Want 200 old Fords? This auction is for you...

Bonhams is the auction house chosen to sell the collection, which since 1997 has been housed in a museum outside Amsterdam. Until it closed at the end of 2016, the Den Hartogh Ford Museum was billed as the world’s largest single-marque Ford collection, big enough to put even the Ford Museum in Detroit in the shade.

But we’re not talking GT40s and Lotus Cortinas here. Piet den Hartogh’s passion since buying his first Ford in 1956 has always been for the early Fords, in all their multitude of variations. Many of them are commercial-based to reflect the Den Hartogh family business as a transport and logistics company – using (what else?) Ford trucks.

On the look-out for a Model A, B, C, N, R, S… or the rather  more well known Model T? This is the auction for you. The collection has no fewer than 40 Model Ts, all said to be in drivable condition and, like all the vehicles in the auction, to be sold at no reserve.

The vehicles Bonhams will be selling at the museum on June 23^rd range from the oldest, a 1903 Model A Open Tourer, to the youngest from the late 1940s, the Woody station wagon. Many of the other great Ford nameplates are there aplenty too – Roadsters, Runabouts, Open Tourers, Doctor’s Coupes, Town Cars, Cabrios, Tudor Sedans and Phaetons – as well as a large sprinkling of Lincolns, including  a 12-cylinder model used in Al Capone movies.

The commercial and special vehicles promise to get blue oval fans just as excited. It’s a remarkable collection: from Ford fire trucks to US postal vans, popcorn and ice cream trucks to 1930s Ford campervans, tankers to ambulances, police cars to buses big and small, hearses to taxis – and yes even a snowmobile as used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

For 20 years it all came together in an amazing Ford-only museum in the town of Hillegom just outside Amsterdam, but  now with the museum’s closure – the Den Hartogh family say there’s no one with Piet’s passion to take it on –  the collection will inevitably be broken up.

For Bonhams  head of motoring Rupert Banner, the all-day sale on 23 June represents an “extraordinary opportunity.” He adds: “The Den Hartogh collection is legendary throughout Europe, and has been a pilgrimage for Ford aficionados for many years. Every vehicle must be sold and each lot is offered without reserve, meaning everyone will be able to bid for their own piece of Ford history".