1969 Ford Cortina GT an ultrarare sight
Back in 1969, the top import cars in Canada were from Germany and Great Britain. The Japanese had barely arrived, and the Koreans weren’t even building cars. But British cars of all types were still happily soiling the driveways of Canadian consumers, and didn’t we love/ hate them?
After the Volkswagen Beetle, the second most popular import in Canada was the Ford Cortina. “Never have so many paid so little for so much,” was Ford’s somewhat Churchillian tag line for the car.
Following the model’s Mk. I debut in 1963 as (briefly) a Consul Cortina, we received the Ford Cortina Mk. II and even a few Mk. III versions until 1972.
Cortinas were a versatile little car. They were inexpensive — at an $1,899 starting price — but had real sporting potential. Top models were powered by the tough and tunable Kent four-cylinder engine (eventually the basis for the Formula Ford racing class).
The Cortina arrived as a two- or four-door family hauler, a DeLuxe wagon, a higher-performance GT, or the rare and very desirable Lotus Cortina, featuring a Lotus engine with a twin-overhead camshaft, aluminum bodywork and competition suspension.
The 1969 Ford Cortina GT above is a pristine Canadian market car in original Ford Red, and except for the steering wheel, headlights and wheels, it’s pretty much bone stock.
Originally priced at $2,582, a Cortina GT is a rare sight on Canadian roads these days. Cortinas, like all vehicles of that era, readily fell victim to the demon rust.
Inside you’ll find a fullwidth wood dashboard with a 110-mile-per-hour speedometer and 7,000 r.p.m. tachometer, supplemented by four centrally mounted minor gauges above the heat and ventilation controls. With plenty of room for four adults, the diminutive Cortina had a huge 594-litre trunk (the 2014 Ford Fusion offers 453 litres).
Canadians got a special winter driving package, with a heavy duty battery and starter, a high-output generator and a high-output heater and defroster. Radial tires, an innovation of the day, were standard, but its little 13-inch wheels — modern at the time — seem undersized now.
Fittingly for the GT, the only transmission available was a close-ratio four-speed manual. The GT also featured a sporty three-spoke steering wheel, oversized and powered front disc brakes, stiffened suspension and the legendary Kent engine, by this time equipped with its crossflow cylinder head.
Displacing 1.6 litres, this high-compression OHV engine made 93 horsepower at 5,400 r.p.m., and 102 poundfeet of torque at 3,600 r.p.m. It arrived with a high-lift camshaft, a tuned header, Weber carburation and a host of available motorsports parts. The Kent engine was in production for 44 years and remained the basis of American Formula Ford racing until 2010. Ford even put the block back into production to support the vintage racing community: It’s $1,335 should you crack yours.
While it wouldn’t tear the street up, the Cortina GT nonetheless offered decent acceleration for the day. At a lightweight 921 kilograms, zero to 100 kilometres an hour was attained in 12.5 seconds, a whopping 52 per cent improvement compared with the base Cortina.
Our featured car spent most of its life in Toronto, then a decade in eastern Ontario, where it now resides. Interestingly, its Ontario registration doesn’t identify it as a Ford Cortina GT. At some point in its history this car became a Cons GT. I think this must have something to do with the Cortina originally being branded as a Consul. Weird, though.
Granted, a 1969 Cortina GT is not the car that leaps to mind if you were going to restore a 1960s Ford. Most would choose a Mustang, which would certainly make more sense commercially. But I think it’s great to see a less popular car like the Cortina GT get the full treatment. That’s the thing about everyday cars like the Cortina — after a while they just disappear.