TOWIE – THE ONLY WAY IS EXCELLENT
David Jackson has made a habit of restoring cars to perfection. This Mk2 Ford Cortina Lotus is the latest in a string of prize-winners to emerge from his single garage, and there surely can't be another quite like it.
David Jackson is now 71 years old, and he comes from a family of engineers. It took him a while to find his calling though, working first in insurance after leaving school before starting in the motor trade working as a panel beater for Ford main dealer J P Hensmans of Brentwood. After that he started his own business, Jackson Coachworks, later moving into management with another main dealer for several years before becoming an insurance assessor for an independent company.
I mention all this here because otherwise you may wonder how a self- employed pest control operative could turn out cars as perfect as this. Pest control operative? Yes, because having served his time in the motor trade, David had decided a change of direction was called for and gone to college to qualify in that profession. At the same time he had decided to 'get back on the tools' and restore some vehicles of the types he had worked on back in the day – Minis, Imps, Cortinas and the like.
Clearly, it is a Cortina that is our focus today. And not just any Cortina, but the eternally desirable Cortina Lotus. This legend came about because in the early 1960s Ford wanted to homologate 1000 saloons for Group 2 racing, and Lotus was developing a twin- cam version of the Ford Kent engine. A deal was struck between the two companies and two- door Mk1 Cortina bodyshells were sent to Lotus, who then carried out extensive modifications that went beyond the twin- cam engine to include a close ratio gearbox, extensive suspension modifications, uprated brakes, lightweight panels and casings plus a revised interior.
The Cortina Lotus (or Lotus Cortina, depending on whether you are a Ford or a Lotus man!) was duly homologated in 1963, and went on to become ferociously competitive on track. All the customer cars were painted white with a green flash, though Ford did paint some red for their racing endeavours and one buyer was superstitious about green and persuaded the company to paint his with a dark blue flash instead.
A total of 3306 examples were built before the baton passed to the Mk2 in 1967. This was to be a different animal. Instead of being finished by Lotus, it was built on the Ford production lines at Dagenham and the modifications were far less extensive. Essentially it was a Mk2 Cortina GT with the Lotus engine and revised suspension. This time it was available in a range of 14 colours, but without the distinctive side stripe of the Mk1. That made it harder to sell, so most cars had the flash added by dealers. Although it was less extensively modified than the Mk1 had been, the Mk2 was more reliable and still did well in competition. It lasted until 1970, and was replaced by the Escort Twin Cam after 4093 had been built.
David's car is one of those 4093 Mk2s. 'Apparently there are more replicas around than genuine cars these days,' he says. 'This is a genuine Cortina Lotus, even though it says only Cortina on the logbook. Back in the day they would put whatever you told them on the logbook, which is why so many are listed as a Lotus, but mine is down as a Cortina. I did get onto Club Lotus to verify its authenticity, so I know it is genuine. The chassis number is one tell-tale, but there are a number of little details that set the Lotuses apart and I studied them all. You have to do that to get it right, and even then with cars that are considered special like the Mini Coopers and the Cortina Lotus, you still get a lot of rivet counters at shows who come along and tell you what you have done wrong.
'The problem is that often they are the ones who are wrong, and that can be very frustrating after you have put a lot of time into researching the details thoroughly. I had
one guy look at this car when it was finished and he wanted to know where the parcel shelf on the driver's side was, but a Lotus shouldn't have one. The thing is that often these people had a car like this in the past, but either their memories are at fault or the car they owned had been modified, so they think that is what they should be like. That can be a bit irritating.'
David, though, could never afford a Cortina Lotus when he was younger. He started off with a Mini van in Willow Green, and he did in fact later restore a 1962 example just like it – that car is now with a collector in Thailand. He has also restored a 1966 Mini Cooper, a Singer Chamois and more, all of them show winners
and all of them sold on after being finished.
'I do the work as a hobby,' explains David, 'so when a car is finished, I then have to sell it to get the money and the space to start the next one. People often ask how I can bear to sell them after putting in so much work, but I got used to that when I was doing it as a business – you'd finish a car to the best of your abilities, and then the owner would come along and collect it at the end of the day. It is exactly the same now in my mind, I am effectively giving a car back to its owner.
'And I get my pleasure from rebuilding the cars, not driving them. Once they are in the best possible condition, if I drove it and it got a chip in the paint or something, then it would no longer be as good as it was. I did grow up with these cars and so there is a degree of nostalgia to it, but it is not about reliving the experience as it was when I drove them; I get my pleasure from making a car as perfect as I can. It used to be that when a car was finished I would see things that I wish I'd done differently, but now I prepare so thoroughly that this doesn't happen. Perhaps this comes from my background on coachworks, but I've upset a lot of people by saying that patina is a word used by people who can't spray!'
It was David's brother who put him onto this particular Cortina Lotus. Remarkably it was located a mere four miles away from David's house, and he was looking for a new project at the time. Initially though, he said he wasn't interested as it was a Mk2 and not a Mk1. However, after further consideration he decided that the Mk2 is still a fairly special car and that he could wait for ever and still not get a Mk1, so he went to have a look. It was dismantled and a restoration had been started, but they were still asking for £10,000. Fortunately it did also come with a number of replacement panels, but at that price it should have done!
'The car was essentially complete, but somebody had pinched the badges,' recalls David. 'That is the only thing which marked the finished car down in any way, because I had to fit reproduction badges. They are very nice, but come in a brighter orange-yellow rather than the original Primrose. They are nicer to look at, but you can tell right away that they are repros. I do know somebody who has two original badges, but I couldn't get them off him.'
As for the state of the car itself, David says: 'I tend not to worry about rust, because you are going to cut that out and get rid of it. You can always remake any metalwork that you need. This car had taken a knock and the front end was no longer square, which I think was why the previous restoration had ground to a halt because they didn't know how to proceed. But if you measure
it all up, you can then figure out what has happened and how to go about rectifying it. Usually the best way forward when a car is out of shape is to pull the damage back out before you take anything off, because then everything pulls everything else back with it. Once you have cut the front end off, you then have to straighten one bit at a time.
'That's what I was faced with. Fortunately they had collected all the major parts – the wings are now over £1000 each, and they had a couple of them. I wouldn't do one again because I know how difficult some of the stuff is to source, and what I would have to pay! It is easier on something like a Mini because you can get panels made on the original presses from British Motor Heritage. Ford is not so well catered to, I think because the original presses were not saved.
'I have portable power rams rather than full- on bodyshop pulling equipment, but I did everything in my single garage the same way as they used to do things in the old days, using a tape measure to make sure both sides are the same length and everything is square. You have to get one chassis rail the right length, and then square the other one up from that. It is all about squaring things up in bodywork.'
This car was still in its original Dragoon Red paint, although someone had added a gold stripe at some point in the past. Not surprisingly, David painted it the original red, without the embellishment of a stripe. 'I think the hardest thing in the word is to put a car back to exactly how it came from the factory,' he says. 'Anyone can modify a car, put something like flared wings on which cover up a multitude of sins, but to get it perfectly original is the real challenge. For example, the front wheelarch flanges were flattened at the factory to allow turning space for bigger wheels. This flattening goes from the 10 o'clock to the 2 o'clock positions. I welded the NOS inner wings to my car, but made this change to the outer wing flanges before they were fitted. People who know what they are talking about will feel around the arch to see if it has been done properly. They won't be disappointed with this one.'
Of course, there were many
skills needed besides bodywork to get this car looking so perfect. Fortunately, as a bodywork specialist David also has plenty of experience with interior trimming. 'I was lucky that when I was working for the Ford main dealer, we had a lot of genuine experts in and learnt from them,' he relates. 'I never forgot these skills because I am dyslexic, and people who are dyslexic usually find that their minds work better with pictures than with words. As a result when you are shown something it tends to stick, but when people tell you something then it often doesn't. That's why school can be so difficult; it is something that a lot of people don't understand.'
David enlisted more in the way of help on the mechanical side. He did have the engine rebuilt professionally, but wasn't too happy with the standard of their work. Then a friend of his, Kim Clark who is extremely clever and builds Aston Martin race engines, pointed out that one of the teeth on the exhaust cam had a chip. As Kim explained, if that went and the chain slipped, it would destroy the engine. So he very kindly sorted the engine properly, while other components were sent out: the carburettors to one expert, the rear axle to another – everything was gone over properly by people who knew what they were doing.
To give you an example of the lengths David went to in order to get everything spot on, one of the wheels that came with the car was buckled, and was actually a Mk1 wheel anyway. So he found and bought a rusty Mk2 Cortina Lotus wheel for £250, then spent two weeks cleaning, prepping and painting it. When he had the tyres fitted, he told the fitter that he didn't want any weights on the wheels to spoil the look. The fitter said that they could stick weights to the inside, but suggested he drive it down the road first and see what it was like.
'That was one of the only times I drove it,' recalls David, 'and you know what? There was absolutely no wobble whatsoever. When I sold it, I had only put around 10 miles on the clock going to and from the MoT station. I'm fine with that because the important thing for me is that the car turned out perfectly. When I was at school, my art master said that no artist is ever truly satisfied when a job is finished. I understand that impulse to constantly re- examine and improve, but you can always find something that could be done differently or better if you look hard enough so I don't get caught up in that game anymore. However, I used to find myself going out to the garage just to look at the Cortina and thinking: I can't believe I did that. And that is good enough for me.'