Merchandising Guides & Image Hosting

[smokuspollutus]

Figured I would post a link to the 1979-1988 Merchandising Guides that I have digitized over the past several years. I think this age range is going to be coming into its stride over the next decade as Gen X'ers and millennials start to become the larger share of the antique auto owner demographic.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smokuspollutus/collections/72157722718652004/

These guides are really high quality stuff that the marque must have spent serious bucks on producing and distributing to its formerly vast dealer network. So if you're wondering what the actual name of your paint is, what options your car has, what was available in a given year, pricing, detailed technical specifications, or what have you-this is a great resource. They did a great job putting them together but shouldn't be considered a 100% bible-these books were of course printed before the model year began and I have noticed the odd inconsistency between book vs actual production.

I have digitized these to a fairly high quality. Some of them are a pain because of the way they're bound or printed on an oddball size of paper. I do not have an archival scanner so they're not mega huge photos. But they'll more than get the job done for our purposes.

Flickr has proven to be an excellent image hosting site for me. I was really looking for something that could be depended on long term to archive images. I pay a yearly subscription to have the full size files visible to all those interested. Unfortunately, about a year ago a friend alerted me to a social media page ripping the images and putting them behind a paywall for paid "subscribers" to access. That really disappointed me as I acquired these books at my own cost and they've been mine for a long time. The digitization process is very time consuming for me, with each book taking a several hours at least to get completed, put together, tagged, posted, etc. I did this so people could have public access, not for someone to scalp. So, I had to watermark them, but did my best to make it as non intrusive as possible, while keeping scalpers away & informing the random guy on the internet where the free files could be found. 

The 1970's-early 1990's is my main range of interest, and I have a couple more years on the front and back of that still remaining to scan. I'll upload them as I do.

Enjoy!