Ford revealed decades-old concept car designs in one release
- The Ford Heritage Vault contains thousands of photos
- It has concept cars from the year 1896 to 2021
- The designs range from the trendsetting to the strange
Published on Aug 06, 2024 at 9:24 PM (UTC+4)
by Ben Thompson
Last updated on Aug 07, 2024 at 5:08 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
Ford gave its fans a treat by unveiling decades-old secret concept car photos in a single release.
The release saw 100 images being released, including 45 new vehicles.
With this drop, the Ford Heritage Vault now plays host to 1,844 concept car images from between 1896 and 2021.
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A walk through the history of Ford
This isn’t the first time a carmaker has lifted the veil on their creative process, with General Motors previously sharing images of the design stages of one of their concept cars.
In addition to the images, the site includes old news releases and brochures.
Ford archivist Ted Ryan told the Detroit Free Press: “Those are what you can’t find anywhere.”
The remarkable thing about the site is that many of the concepts presented would have seemed outlandish at the time, but would become commonplace in the future.
Ryan explained: “The designers were given free rein to imagine what ‘could be’ rather than what was current. Many of the innovations that were showcased often did come to be.
“The X-100 (in 1953) had 100 different innovations, and many, like the rain sensing windshield wipers, telephone in the car, auto sensing high and low beam headlights and the navigation systems, all worked their way into our everyday life.
“These all sprang from the imagination of the designers who created the concepts.”
Concept cars are often made to showcase new technologies or to simply allow designers to flex their creative muscles.
The images of these cars were seldom seen by the public until recently: “We changed that by loading more than 1,600 photos and brochures of over 300 different concept cars from Ford, Lincoln and Mercury into the Ford Heritage Vault.
“The ‘unveiling’ of the brochures and images offers a major snapshot of avant-garde automotive creativity Ford Motor Co. has offered since the quadricycle rolled down the road in 1896.”
A closer look at the concept cars
There are a multitude of concepts within the archive ranging from the innovative to the odd.
With the 1967 Comuta, we have an early prototype for an electric vehicle, whilst the 1958 Nucleon was designed to run on nuclear power.
It starts getting weird when we come to the 1964 Aurora, which has a L shaped sofa for a back seat.
To defend the Comuta slightly, it’s not the weirdest concept car out there – the year 2021 has plenty of those to contend with.
In the first two weeks after the site launched, 64,000 users generated 750,000 searches of the vault.
Ryan said: “I also got a very sweet note from a user who really brought home the impact cars have on our lives and why a site like the vault not only serves as a mechanism to see cool things or do research, but also, at its core, allows people to unlock memories.”
If you want to take a look at the extensive collection, head over to the Ford Heritage Vault website.
