SUPERCHARGED CORTINA GT
Andy Guile had always hankered after a Mk2 Cortina GT, and when he finally got one it was always the plan to supercharge it. But first, there was some pretty indepth restoration work to tackle…
Andy Guile always hankered after a Mk2 GT with a plan to supercharge it. But first, there was some in-depth restoration work to tackle….
It’s a question that rears its head time and time again: just why do we do what we do? What’s the appeal of these old motors that soak up so much of our time, money, blood, sweat and love? Wouldn’t it make more sense to spend your dough on the newest car you can — something with airbags, ISOFIX and ABS, something that’ll always start on the first turn of the key on a cold winter’s morning, something that doesn’t leave your hair smelling of fuel and the niggling voice in the back of your head chattering away about the encroachment of tinworm?
Obviously not. Life’s too short to be sensible and rational. But it’s sometimes hard to explain to people who don’t get why we love old Fords.
For some of us, the act of driving an old-school ride harks back to a time of sepia-tinted simplicity, when we had no fear of climate change, nose-diving economies or William Shatner’s musical career. For others, it’s a fondness for the cars that their parents owned, forging a strong familial tie between the present and the past. And for some, it’s an opportunity to tick a large life-goal box that’s been niggling away for decades, an itch begging to be scratched. It’s the latter that ultimately influenced the purchase of the Monaco Red GT you see here, as proud owner, Andy Guile explains: “I’d always wanted a Mk2 Cortina 1600GT two-door. A friend had one in 1980 and we went everywhere in it — I just couldn’t afford one on a young apprentice mechanic’s second-year wages of £22 a week!”
Tracking one
It wasn’t until 2014 that Andy finally found himself in a position to buy the GT of his dreams — and it wasn’t simply a case of picking one up off the forecourt and winding his way down Adventure Boulevard, like it most probably would have been back in 1980. No, there was a little work to do with this one…
Andy is the car’s eighth owner, and it had spent much of its life in northern England. Enjoying its early years in a town in Lancashire, the Cortina later went to Sheffield, then Leeds, by which time the decades were starting to catch up with it. A buyer in Ireland bought it from Leeds and took it over to the Emerald Isle, parked the car in a garage awaiting restoration, and there it stayed for six years. This was the point at which Andy was able to snap the GT up, bringing it back to the UK for that well-deserved spruce-up.
“I’d only seen photos of the car before it arrived on the transporter, and to be honest it was a lot worse than I thought,” he recalls with a grimace. “It did start and drive though — so I drove 10 yards into the garage and stripped it bare! Over the course of two days I reduced the Cortina to a pile of bits, cut out all the rotten panels, and sent the shell off to be blasted a week later. What returned was… well, not a lot.”
There then followed a solid nine months of cutting, welding and fixing near enough every panel; a few replacement parts were acquired from Ex-Pressed Steels Panels in Keighley, and some original panels were sourced from donors across the globe — the doors were found in Portugal, the bonnet was in Scotland, the bootlid in Yorkshire. Bolting the old suspension back in to create a rolling shell became necessary thanks to an impending house move, and then — after a year out from the project to focus on home renovations — the bodywork prep began, readying it for paint. Two months later it was all straight and complete, resplendent in its factory-original Monaco Red, the work all carried out by Andy in his garage.
Engine time
With the car looking more car-like, the time came to tackle the engine. “It was always the plan to supercharge it,” he says with a grin. “But to begin with I just wanted to get the car finished, so I built and installed a 1700 Crossflow to get it moving until I had time to develop the pulley layout and placement for the Roots-type supercharger I planned to use.”
In the meantime, Andy commissioned Colin at Clearflow Radiators in Darlington to make up a custom rad, using an original Lotus unit fitted with a Capri 2.8i core, and with everything bolted together and working perfectly, it was off to the MoT centre. And guess what? It flew through with no problems at all.
“I’m a member of the Mk2 Cortina Owners’ Club, and from the summer of 2017 I was able to use the GT to visit plenty of shows — some
“I SENT THE SHELL OFF TO BE BLASTED AND WHAT RETURNED WAS... WELL, NOT A LOT”
local, some a fair distance away,” Andy recalls. “The club’s national meeting involved a 500-mile round trip, which it completed with no trouble having only been back on the road for six weeks.”
After numerous adventures with the freshly rebuilt GT, and with winter drawing in, Andy was keen to get cracking on the supercharger conversion. “I endeavoured to keep the set-up looking stock — nice and tidy,” he assures us. “I had to fabricate all the belt pulley brackets; the pulleys themselves are from Jaguars, as I know a Jag breaker near me from when I restored a 1974 Daimler Double Six V12 in the 1990s — but that’s another story! The Mercedes supercharger is modified to fit onto an adaptor plate, and straight onto a Crossflow inlet manifold boosting at 4 psi. At this point, fuel supply became an issue with my choice of SU HS6 carb with a Maestro Turbo needle and jet, as once the engine was run in and I started to build the revs it would lose power at 5000 rpm. I found the charger was using fuel quicker than the pump could supply the carb, so I fitted a high-flow electric fuel pump which helped.” Unfortunately, an error in setting up the carb mixture soon saw the engine blowing up, which isn’t ideal, so the motor you see here was swapped in as a stronger option. It’s a 711M 1600 with forged pistons, and it’s using the DA cam from a Mk2 Escort automatic to beef up the mid-range torque.
Home improvements
This is all a work-in-progress, with new ideas for power, strength and reliability being formulated all the time. After many, many years of yearning for a GT, Andy’s finally been able to realise his dream. But he’s not prepared to simply consider the box ticked and treat it as some kind of ornament. This home-made pocket-rocket has work to do, and Andy’s going to ensure it works hard to deliver the thrills he craves.
It may not be a sensible or rational car, but life’s too short for that.