General Motors may have sold its heritage, but Ford has a better idea: sell copies of archived photos, keep the originals, and profit.
The FordImages site is expected to contain 15,000 historic images from the company’s archives, available as prints for about twenty-five bucks. In this era of free or nearly-free content, I’m not sure who out there is going to stump up that kind of money for, say, a bunch of 1957 models being loaded on car haulers, but there’s probably somebody out there who has been waiting fifty-three years for such a snapshot.
General Motors fans shouldn’t despair, however; I have every reason to believe that fifty years from now it will be possible to buy similar images of GM’s present. Just think of the thrill your grandchildren will get over an authentic print showing GM’s engineers “designing” the Cruze by making a Skype call to Korea, or “engineering” the Regal by making a Skype call to Germany, or “conceptualizing” the legendary Pontiac G8 by making a Skype call… you get the point, right?
After the virtual beating I took yesterday from Sajeev about the Ford Panther platform, I’ll step lightly! I hope Ford is looking at these images as well to see their own heritage and what has happened to it! These companies, Ford & GM – Chrysler is already gone for all practical purposes need to re-address their heritage to see what once was and realize the American car hardly exists anymore and how they got to this point. Maybe the people who run things can be inspired to make a few changes and regain a piece of what they stood for and meant in the eyes of their customers. Or – maybe they’re both too far gone for that.
I understand what you’re saying, looking back into the past to see when their cars actually invoked passion in people. The problem is I don’t know if these guys know how to look back without producing a slavishly retro copy of something.
But I do pray for inspiration for the once great American Car companies. I have hope for Chrysler if the quality holds up, and I believe that Ford has a direction and a path they would like to follow… but GM? Time will tell.
GM started this years ago; Ford is just playing copy-cat: http://www.gmphotostore.com/
Rats! Beat me to it.
Ford has had archival racing photos available for several years now, Petey D at AE.com always features one at the end of his Funes columns for years now, including a link to the ford.artehouse.com page.
Jack may have seen some of same images on his visit to a particular engineering group at Ford a while back.
Dad had a black ’63 Lincoln just like in the picture. Sigh. Sadly I never got to drive it as I was too young.
In high school (late 70’s) a friend (Shout out to Ron Gyursik if you are one of the B & B) had access to his mom’s powder-blue ’63 Lincoln just like this one. We felt like Lords of All Creation as teens cruising Dearborn and Allen Park in this beauty, 5 of us at a time in the warm spring and summer nights. We’d scrape up $2 or $3 bucks each of our paper-route money and half-fill the tank, put a Queen or Aerosmith 8-track in the tape deck, and just, as Stephen King eloquently put it in “Christine, “motor-vate.” None of us would call shotgun, as we all loved the idea of entering and exiting gracefully and manfully through those suicide doors. A prime example of the emotional bonds which men form for the metal they ride in….and if Lincoln could recapture that emotion for me, I’d be in one today.
I can almost feel the comfort of settling back into that fine leather….Ahhhhhh….
I had a desert tan 1962 Lincoln convertible that I bought in 1972. It was actually not that large – within a couple of inches of my 58 Plymouth in overall length, and its convertible top was actually shorter than that on the Plymouth. I suppose that comes from being designed originally as a convertible coupe rather than sedan. Of course that 430-cubic-inch engine only returned 10-12 mpg, but the car gave us a ride we expected from a Lincoln, and had the requisite fit and finish inside and out. I was amazed when I looked behind the rear seat back; there was a bank of relays for the top mechanism that extended the entire width of the seat. There was even a little relay that would lower the rear door window a couple of inches if I opened the door with the top up and window up, then raise it again when the door was closed.
Giving their turning circle, you were probably well-advised to not try driving one unless equipped with signal flares and semaphore flags.
Very easy to drive, Diesel, what with those fender “blades” telling you where the corners were. Kinda slow ‘n’ thirsty, what with all those cubes and lbs, but, bring ’em back a little smaller loaded with today’s technology? I’d want one.
Very easy to drive, because that bombardier gunsight on the hood let you know EXACTLY where the beast was pointed….(Ron did let me drive it…once!)
I have hope for Chrysler if the quality holds up, and I believe that Ford has a direction and a path they would like to follow… but GM? Time will tell. Dan, I sure hope you are right! Paul, I DO remember GM doing this years ago! Thanks for reminding us! As to Mark‘s comment, I also have fond memories of my buddies and me cruising around in my dad’s 1966 red Impala 4 dr. hardtop in the winter when it was 20° with all windows rolled down, vents cranked all the way open, heat off, playing “freeze-out”! For the record, I did get a ride to town once in a Lincoln Continental 4 door convertible with the top down when in the USAF! Nice!
I guess there are still guys out there who pay money for pornography, right? So why not?
They need to bring back an updated continental – like in the photo. That’s what a Lincoln is supposed to be; not tarted up fords.
To be fair, the Continental design was originally supposed to be a Thunderbird :)
Jack, and a two-door coupe at that. Somewhere in the archives is a photo that I posted of Elwood Engel’s original design for the ’61 Thunderbird. The story is that Robert Macnamara saw the proposal and suggested adding two doors and making it into the Continental.
The ’61 Thunderbird and ’61 Continental shared a platform and even the same cowl.
Bring back suicide doors!!!
Neato! Found a pic of my first car to use as my Avatar….bookmarked the site, it rocks.
Why, yes, that is a 1970 Boss 302. And no, sadly, I don’t still own it. And yes, indeed it was very fast and handled pretty well for the time. And yes, it was fun to work on. And no, I never lost a race to a Z28….
Mark: When I met the cute gal who would become my wife in 1975, she owned a beautiful root-beer reddish-brown 1970 Mustang 302 convertible, but not a Mach 1 or Boss. She scared me to death in that thing, the way she scooted around town in it! It was very fast! I had a ball driving it, too. Sold it in 1979 when she stopped working as our son was due, plus, the floor was so rusted out, I was in danger of being Fred Flintstone if I had to jam on the brakes very hard and my feet would go through the floor! It certainly was faster than my avatar I owned when in the USAF, but nowhere near as sharp!
Are those fourteen or fifteen inch wheels on that Lincoln?
Fourteens, I believe. As in 9:50X 14? IIRC.
What you’re paying for @ ford.artehouse.com or gmphotostore.com are high quality large prints that have been professional printed. Their products are suitable for framing.
The simple fact is that some of the best photos of the cars we love were taken by photographers employed by the car companies. They have huge photo archives so why not try to make them generate some revenue?
As some of you know, my day job is doing custom machine embroidery. When I was looking for a photo to use for an embroidery of the ’53 Stude coupe, I found a publicity still of the car on a banked track (so the view of the car was somewhat elevated). Raymond Loewy, whose employee Bob Bourke is generally credited with the Starliner cupe, was standing next to the car, behind it, leaning on the A pillar. I figured that if Loewy thought that was the best view of the car, that should be the one that I used.
Cool idea! I’m not a Ford guy, but I appreciate the history and passion in many of these photos.