7:42 am, October 20, 2023
A timewarp car dealership – still stocked with unregistered classic 1980s Ford models – has been discovered.
Classic car enthusiasts from the Auto Retro YouTube channel found pictures of the abandoned Ford dealership online and wanted to know if it still existed.
The presenters set off on a 1,000-mile road trip to see if the showroom was still in existence in Germany.
When they arrived, they found the car dealership still stocked with unregistered Fords including three Sierras, including an estate, a Fiesta S MKII, an Escort 1.1 Laser MKIII, and a Ford Orion 1.6 D.
The cars are in immaculate condition and, up until recently, were even still being cleaned. In the video, published this week, the team take a close look at the car and the showroom.
The YouTubers discovered that the business was previously a large Ford dealer that stocked around 300 cars – but it closed in the mid-’80s.
Writing on YouTube, Auto Retro said: ‘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 from his dealership days. In 1995, the family who owned all the buildings, sold off the majority of his cars including most of the new ones.
‘These unsold cars you see here were moved into the showroom, which was then left as a memorial to the owner. The widow kept the building maintained, clean and tidy, and presumably the cars cleaned.’
The Auto Retro presenters explain in the video that they found the pictures online two years ago, which were dated from 2010, and were inspired to make the trip.
‘They showed an old Ford dealership in Germany, but no one knew where it was,’ explained the Auto Retro team in the video, which has had more than 200,000 views.
‘Inside, it still held an abandoned stock of brand-new, ’80s Fords. After doing some digging, we found the pictures were actually taken in 2010, so we weren’t sure if the cars were even there. So we got to work tracking the place down.
‘After a lot of work, and after almost giving up, we had a breakthrough and found the dealer.’
The team located the site on Google Earth and decided to head there to see if it still existed. When they arrived, they were treated to the collection of classic ’80s cars that they could only view through the windows.
You can watch the full video at the top of this post.
