The original buyer bought the car in a Ford Racing Division parking lot sale before they closed the doors in November 1970 and he owned the car for only a few months.
The original owner said that he had to wait for them to install the driver's side rear view mirror before he could drive it away.
The process of the resale of Ford-owned used vehicles (marketing, test mule, executive lease) in the Dearborn area is something I'm very familiar with, first and second hand. Something highly modified was generally assigned to be crushed (there are of course stories about theft, but that would be abnormal.) The remainder would be slated for resale, for obvious financial reasons. Ford has their fair share of lawyers, and good corporate governance would require that laws and statutes are followed. If the case of resale, these vehicles would be processed and moved to the employee resale lot. This lot physically moved periodically - it was merely a fenced in location with a triple-wide trailer. There was automatic pricing based on MSRP and mileage. The pricing was pretty much a no-brainer (a good deal). When you found a car or truck that you wanted to buy, you would head to the trailer and go through the initial paperwork. You would NOT drive away with a car, period. There were no financial transactions made at the lot, period. Part of the paperwork was for you to select the dealer that you wanted to work through. If it was a Cougar, you had to use an L-M dealer. The car would be transported to that dealer, and you would go to that dealer to pick it up. This is where you would get the car and do the title work, and pay for the vehicle. Dealers are equipped for these things. I asked the used car sales guy, and he confirmed that the dealer would get a set amount from Ford for handling the paperwork.
The Ford Racing division leaders, at the time your car was sold, were co-located at the Kar Kraft building on Haggerty Street. This is the building that they were locked out of when Ford pulled funding. There is insufficient space in this location for the B-lot.
The titles for these company owned vehicles would not follow the car, they were managed in a totally different office and business unit, making the story that the original owner told you as most likely an embellishment of what actually happened.
The other nuance is that the name "employee resale lot" was not a misnomer - only Ford employees could purchase these vehicles. There was also a stipulation that they could not resell for at least one calendar year, probably to prevent used car flipping. The State of Michigan had set up family to family vehicle sales to not be subject to sales tax, so my brother who worked there would buy a car and sell to a family member, then a year later transfer the title at no fee. The last car I bought there was in 1999, and by 2010 or so Ford had eliminated this employee benefit and directed all used vehicles to a local auction house.
Was the second owner (after Ford) a Ford employee?
My guess is that the owner was a Ford employee, or he had a relative that was. Perhaps they went to the Kar Kraft building and saw the vehicle, getting wind of it being about to be released for resale. Then the Ford employee would go to the B-lot trailer with a box of donuts, and tell them to call him as soon as that vehicle showed up, so he can be the first on the list to buy it. The mirror repair could have been done between seeing the car and the B-lot, or that could have been done at the dealer. My guess is that it would have gone to the garage at the back of the WHQ (on Garage Rd believe it or not) where most of the Ford owned vehicle maintenance was done.
