Here's The Full Story Behind Those Abandoned Zero-Mile Fords

Exactly two weeks ago, we covered a very interesting video showing an abandoned Ford dealership in the city of Ingolstadt, Germany, where a few brand-new 1980s Fords are sitting in fully original condition. That video made huge waves around the automotive society and many questions were asked. There’s now a follow-up clip from Auto Retro, which tries to answer most of them with additional information gathered from different sources. We also have exclusive content coming later today but more on that in a minute. First, let’s talk about the new details.

From this new video, we get to learn that the dealership was originally established around the middle of the 1960s and was the main dealer of the brand in Ingolstadt. Its founder, Joseph Stock, had a hard time keeping up with the competition in the city as Ingolstadt was the place where Audi was by far the most popular marque. Another problem was the fact that Ford wouldn’t take back unsold cars, leaving Auto Stock with tens of unsold vehicles from previous years.

Things got even worse around the middle of the 1980s when the automaker pulled the plug on its partnership with Mr. Stock. Stock became an independent dealer and when he died in 1994, he left more than 300 Fords from different eras with more than half of them being brand-new and never-registered cars. His widow and son decided to close the business and sell the remaining assets and as you would imagine, the older cars received huge attention. For example, a Ford Granada with 0 miles on the clocks was sold for around 10,000 Deutsche marks, which is believed to be around $9,350 today – a real bargain for every collector.

But that wasn’t everything. There was also a full store of parts within the dealership mostly full of brand new body panels for 60s and 70s European specification Fords. A total of seven of the new cars, in turn, were set aside by Stock’s widow for their grandchildren. These were the cars featured in the previous video – three Sierras, an Escort, an Orion, and two Fiestas. Six of those cars are still sitting in the showroom as one was sold more than 20 years ago. Mrs. Stock also kept the dealership clean as a way of honoring her husband and his professional achievement after building the dealership from the ground up. She even let visitors inside but some of them started stealing parts and she decided to lock the showroom for good. 

That’s obviously not the full story – there are many more interesting details and we have an exclusive chat with Darren, the guy behind the Auto Retro channel on YouTube, who unearthed the abandoned Ford showroom, scheduled for later today. Join us at 5:00 PM EDT on our live podcast where we will talk more about the secrets of the inactive Ford dealership from Ingolstadt.

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