The GM Media Archives–Past and Future

Glimpses of the Past and Visions of the Future

General Motors Media Archive Fact Sheet

Considered one of America's most impressive and significant private resources, the GM Media Archive is thought to be the most comprehensive privately held automobile archive in the world.

The oldest images date from the 1860s, when Opel (one of GM's global divisions) was a sewing machine manufacturer. The newest were shot last week. Altogether, the archive houses more than six million photographic images, 5,000 motion picture films, and 20,000 videotape masters.

The GM Media Archive was established in 1993 sparked by an exploding demand for memorabilia and trademark licensing content, and a desire at the executive level to better manage and preserve GM's media assets. Staffed by a diverse group of archivists, librarians, digital technicians, automobile historians and photography professionals, the GM Media Archive digitizes and catalogs the collection to help provide reference services to GM and external clients.

Scope of the Collection
General Motors has been producing automobiles and trucks for almost a hundred years, and nearly every model GM has created can be found in the Archive. The collection not only has GM's North American production vehicles, but also includes extensive assets from the overseas divisions, such as Opel, Vauxhall, Saab, and Holden.

While trucks and automobiles make up the vast majority of the collection, other subjects are well represented, such as GM executives, assemblers, designers, auto shows, motor sports, trains, planes, war production, special events, fashions, celebrities, dealerships and factories. In short, the collection closely mirrors the development and progression of the human experience in the twentieth century.

Services
Over the years, the GM Media Archive staff have researched and provided thousands of images and video for everything from corporate presentations to books, television documentaries, museum and trade show exhibits, as well as news and magazine stories. Due to the vast quantities of material in the GM Media Archive, there are countless numbers of assets that have never been seen before by the public and many have been out of circulation since their creation. For a fee, the archivists research a given topic within the collection, obtain corporate and divisional permission and arrange for copyright licensing of GM's assets to ensure material is protected for use on a given project.

In addition, the GM Media Archive team of product experts is able to provide accurate and detailed descriptions of these assets. Unlike a stock house, information about why an asset was created and who photographed it can often be provided.