The Ford Motor Company marked 119 years of building vehicles this week, and decided to celebrate the occasion with all of us. To mark the anniversary, Dearborn is making more than 5,000 historic images of vehicles from Ford, Lincoln and Mercury available for the public to view, in many cases for the first time ever. The Ford Heritage Vault gathers historic images spanning the century from Ford’s founding in 1903 to the company’s memorable 2003 centennial.
Anybody remember this accessory package, which Ford evaluated as an option for the 1959 Ford Country Squire station wagon? The collection of curated photographs and company brochures that can be accessed through the vault include a lot of tasty memory-teasers such as this one. The vault’s curation process has encompassed two years; Ford plans to continue growing the archive going forward. The project was a joint effort between Ford’s corporate staff and graduate students at Wayne State University outside Detroit. It incorporates assistive tools to help the visually impaired access the collections.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 