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Up until recently, Ford didn’t have an official collection of its many important historical vehicles. That all changed when Ford started curating its Heritage Fleet in 2024, and we got our first sneak peek at the collection in 2025. Now, however, Ford has moved the fleet into a new permanent home: the Ford Vault.

Situated in a nondescript building in Romulus, Michigan, the Ford Vault will house the Heritage Fleet, which includes everything from Model Ts and Mustang prototypes to race cars and one-off concepts. Currently, due to zoning laws, the building is only open to employees and offers limited opportunities for media, with the site formerly used as an Amazon warehouse.

However, Ford promises that it is working with the Romulus city government to get the building up to code so it can be turned into a public museum. The company didn’t provide a timeline for when the collection would open up to the public, but we got to take an early look at the fleet it has amassed.

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Many of the cars were already part of the collection that we saw back in 2025, but Ford also brought in several new vehicles. We’re not going to cover any of the vehicles we wrote about back in 2025, so if you’re interested in what else Ford has in its Heritage Fleet, go check out that roundup below.

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1910 Ford Model T

Ford built more than 15 million Model Ts, but this one stands out for two reasons. For starters, this Model T was sold in the United Kingdom, meaning it has the steering wheel on the right. You’ll also notice that instead of the customary black paint job, this Model T wears a vibrant green hue. Henry Ford’s famous line of “any color, so long as it’s black” didn’t actually come into effect until 1914, once the groundbreaking assembly line was up and running. Before then, you could order the Model T in red, green, blue, and grey. Black paint dried faster, leading Ford to restrict the color palette once the assembly line was bustling for the sake of efficiency.

2006 Ford Super Chief Concept

The Super Chief concept is the complete opposite of the bare-bones Model T. Designed as a vision for a luxury truck in an era when pickups were transitioning from workhorses to lifestyle vehicles, the concept took inspiration from the Super Chief locomotives of the 1950s for its domineering look. Under the hood, it used an innovative supercharged 6.8-liter V-10 called “Tri-Flex” because it could combust gasoline, E85, or hydrogen. Coach doors open to reveal a decadent cabin covered in brown leather, brushed aluminum, and American walnut wood. The glass roof sits over a structured grid of leather and wood, while the bed is lined with wood and strips of metal.

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Ford Mustang Ute

From the front, this may look like a normal Mustang GT350, but once you get to the rear, you’ll find that it has actually been converted into a pickup truck. This Mustang Ute project was built by apprentices in Ford’s metal shop at its Experimental Vehicles Building as a way to train them on the complexities of building concept cars. It uses the bed from a Ranger, and while it was never destined to be more than a training exercise, the Ute now has us daydreaming about a hi-po successor to the Falcon Ute sold in Australia until 2016.

2008 Ford Ka

The Model T isn’t the only foreign-market car in the collection. This is the adorable first-generation Ka, a tiny hatchback sold in Europe from 1996 to 2008. In fact, this was the final first-gen Ka to roll off the production line, and it has fewer than 10 miles on the odometer, making it probably the most pristine Ka in existence. The Ka was a big success for Ford, and it even spawned a convertible called the StreetKa, which we’d love to see added to the collection in the future.

2003 Ford Model U Concept

Ford has called its upcoming Fathom electric truck a “Model T moment,” but this isn’t the first time the company has employed such language. The 2003 Model U concept was designed as a modern take on the Model T’s “people’s car” approach. It was a small pickup truck that could be transformed into an SUV via a retractable rear section. It also had a retractable canvas roof and exterior body panels made from a soy-based material. Under the hood lived a supercharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder hydrogen-combustion engine mated to an electrified automatic transmission. The Model U got a claimed 45 mpg and was loaded with features that weren’t yet common in 2003, from a head-up display to adaptive headlights and automatic emergency braking.

1999 Ford Bronco U260 Prototype

The Ford Bronco was killed off in 1996, but by 1999 there were already plans to bring the off-roader back. Designer Moray Callum led a team that proposed this next-generation Bronco, known under the codename U260. It was based on a Ranger platform, but never progressed much beyond this exterior-styling prototype. Ford would revisit the Bronco in 2004 with a concept that debuted at the Detroit auto show, which also lives in the Heritage Fleet, but we’d have to wait until 2021 to see the Bronco name return on a production car.

2005 Ford SYNus Concept

Love it or hate it, the SYNus is certainly one of the most unique-looking vehicles to ever wear the Blue Oval. While it looks like it should be pronounced like “sinus,” the name is actually meant to be said “sin-you-ehs,” combining “synthesis” and US, standing for “Urban Sanctuary.” The design looks like a bank vault on wheels, with thin windows, slab-sided bodywork, and even a wheel handle for the rear door. While it looks imposing in photos, the SYNus is actually quite small in person, only measuring 158 inches long. It was powered by a 134-hp 2.0-liter four-cylinder mated to a five-speed manual.

1995 Lincoln L2K Concept

These days, Lincoln only sells SUVs, but back in the ’90s, the luxury division considered building a two-door roadster. The L2K began as a proposal for a Mercury sports car, before Ford brass changed their mind. Built on a heavily modified chassis from a 1993 Mazda Miata, the L2K packed a 250-hp 3.4-liter V-8 engine and a four-speed automatic. The L2K was a drivable concept, and it reportedly completed around 100 laps of Saugus Speedway in Santa Clarita, California. It then debuted at the Los Angeles auto show and toured the show circuit before management scrapped the project. While there were reports that the L2K was scrapped, the slinky Lincoln clearly survived.

1963 Ford Cougar II Concept

This pointy concept from 1963 is actually based on a Shelby Cobra, eschewing the iconic curvaceous body for a wedge shape. Designed by Eugene Bordinat, Ford’s head of styling at the time, the Cougar II’s fastback fiberglass body looks sleek and modern, with a rich red paint job accented by chrome trim. The Cougar II also wore pop-up headlights, and improved aerodynamics meant it could allegedly hit 170 mph (10 more than a standard 260 V-8-powered Cobra). The Cougar II and a similar concept, the Bordinat Cobra, are on loan from the Detroit Historical Society, and the Ford Vault may include more vehicles on loan for rotating exhibits once it opens to the public.

2006 Ford Reflex Concept

Many of Ford’s concept cars feature experimental powertrains, and the Reflex is no exception. This futuristic-looking compact coupe was motivated by a diesel-electric hybrid engine with innovative-for-the-time lithium-ion batteries. Ford claims the Reflex could return 65 mpg, and with an electric motor on the rear axle providing all-wheel drive, 60 mph arrived in a claimed 7.0 seconds. Opening the rear-hinged butterfly doors reveals a cabin that looks inspired by athletic wear, with lightweight seats upholstered in mesh and rubber in the floor taken from Nike shoes. The Reflex also has a 2+1 layout, with a single “love seat” mounted behind the front passengers, along with an integrated child seat and a baby camera monitor mounted in the dash. Sadly, this mixture of sporty and practical never made it into production.

Le Mans-Winning Ford GT40s

We’ll close with a trio of vehicles that won’t be in the Vault beyond the next few days, but are too good to not include. These are the three Ford GT40 race cars that, somewhat controversially, crossed the finish line together to take the top three spots at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. The legendary finish saw the black No. 2 Shelby American car driven by Bruce McLaren take first place ahead of Ken Miles in the blue-and-red No. 2, who had been leading for much of the race’s final hours and had been asked to slow so that the three leading GT40s could finish together.

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Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.

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