Reply to "How do I find out the history of my car"

It is more likely that you will find records at one of the Ford "sub-contractors". Someone like Strope who did work on "fixing" some of the problems on the early cars in Southern California.
What you guys are looking for are the invoices from Ford to the dealers.
Ask Lois Eminger. She doesn't have them but may be able to put you on to someone who does. She's retired quite awhile now so hurry if you want to talk to her.
There is or was a way to do a DMV search, state by state. You had to supply a serial number configuration and search all.
Since then California has put in an anti-staulking privacy act which eliminates a search from DMV records in California.
I had one of these reports previously done for SAAC. It had reports from 30 something states.
The others states were not obtainable.
Of course this also only helped for registered cars. It won't necessarily even find non-registered, titled cars.
I'll see if my sources have dried up. If they haven't I'll post the information I can find.

Unfortunately it was over 10 years since that search was done (maybe 15 even). Since the Freedom of Information Act, one needs essentially a court order to do a search. Sorry I did try, NO GOOD.