“There’s a contradiction to preservation,” says Richard Bacchus, certificate officer at the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (BMIHT).
“Our role is utilising archive materials to produce a product that funds the preservation of these items, but the downside is that the more you use the material, the more it degrades.”
Stretching back to Wolseley records from 1901, the BMIHT is the custodian of build records, business materials and photographs from the British Motor Corporation, British Leyland and their component marques, plus Aston Martin.
Housed in the British Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire, members of the BMIHT team spend most of their time fulfilling private information requests in the form of heritage certificates, but also deal with government and customs agencies worldwide.
Much of the archive is in the form of hand-written ledgers or even more fragile microfilm, but a digitisation drive has led to the most frequently accessed materials being preserved for posterity.