8 Notable Vehicles from Ford’s New U.S. Heritage Collection

Until now, Ford of Australia, U.K., and Germany had something that the U.S. didn’t—a collection of significant models from its past.

When Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, saw what his U.K. counterparts were doing at the Daventry Innovation Center, he put out the word to his American team that they needed their own “heritage fleet.” Not only would it allow the different arms of Ford to borrow significant and well-maintained vehicles from one another, perhaps for shows or various events, but it would inspire the employees. That, to Farley, was the point of emphasis.

Ford’s head archivist, Ted Ryan, who manages 16,000 cubic feet of paper and 3.5 million photos, was on that email. When Ryan got word from Farley to put together a heritage fleet, he and his team did what archivists do best: hunt, gather, and organize.

It took about a year, along with more legal, financial, and accounting paperwork than you’d expect. Today, in a parking deck inside Ford’s world headquarters, we saw the first fruits of their labor: 49 vehicles. They came from everywhere: From an internal department, from a retired employee who had squirreled away a one-off prototype, from the oldest EMS service in the nation, from the Rouge plant managers who had known to save the last Mustang and the first F-150 built in Dearborn.

Our tour of the collection was divvied up by internal department: Ford Performance, Archives, Communications, and Design. Paul Wraith, Ford’s global design director for SUVs, who has worked for the company for 24 years, was seeing many of the concepts for the first time. As the rest of the group flocked to the roar of a GT Mk II, which was fired up for the occasion, he wandered among the collection of fiberglass and composite. The MA concept most fascinated him as a designer, but it was the handiwork of his coworkers that made him stop and point out details like the logo on the rear quarters of the 2007 Interceptor concept. Someone, he said, had spent hours hand-brushing that logo. It makes sense, because concept cars are one-offs; they aren’t built by the same factories that mass-produce the models that make it into the sales portfolio.

The collection won’t be open to the public, says Ryan, “but we’re going to make the vehicles available to the public, however and whenever we can.” For instance, they brought a V-10 Mustang prototype (below) to the Woodward Dream Cruise. Ryan was clear, though, that the Heritage Fleet is “by and for employees.”

We left convinced that there were many more stories represented in that collection than we’d heard in full. We had no choice but to focus on a few of the 49, so here are our selects.

1999 Mustang V-10 Mule

In the early 2000s, a small team of engineers within Ford wanted to prove to management that Ford could compete with the likes of the Viper and Corvette.

Their idea was to create a testbed of a V-10 engine that they were hopeful would go on to power the 2005 Ford GT, as it was being developed at the same time. They didn’t just cram their V-10 truck engine in there, either. The team worked off the modular 4.6-liter engine block architecture and added two cylinders to create a short-deck 5.8-liter V-10 that they could fit into a Mustang.

The franken-engine was a combination of off-the-shelf, aftermarket, and handmade parts, and far from production-ready, but the concept was there. They found a disused 1999 Mustang test car that had originally been used to develop the Cobra R, and managed to squeeze the new engine inside.

And it worked.

Even in its somewhat slapped-together setup, the car was a rocket. A period test had it rip through the quarter mile on standard street tires in 12.28 seconds at 117 mph, beating out the 12.83 at 110 mph of a brand-new supercharged 2003 Cobra tested the same day.

Unfortunately, as we know, they never put the V-10 into a production Mustang, nor did the engine make its way into the Ford GT, but the team had proved their point nonetheless.

Ford was so impressed with the skunkworks effort that they assigned the group a proper R&D budget and told them to create a 7.0-liter performance variant that would go on to power the 427 Concept and the 2004 Shelby Cobra Concept.

VIN #001, #002, #003 Ford GTs

Early VIN numbers of collectible models are highly desirable, so it’s only natural that Ford owns the first modern-era GT, VIN #001. It owns the first three, in fact. The three were rush-built ahead of Ford’s centennial celebration in 2003 when it showed the cars in appropriately patriotic shades of red, white, and blue. The blue car, VIN #003, has since been repainted in the Gulf orange and blue racing livery, to honor the GTs that won at Le Mans in 1968 and ’69.

1938 V8 Ambulance

The oldest vehicle that we saw was also one of the hardest working. The Belmar First Aid Squad used this ambulance for decades, and after it was retired from active service, used it in parades. The Belmar Squad, which disbanded in 2021 due to financial strain, was one of America’s original first aid squads. In fact, it was as old as the ambulance itself. The squad preserved it with love and dedication—just look at the stretchers and splints in the back—and only let it go at the very end. Lifelong squad member Steve Hines drove the ambulance into the trailer that took it to Dearborn, where it will now enjoy a continued, luxurious retirement.

2004 Bronco Concept

It’s easy to see the design cues that carried over from the 2004 Bronco Concept shown here to the production version that appeared in 2021: The boxy proportions, upright windshield, the “Bronco” proudly displayed across the grill on a line that bisected the round headlights. Underneath the hood, though, is a very different story: A 2.0-liter turbodiesel with nitrous injection. Y’know, just in case.

No wonder Dwayne Johnson asked to use this concept in his 2018 movie, Rampage!

2001 Ranger Lightning Bolt

This Ranger began life as a black, regular-cab pickup with a 2.5-liter inline-four backed by an automatic transmission. That was before the people at SVT got ahold of it.

They yanked out the inline-four and squeezed in the supercharged 5.4-liter from the second-gen half-ton SVT F-150 Lightning. Along the way, they built custom two-foot headers and lowered the truck by two inches. As told to therangerstation.com, the new V-8 overwhelmed the stock suspension of the Ranger, which was 1200 pounds lighter than the F-150 Lightning, so the team used F-150 parts wherever possible. As usual, the SVT was remarkably thorough and thoughtful in its modifications. Is this still a Ranger? Sounds like a Ship of Theseus question to us … but damn, is it awesome.

2003 427 Concept

Ford 427 Concept aims to rekindle America’s love affair with the sedan. Thus ran the headline for the three-page press release announcing this concept in January of 2003 — four months before Chrysler would unveil its 300C concept. Imagine if we had gotten a 427 vs. Hemi battle of American sedans in the 2000s!

On paper, the 427 would have given a Hellcat a run for its money. Under its hood—which we were not allowed to touch—was a 590-horse V-10. 70 pounds lighter than the iron-block 5.4-liter, 32-valve V-8 in the contemporary Cobra R, the engine of the 427 Concept boasted lightweight forged aluminum pistons, aluminum cylinder heads derived from those on the Cobra R engine, hollow valve stems, and billet connecting rods and crankshaft.

The engine would remain a dream, but the design of the 427, down to the chunky five-spoke wheels and three-slat grill, clearly dictated the look of the 2006 Fusion.