1965 Ford Cortina MK1 'Lotus Tribute' 2 Door Sedan

Description

The Cortina was a mid-sized family car launched in 1962, designed to fill a gap between the smaller Anglia and executive Zephyr/Zodiac models. It was a replacement for the Consul which had used a four-cylinder engine in what was essentially a Zephyr body, which explains why the Cortina was first sold as the Ford Consul Cortina. With development dating back to the late 1950s, it was named for the host town of the 1956 Winter Olympics, the Italian resort Cortina di Ampezzo: the idea was to stress two aspects of the Cortina, its glamour and intended international appeal; the ‘Consul’ descriptor soon vanished backwards into history!  The Cortina’s styling represented a successful marriage of the best American and European styling trends, with simple glasshouse, neat chrome grille and vestigial rear fins atop the signature Ford round tail lights. With its stiff, lightweight monocoque body shell, ample cabin space and excellent handling, the Cortina could obviously handle greater power and first the GT and then the Lotus Cortina high performance variants followed; so successful was the latter that it spelt the end of the Jaguar Mark 2 3.8’s dominance in tintop racing. While the Lotus Cortina (initially known as the Ford Cortina Lotus) was never sold in Australia, the GT was. Indeed, Cortina GTs won the Bathurst 500-mile race outright in 1963 and 1964 and in 1965 the special Cortina GT500 developed by racing guru Harry Firth claimed a third successive win.