a prototype “jeep”. Lots of drawings, etc regarding this vehicle are on line to view.