A SHOWROOM full of brand new Fords from the 1980s has been frozen in time and recently discovered – to reveal a rather sad story.
The garage which closed down 40 years ago has been stuck in a time-warp ever since retaining six of its original stock with virtually zero miles on the clock and all unregistered.
Auto Retro, a Youtube channel, has released full details of the sad story in their latest video.
The original owner of the garage in Ingolstadt in Germany died over 30 years ago, but to this day it has remained in the custodianship of his widow who kept the showroom as if new until she herself was moved into a care home in the last few years.
This explains why the cars and the showroom are relatively clean and dust-free, despite how long its doors have been closed to buyers.
Auto Stock was established during the 1960s and operated as a franchised Ford dealership – earning a good reputation in the city.
However the owner Joseph Stock faced challenges in competing with the hometown manufacturer of Audi.
Over the years the stock piled up and in the mid 80s Ford stopped their relationship with the garage, which became an independent dealer.
After Stock died in the 90s, his family inherited a collection of at least 300 cars, with approximately half being unused Fords.
Following his death, his widow decided to shutter the dealership, facing challenges in selling the remaining inventory of vehicles.
For reasons not fully known, Mrs Stock set aside seven cars for her grandchildren, and six of them still occupy the showroom to this day.
“The owner continued to be an independent car dealer until his death in 1994. He had 300 cars on site, including 150 new Ford cars left over stock from his dealership days” Auto Retro said about the find.
“The widow and her son closed the business and began to sell off the assets, as you can imagine those 60s and 70s Ford’s flew out the door faster than a Cosworth on an Autobahn,” they added.
“After the sale Mrs stock continued tending to the showroom, painting it up and making sure the legacy stayed alive. Some say it was her way of honouring her late husband and the dealership he built from the ground up.”
The Auto Retro team found the dealership via some old photos online. After some digging they discovered the images were from 2010, so they doubted that it even still existed.
Using Google Earth and many man hours they finally had a breakthrough finding the dealership and even seeing one of the cars, but the Google Earth images were taken in 2009 so they took the 1,000 mile trip to Germany to discover if it really still existed.
The rest of the incredible story has since been revealed in their follow up video below.
The value of the cars, with virtually zero mileage and in factory fresh condition, would most like run to the tens of thousands.