For its 119th Birthday, Ford Opens its Archive Vault to the Public

• The website contains more than 5,000 photographs and brochures

• Every vehicle made by Ford and its brands between 1903 and 2003 is represented

• The company collaborated with students from Wayne State University to elaborate the website

Today marks the 119^th birthday of the Ford Motor Company, which was created on June 16, 1903. To celebrate the occasion, the automaker created a new website to display its archive to the public.

The website called the Ford Heritage Vault contains a curated selection of over 5,000 photographs and brochures that document every vehicle made by Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Edsel, and even Merkur between 1903 and 2003.

This is the first time the archives from the second-largest American automaker have been opened to the general public since they were established over 70 years ago. The result is the largest online database for the American automotive industry.

Ford believes that making its archives public will allow more people to learn about the history of the company and its models and it will help some users take a trip down memory lane by viewing images and brochures associated with vehicles they owned or those they dreamed to own in the younger days.

The automaker says this is only the beginning as new content will be added regularly, but even then, it is interesting to note that the first selection of content that is available on the website is not limited to the company’s best-known vehicles, such as the Mustang, the Thunderbird or the Model T.

Indeed, many vehicles that were once commonplace but are now rarely seen even in vintage car shows can be found in the Vault, such as the Pinto and the Tempo, for example.

In order to help users find what they are looking for, the search function includes filters that can be used to view images of a model in a single paint colour.

The Heritage Vault website was created with the help of students in the Science of Information department of Wayne State University, as well as many of the company’s employees and retirees. In order to make the database accessible to everyone, the contents have been digitized and are compatible with assistive technologies designed for the visually impaired.