Ford Photos

[servicepub (RIP)]

For a very short time I will post about 200+ Now 591 photos WWII Ford Canada photos on my web-site. This is a test pending something more permanent down the road if I can get Ford Canada to agree.
Please do not link to this site from other sites. This URL is being shared with MLU ONLY
Please do not copy these at this time. If you really must have a photo or two for your own reference and not for distribution I will e-mail it/them to you separately. I also have these in full size TIFF files but these images are 5MB files

Ford Canada Archival Photos

[Steve Guthrie]

Hello Clive

HOLY SH*T!

What a treasure trove. I've seen a handful of these photos before but did not know the extent of the collection.

Plus the LC series tends to demolish the belief Ford of Canada 'never' built Lloyd Carriers!

Well, we appear to have built at least one!

Thanks for sharing

Steve

[Brian Gough]

Clive

WOW !!!

Thanks for posting.

This will surely keep me off the streets for awhile.


Brian

[Keith Webb]

Bravo to you, Clive.
Thanks for sharing them with us.

[cliff]

All I can say is WOW! Fantastic photos Clive I especially like the ones of the F60H.

Thanks for sharing and I hope that Ford allows all of the photos to stay online.

Cheers
Cliff

[Marco C.]

Thanks Clive for the nice Pictures

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Clive, you have finally achieved what was talked about aeons ago it seems now.

May I reiterate, because of confidential reasons, these must not be linked to from other sites, as has been requested.

I will I hope be doing something similar with the myriad of WW2 British Ford photos from the Dagenham archives. They are mostly of Carriers, if that interests?

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by servicepub
For a very short time I will post about 200+ WWII Ford Canada photos on my web-site. This is a test pending something more permanent down the road if I can get Ford Canada to agree.

Excellent, Clive! So where can we sign the petition sheet?

Originally posted by David_Hayward
I will I hope be doing something similar with the myriad of WW2 British Ford photos from the Dagenham archives. They are mostly of Carriers, if that interests?

Yes, the more the merrier!

H.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Steve Guthrie
Plus the LC series tends to demolish the belief Ford of Canada 'never' built Lloyd Carriers!

No they did not, as Lloyd Carriers did not exist

Seriously, these pictures are not proof of Ford Canada manufacturing Loyd Carriers. For that we need production records and/or pictures of a production line in operation. What these pictures proof to me is Ford Canada at least had a couple taken apart by the production engineering department to assess if they could be taken in production in Canada. I would not be surprised they found out the design of the Loyd Carrier wasn't really suited to mass production. Ford USA came to the same conclusion when assessing the Universal Carrier, which is why they re-engineered it into the T16.

H.

[Bill Murray]

Morning Clive:
May I add my thanks for the sharing.

What an absolute treasure trove for restorers, modellers and of course, historians.

I will forever be baffled by those companies that make it so difficult for those of us interested in their history to obtain reference photos such as these. Over 65 years have passed, what harm can it cause??

In any case, thanks again and best of luck with getting pemission to post them, share them, publish them or whatever your end objective is.

Bill

[servicepub (RIP)]

Originally posted by Bill Murray

I will forever be baffled by those companies that make it so difficult for those of us interested in their history to obtain reference photos such as these. Over 65 years have passed, what harm can it cause??

In these litiginous days, I think many corporations prefer the status quo as the safe route, rather than doing something new that may lead to a lawsuit (in their minds).
There is also the example set by Colt which earns an incredible amount of its profit from selling its historical data. Gun collectors can obtain data specific to a revolver or pistol in their collection, for a fee, from the Colt Historian. At US$100.00 per letter and only a staff of three, the Colt Historian brings in easy money to the corporation. I wonder if Ford and GM are looking at turning their archives into profit centres? I know that when I inquired into GM several years ago I was quoted a 'research fee' and 'reproduction fees' that would have made my simple quest far too costly. (What really p*ssed me off was that all of the WWII GM Canada stuff was sent to GM in Detroit - where there is no interest in things Canadian!)
We all know that these corporations are more interested in profit than in furthering historical research - and as a share holder I can't blame them. I would be happier, however, of they would just transfer their material to a proper public-access archive.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I can perhaps answer Clive's very valid query about GM. Basically every single photograph that was used in GENERAL MOTORS WORLD that they found, and a whole host more in a 'room that nobody entered' were sorted out at great expense by an outside contractor. I spoke to one of the guys, an Irishman, and he sent me photos of a particular subject. After a while I contacted him again and the whole situation had changed. From now on it was search fees, repro fees, you name it. Why? Because GM work up to the importance of their heritage. Now you have to contact GM Media Archives, as it is all electronically filed. However they will not supply images that they do not own the copyright of, and in my case I was fortunate as the newspaper that took the photos had the rights and I had a written letter of permission from the editor.

The Pontiac, and possibly Cadillac, and Corvette, records are all available and in the case of the former Pontiac Historical Services will give you chapter and verse on your car for a fee, because it is nothing to do with GM: Mr X apparently bought the data/photos. I am not sure now about Oldsmobile as the Olds History Centre in Warren may have gone 'commercial', whereas previously it was a free service and they even published their wartime Olds works photos.

I just happen however to get on with people at Fords, and it has helped. However, this is a personal tribute to Clive as I know how much work he has put into it

[sapper740]

Originally posted by servicepub
For a very short time I will post about 200+ WWII Ford Canada photos on my web-site. This is a test pending something more permanent down the road if I can get Ford Canada to agree.

Clive, thank you very much for sharing this archive with us! I think I have solved the riddle of where the rear fenders on my C15 came from. They appear identical to the fenders on the truck in jpeg #5. One more riddle solved!


CHIMO!

[Bill Murray]

Not to beat this to death, but.....

I run a business that is driven by licensing. The Hobby and Gift business.

In that sense, understand and actually support companies collecting licensing/royalty fees for proprietary information, images etc. that they own.

It cost them money to take the photos, forgetting that they may well have been used for training, parts manuals or whatever as opposed to having any historical significance, then or n ow.

It costs money to copy them, microfilm them or, nowadays transfer them to digital images suitable for computers.
And....whatever other costs they incur to get them to folks like us.

In many cases like this the firm or government charge a reasonable fee that probably covers their cost and maybe a bit more. Others make it a profit center, specifically licensing, where if you wish to just use the name Chevrolet you pay a pretty healthy fee for essentially a few exchanges of correspondence.

The baffling part for me is that there are so many companies, apparently Ford in this case, that are just totally un-cooperative or downright obstructive when it comes to sharing their historical materiel. Even if you offer to pay for it, which years ago I used to do as did many authors of our beloved books.

Both Bart V and Fred Crismon had some real horror stories of entire rooms of archives of the type that we seek as the Holy Grail being dumped into the trash tips by many companies and governmental organizations over the years.

Well, enough, just another two cents :dh:

Bill

[Brian Gough]

Some of the 8 cwt body photos in the Ford archives looked familiar to me. Sure enough, a reading of the GM 'Bible' shows them to be there too.

For example:

Ford # AT088 is GM # GMEXA5 neg no. 557-291141
Ford # AT089 is GM # GMEXA6 neg no. 556-251141
Ford # AT090 is GM # GMEXA7 neg no. 560-261141
Ford # AT091 is GM # GMEXA8 neg no. 553-241141

There are also a few larger body photos I will check out to see if they are common. Keith Webb, Dirk Leegwater or Barry Churcher can you confirm?


Brian

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

May I just state the obvious that the photos were taken as official shots and thus arguably Crown Copyright, for which there is now no restriction in Canada. However, de facto possession and all that means that Ford of Canada understandably has rights of reproduction of their stock. I for one respect that attitude.

Secondly, I know only too well that the garbage bin, skip, call it what you wil is still receiving archival material and I know that there has been a deliberate policy in somce cases in the UK of trashing rather than donating. I also believe to be true that a motor manufacturer lost its archival production records because someone wanted the filing cabinet they were in, and everything was dumped and now they have zilch EXCEPT copies turn up of info previously supplied, pre-binning, and so some information has been resuscitated.

It then relies on employees say to retrieve them. This has happened in one case with a photo album from 1940/41 that will be repro'd. in due course for an exhibition when the building closes in December.

In GM's case I know that they woke up to the potential of the archive. With Ford, blame the Slave Labour allegations that resulted in the closure of an archive and full-time historian and removal of all records to Dearborn. Dearborn has I believe now catalogued their holdings after some years? They also received Oakville's records as well.

[servicepub (RIP)]

Let's go one step further. Most of the photos that appear in the Army Engineering Design Board (AEDB) post-war books have disappeared. These photos were taken by the RCAF. At some point long after the war the Cdn Forces Photo Unit did a triage of their photos. As this organisation was an RCAF organisation they destroyed anything that was not air-related.
The result is that, today, I can go to the National Archives and look up the appropriate HC number and find only a gap, between photos of airplanes and air bases, where the originally there was a series of AFV photos.
Fortunately, I have been able to track down many of the original photos of CMPs used by Dr Gregg in his books, and have been making copies for my files. However, at $9.00 a photo this gets expensive!

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

May I plead here that when David Fletcher retires at Bovington, and all the other ex-forces people leave their regimental museums to be replaced by 'Museum People', that there is no triage or butchery on the photo collections. Bovington has soft-skin photos as you all know, and these do not fit in with their armoured ambit. There are photos and card records in Bovington that are not available elsewhere including the IWM.

[Dirk Leegwater (RIP)]

Originally posted by Brian Gough
Some of the 8 cwt body photos in the Ford archives looked familiar to me.
Sure enough, a reading of the GM 'Bible' shows them to be there too.

For example:

Ford # AT088 is GM # GMEXA5 neg no. 557-291141
Ford # AT089 is GM # GMEXA6 neg no. 556-251141
Ford # AT090 is GM # GMEXA7 neg no. 560-261141
Ford # AT091 is GM # GMEXA8 neg no. 553-241141

There are also a few larger body photos I will check out to see if they are
common. Keith Webb, Dirk Leegwater or Barry Churcher can you confirm?

Yes Brian I can, the 4 GM and Ford photo's are exactly the same, the photo's here below
are from the GM "black" bible.

Mvg. Dirk Leegwater

[Don Birnie]

Clive
Great pictures. Thanks for posting.

Don

[Max Hedges]

Keith, did you notice the gear box cross member in photos 26 and 27.
You sure could look at these pictures for hours, thanks for posting them Clive.
Max

[Keith Webb]

Originally posted by Max Hedges
Keith, did you notice the gear box cross member in photos 26 and 27.
You sure could look at these pictures for hours, thanks for posting them Clive.
Max

Yes, I did and thought about your F60L - interesting to see this was the thinking early in the chassis design phase.

For others we're talking about one of Max's vehicles - a late production F60L with what looks like a factory fitted lower gearbox cross-member rather than the standard one where engine and gearbox have to be removed to change a clutch.



There were other detail differences I've yet to find on another vehicle - more here.

[Bill Murray]

I have more thoughts on this subject, but for the moment can someone tell Dummy Dugan here what is the GM "Bible" or "Black Book" and is any of it accessable or has it been published/posted somewhere.
Bill

[Bill Mulholland]

I am in Ottawa all next week. I will certainly stand you to a "Kilkenny" or several at "Rosies" or wherever we happen to gather in thanks for these marvelous photos. Should we not be able to gather, I will stand me to several in your absence and honour, so until later.........
Cheers, Bill

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I have a couple of photos of the very rare F8A Model C011DQF, and thought that I ought to post them as they came from the same source.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

F15 this time

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Compare with F8

[servicepub (RIP)]

MLU Challenge

In the series of official CMP photos taken by DND in cooperation with Ford and GM, it would appear that I have some photos, Dirk has some, David has some and Keith has some. Can I suggest that we each share a complete set of high resolution images, on CD, to each other and therefore try to compile a complete set for posterity.
I see that Dave, Keith and I all have photos in the "N.D." series , I don't know what Dirk, or others, may have.

Hey Wild Bill. I'll take you up on your offer.

[Steve Guthrie]

Okay, point taken about a photo of a Loyd in the Ford plant does not constitute proof they were built there.

However, for many years, there was a belief that FMCL 'did' build Loyd carriers, before that was disproved by a legion of enthusiasts like Bill Gregg and others.

Is it possible that a release years ago of one of the Loyd photos Clive has rediscovered could have been the starting point for the original rumour?

Carl Vincent, a long time aviation enthusiast from Ottawa tells the tale of a fellow caught by the police inside a dumpster at the National Archives many years ago. He had heard someone had dumped hundreds of photos of Royal Canadian Naval Aviation topics into the trash to make space for something 'more worthwhile'. It was true. He was caught with photos of Seafires, Fireflys and Avengers on his person and was charged with theft and trespassing etc etc etc.

Luckly for him, the justice of the peace who heard his case was a former Sub-Lieutenant (N) who had served on the 'Magnificient' and dismissed the charges.

Don't know if the photos were saved, though.

Steve