SPA CLASSIC
The Cortina wasn’t meant to be a rally car, but with some lateral thinking, Boreham’s engineers turned the GT into a multiple winner. Here’s how.
The infamous Spa Francorchamps race circuit in Belgium gets overrun with over 100 stunning, race-ready classic Fords, for the annual celebration of historic motor racing.
As everyone knows, the Cortina eventually became a great race and rally car — but the miracle is that it became competent in motorsport at all. Nothing that Ford’s engineers built into the car made it remotely promising at first and it was only a combination of Boreham’s expertise, and Keith Duckworth’s engine genius, which made its motorsport success possible.
The story really began in mid-1962, when Ford was running its motorsport programme out of the old Lincoln Cars building in Brentford, using Anglia 105Es (too small and underpowered) or Zephyrs (too big and heavy). Fortunately, a nucleus of forward-thinking mechanics and engineers — Bill Meade and Mick Jones among them — joined Ford Motorsport at this time, and along with team coordinator Bill Barnett and manager Syd Henson (and later Alan Platt) they would make all the difference to the team’s prospects, and the move to a brand-new workshop at Boreham cemented those prospects.
First steps
The first works Cortina to go rallying was Jeff Uren’s highly-tuned 1200 (TOO 528), in the 1962 RAC Rally, though because the engineers and mechanics knew virtually nothing about the design, that car hit all manner of problems, which included losing its entire exhaust system at one time. However, team leader Henry Taylor then started the 1963 Monte, using the same 1200, and was rewarded with second in class. This car, incidentally, was prepared at Lincoln Cars, and was definitely subordinate to the works Anglia 105Es of the period.
Things then became more serious in the spring. Immediately after the GT was introduced in March 1963, cars were sent to tackle the East African Safari — but every one of them retired. On the Tulip, which followed, Pat Moss struggled against unfavourable handicaps, so it wasn’t until May, and the hot, rough and dusty Acropolis, that the GTs made a show.
Before the event, sceptics assumed that the Cortina was too flimsy to withstand fast rough-road events, and that it would crumple under the strain: rally cars did not have stiff roll cages in those days, so extra strength had to come from beefing up the under-frame and the chassis rails. They were soon proved wrong, though, and everyone was amazed to see Henry Taylor and Pat Moss finish fourth and sixth, especially as they were only beaten by MercedesBenz and Volvo saloons. It was a great performance, which made all the private owners jealous — and puzzled. Boreham’s mechanics, on the other hand, were not. They had learned how to stiffen up the shell.
In the meantime team manager, Syd Henson’s assistant, Bill Barnett, had homologated many extra items, and others were added in the next two years. Extra fuel tanks, wide-rimmed wheels, and alternative gear ratios were all approved, but even after reading FIA Appendix J regulations, no-one outside Ford could ever understand how an engine with twin dual-choke Weber carburettors came to be listed in the Group 1 showroom category when 5000 units were supposed to have been made! It was no wonder the cars were suddenly competitive, for these Weber-equipped engines developed around 110 bhp, compared with the 78 bhp of the standard car.
Faster, stronger
After mid-1963, when Bo Ljungfeldt’s Swedish-registered car finished third overall in the Midnight Sun Rally, and when Henry
Taylor’s car finished third on the Alpine, it was suddenly clear that the Cortina had become a rugged and formidable machine. This was remarkable, for this came after only six months’ serious development.
Even at this stage, though, Ford realised that on loose surfaces, or on snow and ice, the Cortina would always be struggling for traction — and that it couldn’t really expect to beat the front-wheel-drive Minis and Saabs. The RAC, which came at the end of the year, proved that point, where Henry Taylor took sixth, and Pat Moss seventh — which was about as good as could be expected. To win the Manufacturers’ team prize was a consolation, but only that.
For 1964, motorsport got new cars — by stealth. Although it kept the same set of registration plates from its original Cortina GTs — 888 DOO to 893 DOO inclusive — Ford then threw away the battered old white shells in favour of a brand-new stronger set of red ones. The new cars, even though entered as FIA Group 1 production saloons, were already beginning to look very purposeful, for the fag-packet engineering programme had been persistent. Up front the 1500 GT Pre-Crossflow engines were fitted with twin sidedraught Weber carburettors. An extra fuel tank was fitted behind the rear seat and at the front the second-generation fascia style had been added. There was also an impressive display of switches, dials and relays on that fascia.
Between them, Platt and Barnett had re-jigged the driving team. Pat Moss left the team after just one season and Peter Riley retired, but Barnett captured Vic Elford to join the team instead. Elford, originally a co-driver, had raced Minis, and spent 1963 with the Triumph works team. Ambitious, Vic wanted to move on, so a £4000 offer from Ford was enough for him to jump ship.