(WWJ) -- Ford is celebrating its 119th birthday Thursday by opening up the vault.
"We're excited to launch the "Ford Heritage Vault," says Ford Archives and Heritage Brand Manager Ted Ryan. "This is the first time Ford Motor Company has begun to make its resources and archives available online."
The site is open to anybody at www.fordheritagevault.com. It will start with photos and brochures from just about every vehicle that Ford has ever made. That's about 5,000 different exhibits,
Ryan sees the website being used by enthusiasts and researchers alike.
"We can open up a new wealth of material available to people to make our content available to them in the purest form," saod Ryan.
WWJ's auto beat reporter, Jeff Gilbert, said he found the brochure for the Ford Fairmont Futura that he bought in 1980.
"Those vinyl seats looked much nicer in the pictures," Gilbert said.
Ford worked with Wayne State University graduate students as well as their own employees and retirees to prepare the site -- a work that's taken more than a year.
"These assets were born analog, and we have worked hard to bring them to the digital world," said Processing Archivist Ciera Casteel, who led the effort to make the assets accessible.
"But digitizing isn't enough. It was important to us that the Heritage Vault is accessible for everyone to enjoy," said Casteel.
There will be assets to help blind and other visually impaired visitors to the website.
Ford has one of the largest archives of any major corporation. It's in a secure location at one of the company's buildings and is generally off-limits to outsiders.
"We are closed to the public," says Ryan. "We can't let people come in and look on the shelves."
Ford gets more than a thousand requests a year for some sort of access to their archives.
This is just the start. Ryan says the site will continue to grow as they add more photos, important company memos and other parts of Ford history.
"The goal is this will be the one-stop shop to find anything about Ford Motor Company history," said Ryan.
There are certain things you won't find. No photos of celebrities with Ford vehicles. No classic commercials. Ryan says it was too hard to get rights for things that Ford doesn't currently have 100% ownership of.
However, if you go on the site and find a photo of the car you love or the brochure to a vehicle you once loved, Ryan says you can feel free to post it on your social media or use it for a class project.
"Everything is free and available for download for anything that is a non-commercial use," said Ryan.
Click HERE to browse the vault.
