From The Clash’s Janie Jones to memories of Uncle Ron’s white Ford Cortina, a nostalgic journey through Britain’s favourite family car. Ten fascinating facts about the Cortina, its remarkable history, racing success and the car that defined a generation.
by Chris Harris
I’ve just written a blog about Janie Jones, a song by The Clash with the classic line, “but he’s just like everyone, he’s got a Ford Cortina that just won’t run without fuel…fill it up Jacko!” It got me thinking of Uncle Ron and his Cortina!
There was a time when Britain was awash with Ford Cortinas. They were everywhere. Parked outside suburban semis, thundering along the M1, carrying salesmen to appointments and taking families to windswept seaside resorts with three children arguing in the back and a boot full of luggage. I remember the late Seventies and Uncle Ron proudly driving us around in a white saloon version in Purley when we used to go up and visit.
My sister briefly had a later estate model around about 1985, it didn’t last long as a pint of milk exploded in the front and she was never able to get rid of the smell!
The Cortina was never intended to be particularly glamorous. That was rather the point. It was affordable, practical, reasonably comfortable and, crucially, just desirable enough to make its owner feel that life was moving in the right direction.
Introduced in 1962 and discontinued in 1982, the Cortina became one of Britain’s defining cars. Developed by Ford of Britain and built principally at Dagenham, Essex, it was aimed squarely at the ordinary family motorist, although fleet buyers and company-car drivers would become an enormously important market. Remember the 2010 film, Made in Dagenham? although the story took place at Ford Dagenham, much of the factory filming used the disused Hoover factory in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales!
Five generations appeared over its twenty-year life, and the Cortina repeatedly topped Britain’s sales charts.
But behind this apparently unremarkable family saloon lies a surprisingly colourful history.
Here are ten things every motoring enthusiast should know about the Ford Cortina.
Ten fascinating facts about the Ford Cortina
1. It was nearly called the Archbishop
Everything starts somewhere and evolves, as did the name. Before Ford settled on Cortina, the project had the distinctly ecclesiastical codename Archbishop. The eventual name came from Cortina d’Ampezzo, the fashionable Italian ski resort. Talk about aspiring and punching above your weight, a very unrealistic and glamorous association for a car destined to spend much of its life outside British council houses and suburban semis!
2. The original Cortina cost just £573
When it appeared in 1962, the basic two-door Cortina 1200 cost £573. Ford had ruthlessly engineered the car to be inexpensive to manufacture and run. And if you wanted a heater? That was an optional extra costing £15.10. More than a packet of fags in todays money. Presumably warm feet were considered an extravagance, well winter’s were colder then.
3. It was Britain’s best-selling car for ten years
During its twenty-year production run, the Cortina topped the British sales charts on ten occasions. The Beatles of the car industry, well, without the talent and panache to be fair. It finished second another eight times and third in the remaining two. In 1979 alone, nearly 194,000 were sold in Britain. Few cars have ever dominated the national market quite so comprehensively. But with competition from British Leyland, British Layabouts my Latin teacher used to refer to BL as, maybe that was not too surprising.
4. Formula One legend Jim Clark raced one
The Lotus Cortina, introduced in 1963, transformed Ford’s family runabout into a genuine racing machine. With its 1.6-litre twin-cam engine, lightweight panels and distinctive green stripes, it became a touring-car legend.
Jim Clark, twice Formula One World Champion, famously raced them, often cornering so hard that one front wheel lifted clean off the ground. It was an extraordinary advertisement for a car your local bank manager might also have driven, although one rather suspects he drove home from the race in an Aston Martin.
5. The Japanese Cortina was deliberately squeezed
One of the strangest episodes in Cortina history involved exports to Japan. Japanese taxation rules placed cars into categories partly determined by body width. Certain Mk3 Cortinas were fractionally too wide, so Ford actually compressed their bodyshells in a special fixture to bring them within the required limits. A modest solution to a problem of just a few millimetres, long before the days of tariff wars.
6. Some Cortinas had enormous engines
British Cortinas were generally modestly powered, but overseas customers enjoyed rather more adventurous machinery. South African buyers could purchase a 3.0-litre V6 Cortina, while Australian versions were offered with straight-six engines as large as 4.1 litres.
7. It helped conquer one of the world’s toughest rallies
The Cortina was far more than a shopping and commuting machine. Competition versions won major international events, including the East African Safari Rally and the RAC Rally. The contrast was wonderful: a car designed for the ordinary British family proving capable of surviving some of the world’s most punishing roads. But another fact that explains the longevity of the Cortina.
8. The Mk3 borrowed its curves from America
The 1970 Mk3 Cortina introduced dramatically different styling, with its sweeping waistline and distinctive Coke-bottle shape. It reflected American design influences at a time when Ford wanted its European cars to look more exciting. Compared with the rather sensible Mk2, the Mk3 looked positively flamboyant. It also shared its underlying platform with the German Ford Taunus, an early example of Ford bringing its European operations closer together.
9. The Mk5 wasn’t officially called the Mk5
Although virtually everyone calls the final Cortina the Mk5, Ford originally marketed it as the Cortina 80 when it appeared in 1979. It was effectively a heavily revised Mk4 rather than an entirely new car, with changes to the bodywork, windows, lighting and engines. The public, however, preferred Mk5, and the name stuck.
10. More than 4.3 million were made — and the last one was a Crusader
The Cortina’s final chapter came on 22 July 1982, when the last British-built example, a silver Cortina Crusader, left the Dagenham production line. Across its twenty-year career, more than 4.3 million Cortinas had been produced. Its replacement was the radically styled Ford Sierra, whose aerodynamic appearance was a world away from the Cortina’s traditional three-box silhouette. For some motorists, it was a leap into the future. For others, it was the moment Ford lost the plot.
The car that defined a generation
The remarkable thing about the Ford Cortina is that it was never really supposed to be remarkable. It was a car for people getting on with their lives. For travelling salesmen, families heading to Cornwall, police officers, taxi drivers and middle managers who had finally earned the right to something a little better than an Escort!
There were faster cars, more beautiful cars and certainly more sophisticated cars. But few became so completely embedded in British everyday life. Today, a surviving Cortina turns heads in a way that would have seemed absurd forty or fifty years ago. Once they were everywhere. Now, spotting one on the road is like unexpectedly encountering a little piece of your childhood and Uncle Ron!
