"The Standard Catalog of Ford is one of the cornerstones in this award-winning series of books on the history of automobiles. Rather than the "same old same old," we tried to improve this latest edition for the Ford buff.
To begin with, we decided to make this edition all-Ford so we have more room to give the more collectible Ford models additional coverage. In line with this policy, the Mustang and Thunderbird sections are bigger and more complete.
Next, we eliminated many instances where there were multiple photos of the same model and added photos of models not shown before. In the sections covering cars from the early 1930s to early 1950s, we tried as hard as we could to get a picture of every body style, as used to be featured in automotive historian George Dammann's great old hardcover Crestline books.
For 1955 to 1968 models, we came up with some great new and accurate production records. Believe it or not, the source of these production figures was General Motors! They show how rare some of the cars really were.
Naturally, we updated the Ford and Mustang sections to 2007 and we covered T-Birds until the "end" of the model in 2005. (Like many 'bird buffs, we hope it's not really the end of a great nameplate.) In any book of this type, certain facts are concrete and certain facts are fluid. Building cars is not an exact science and the automakers don't always do what their literature says. This can lead to minor errors in a compilation like this. If you find any, let us know, prove your case and we'll make necessary changes.
At the end of the catalog, we added the latest "ballpark values" on Ford collector cars and ended the book with some listings of contacts helpful to Ford lovers. We hope you find The Standard Catalog of Ford to be enjoyable reading."
- John "Gunner" Gunnell |
