A loud roar shakes the ground in a sprawling garage tucked away behind Ford Motor Co. world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. The muscular growl is coming from the beneath the hood of a 2017 Ford GT MKII as an engineer revs its racing engine.
Only 42 copies of the track-only car were built, priced at $1.2 million apiece. The MKII reporters were shown Tuesday is part of a collection of about 175 classic, concept, one-off and certain significant vehicles in Ford’s history as part of what the automaker calls its “heritage fleet” revealed for the first time to reporters on Wednesday.
Listen to the MKII “sing” in the video below.
Many of the vehicles on display are museum quality, but don’t plan a family outing to view them.
“We didn’t do this to set up a museum. We did this to set up a working fleet that’s valuable and they can offer insights to product development, to engineering, to Ford Performance, to drive our business going forward,” said Ted Ryan, manager of Ford Heritage brand, during a media tour of the collection on Wednesday. “The intent of this is to have a viable fleet that can be used by all the different teams within Ford.”
While the public cannot tour the Ford Heritage Fleet anyone can access the Ford Heritage Vault website with images, brochures, manuals of thousands of Ford vehicles.
A whirlwind tour of the collection was a trip where each vehicle marked a highlight of Ford’s history, innovation, design or experimentation.
The Ford Mustang, introduced at the 1984 World’s Fair in New York City has been one of Ford’s most popular cars over the years. The 10-millionth Mustang that rolled off the assembly line is part of the collection, painted the same Wimbledon white as the one revealed in 1984. The biggest difference is first one’s V8 engine developed just 164 horsepower, while the 2019 GT V8 put out a brawny 460.
In keeping with the original pony car’s popularity and significance to Ford, the Mustang comprises a large proportion of the heritage fleet including:
- Several versions of the Cobra including the last Fox platform model. “The idea was to make them as lightweight as possible, high performing as possible, biggest engines that we could put in basically unique parts, cool systems, things like that, “ said Nick Terzes, manager, Ford performance parts. “Each one of these is number one. These are the very first of the production run of each of these limited edition cars. So we’ve been able to keep them. We’ve used them for many events. We’ve driven them on the track, andstill very fortunate to keep these in the fleet.
- To introduce the 50th anniversary Mustang in 2014, the company got permission to display one, briefly, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. The yellow Mustang was gutted of its engine and other heavy components, broken down into sections small enough to fit into an elevator and reassembled, explained director of Ford communications, Said Deep.
Pickup trucks have always been Ford’s biggest moneymaker and several examples show how the company used design and technology to keep them fresh.
“We’re able to keep one of the originals in the fleet as kind of a design inspiration, but also as our benchmark, so we can continue to increase the performance,” said Terzes, as he pointed to The original Lightning program was in 1993 this is a second generation. This was a super charged 5.4 liter in this and really we jumped up the performance significantly with this truck.”
A battery-electric Ranger is one of the company’s first forays into developing an electric pickup truck. It’s range was just 40 miles, according to Ryan.
The Airstream is an example of the collection of concept vehicles, also known as show cars in the heritage fleet. Concept vehicles are never meant to be produced for sale, but are exercises for designers and engineers.
Indeed, the Airstream is a favorite of Paul Wraith, head of design, Ford SUVs.
“If you look inside the vehicle it’s brilliant. It’s got these egg-like chairs, this stripe of orange and white,” said Wraith. “I used to sit in it every day. How cool to eat my lunch when it spent a bit of time over in the UK, one of our studios. It’s a really nice place to be.”
A show version of the Ford Bronco caught the attention of wrestler-turn-movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when he saw it while touring a design studio.
“Can I borrow your car, he said,” recalled Wraith. “I said yes, please don’t break it.” A Bronco did appear in Johnson’s movie “Rampage.”
Ford’s much earlier heritage is represented by a Model T reproduced for the automaker’s 100th anniversary in 2003 along with a 1938 ambulance once used by a volunteer safety group from Belmar, New Jersey.
Impetus for creating the Heritage Fleet came from Ford CEO Jim Farley who enjoyed a similar collection on display at Ford of England.
“The email came into senior management and me basically saying, this is great. Why don’t we do this in the United States,” recalled Ryan.
So the work began, and as Terzes explained, it became both a labor of necessity and love.
“There was a fleet of engineers, designers, sales people, that helped get these vehicles shepherded back in the day,” Terzes said. “But then since that point, there’s been a whole group of people that have helped protect many of these cars and keep them in our fleet for future inspiration for actual development work as we’ve continued building the next generations of vehicles.”
A corollary perhaps where everything old helps create something new again.
