1975-2005

The site of the Ford's Amsterdam assembly plant still remains. After the assembly stopped in December 1981, Ford immediately started to clean out the buildings as it was their intention to sell the premises. But selling the site became very difficult as the Amsterdam Harbour authorities were not very cooperative. For a short period the former assembly plant was rented to Blokker who used it as a temporary warehouse because their own warehouse was destroyed in a fire. For a period of almost 10 years the site stood empty. Finally in 1990 Ford reached an agreement with the harbour authorities to sell back the site to the city of Amsterdam. The harbour authorities ran an extensive enviromentally driven demolition program to clean the site. The old historic main assembly building which contained a lot of asbestos was unfortunately completely demolited. Only the latest buildings built in 1974 and the old partswarehouse built in 1957 remained for years. In 2005 the new user of the site also demolited the old partswarehouse building. Today the site is in use as a coal bulk terminal. In the seventies Ford had an option on their neighbours coalterminal site for future extensions of the plant. But irronically it happened just the other way around. Last year I came in contact with Kees, another Dutch Ford Transcontinental fan living near to Amsterdam who told me that he had a friend who was working at the bulk terminal. This guy managed to arrange a once-only visit for us to the remains of the site. Well we did it in style. We went there with Kees his Transcontinental which is one of the very first built in 1975. Exactly 30 years after its assembly it went back into the remains of the former assembly factory. In one of the offices inside one of the buildings we even found some air pictures from the site as it was in operation during the seventies and a picture of the demolution of the site in the late eighties and early neighties. We were allowed to make copies of the pictures and you can find them on this site. Latest information is that OBA has decided that the they keep the former parts warehouse. They recently closed the west side of this building as you can see on the last two airpictures which were recently taken by Rob van Rijn (Dutch Mustang).  Click on the thumbs to enlarge these pictures.