Clark fell in love with his instant tin-top hit

Jim Clark was an important part of the Ford Lotus Cortina’s development. He was keen from the early stages of the project, the keys to which were the work on the twin-cam 1600cc engine done by Lotus boss Colin Chapman and Harry Mundy, and suspension changes over the basic Cortina.

Clark first drove a Cortina with a 140bhp race engine in October 1962 and was impressed: “It really surprised me and gave me just about as much of a thrill as a Formula 1 car. On the way to Snetterton for the trials I thought the acceleration was out of this world for a family saloon.

“On the circuit for the first time I found the handling a bit odd so we experimented with tyre pressures and shock absorbers to sort things out.”

At a subsequent test at Silverstone, he and Chapman made real progress. “The road was dry and it was here that I realised just how good the roadholding really was,” reckoned Clark in his book Jim Clark – At the wheel.

By the end of that test, the Lotus Cortina was lapping close to the existing saloon lap record, held by a 3.8-litre Jaguar and Clark reckoned they had “quite a bit up our sleeve”.

He then raced the car at Snetterton at the end of 1963, winning his class and finishing second overall to Jack Brabham’s Ford Galaxie. “This proved to be a real laugh,” wrote Clark. “I kept finding the inside front wheel lifting off the ground. This set me thinking, so I started going closer and closer to the semicircular rubber tyres which mark the inside of the bends. Eventually I found that I could tricycle the corner with the front wheel over the tyres on the inside.

“I again drove the car at Oulton Park in practice and here I had another odd experience. I found that if I went into Cascades hard enough both inside wheels would come off the ground, but this was a very hairy thing and not to be recommended if you wanted to stay on the road in one piece.

“I had a lot of fun on these occasions. It was a great relief to find that I could still enjoy light-hearted dicing after the tremendous strain of the grand prix battles which had won me the championship.”