Big Resto Cortina
Ever wondered how concours cars are created? Bruce Mcdermott will tell you it’s not about money, tools or skill, it’s just about being picky
What does it really take to restore a classic car to concours standard?
You’ll have heard of driveway restorations and you’ll have also heard of concours-standard restorations, but you very rarely hear of concours-standard driveway restorations. Let’s face it, the two aren’t particularly compatible: one is the weather-lashed preserve of the wheelie-bin, the plastic-fantastic shopping shuttle, and of mail-delivery personnel; and the other, the rarefied atmosphere of the boutique workshop, small cups of coffee, and five-figure invoices. But here’s Bruce Mcdermott, standing on his driveway with not just one but two Ford Cortinas ready for the nano-scrutiny of a magnifying-glass-wielding concourse judge. And there’s a rare 2000E in the car port that’s going to be even better, and another GXL that’ll likely be better than that. Not that Bruce has ever offered up his cars for such invasive probing. ‘I’m not into all that stuff,’ he says. ‘I was even thinking about having some bumper stickers made using the marketing slogan for the Cortina Mk IV: don’t judge me, this is a ‘car above comparison’.’ So here’s the Bruce Mcdermott method of restoring cars to concours standard. First of all, it’ll really help if you become fully immersed in the marque you’re restoring, so that could mean dedicating all the wall space in one room to floorstanding display cabinets filled with models and marque-memorabilia, say. Oh, and you’ll need to call an offspring or pet something marque-specific:
Bruce’s dogs are called Taunus and Roman, the latter being Ford’s Seventies’ hue, Roman Bronze. And there’s Pinto the cat. Bruce is also the Chairman of a local Ford club in the Bournemouth area; runs a Cortina page on Facebook with over 8600 members; and has owned about 35 to 40 Cortinas since buying his first one at 17, just 14 years ago. This is being fully immersed: cut him and Bruce will bleed Ford Venetian Red.
Starting from scratch
Next, you’ll need some tools and a bit of know-how. ‘I was always a tinkerer and did a year of an apprenticeship at a Vauxhall dealership, learning about bodywork and paint, but I didn’t finish it.’ Bruce connected via Facebook with a Cortina estate owner in Essex, Greg Tredgett, who restored Porsches for a living. After becoming good friends, he visited Bruce regularly, helping out with the body structure and mechanical aspects, eventually moving down permanently. ‘I really wanted to learn more about these things, so Greg advised me what to buy and I invested in an engine crane, welder, angle grinders, engine stand, and everything I’d need for a home workshop.’ After a two-week crash course, Bruce was able to strip and rebuild a Cortina engine all on his own, and is now able to remove an engine, get it stripped down completely, and on a stand in under 30 minutes. And he can fully rebuild them again in two days, if necessary. And on more than one occasion one of Bruce’s rebuilt engines has been pushed into arduous service immediately afterwards for long road trips, without any issues.
If you’ve got a tick in these boxes, you’ll be wanting a car to restore. ‘GXLS are rare and therefore very expensive now, so given all my past experience of other
‘I gave it 15 coats of aerosol primer, four coats of Onyx Green and three of clear’
people’s standards, I don’t want to pay lots of money for work that just isn’t that good, so I look for cars that haven’t been messed with, but need work,’ says Bruce. The green GXL had been off the road since 1988 and had never been welded or bodged. The result was a car that was both beautiful and dreadful in places, to quote Bruce: the front wings had holes you could put your fist through, but once unbolted, the inner wing rails were surprisingly sound; the outer and inner sills, and jacking points, were rotten, along with rear wheelarches, but the boot floor was solid; the engine had seized but otherwise it was a 42,000 mile car; and while some of the hyper-rare trim bits needed remaking or rechroming, the interior was essentially good.
Take it easy
So, you’ll be wanting to dive into your new project, then. ‘I never start work straight away,’ advises Bruce. ‘The whole restoration took me three years, but I just left it alone for the first twelve months, during which time I sourced parts.’ This involved trawling autojumbles and ebay, plus contacting suppliers who’d helped out beforehand. Don’t expect this to be a cheap process anymore. Ford used to be renowned for their cheap and plentiful parts supply, something that was a key selling point for some, so if you’re one of those people, you need to sit down for the next bit: expect to pay about £1000 for a pair of front wings; £450 for a GXL steering wheel; £300 for the rear pillar badges; and £130 for a gear knob, for instance. This reinforces the need to buy a good car to start with, and to allow time to save up for the parts you’ll need before stripping the car to pieces.
You’ll be pleased to know that this is where we finally get burnt, greasy and impregnated with filler dust. Everything was stripped off the car, leaving only the headlining in position, which was in good condition. The car was mounted on a roll-over jig and with Greg’s help, Bruce replaced the outer sills and repaired the rear arches using handmade patches culled from scrapped doors. He then spent many months bare-metalling the underside and engine bay using a woven-nylon abrasive disc in a drill. In between times, he moved to the engine to strip that, unseize it by dousing the bores with diesel and oil, eventually rebuilding it, replacing the original head with one with hardened valve seats.
Back on the shell, the wheelarch, engine bay and bottom-polishing continued. ‘The bare steel was given a coat of Jenolite, followed by fifteen coats of various primers, starting with Jenolite rust-inhibiting red-oxide, four coats of Onyx metallic green cellulose, followed by three coats of clear lacquer. I then spent many hours flatting the paint before buffing it to a mirror shine.’ The quality of the underside’s paintwork is now outstanding. Oh, and this was all achieved by using aerosols. Yep, aerosols. Bruce simply doesn’t have room for a compressor and spray kit so he gets rattle-cans made up at a local paint factor, and has found Halfords primers and clear-coats to be the best because of
the quality of the nozzles. And this all takes place on the driveway, under the car-port. ‘It makes things easier, actually,’ explains Bruce. ‘Paintwork can look great outside but the light under the corrugated roof shows up every imperfection.’
With the rear axle and the front subframe completely stripped, cleaned, protected and painted in the same way, Bruce rebuilt everything with new parts and fitted the suspension. Bruce and Greg then carefully lifted the shell off the jig with the engine crane, using webbing to sling it to protect the new paint from scuffs, and lowered it onto the axle and subframe. Although Bruce has since undertaken full aerosol resprays on two Cortinas, in metallic colours to boot, since the GXL’S paint was completed about eighteen months ago, Bruce entrusted the GXL’S bodywork refinishing to a local bodyshop. No doubt he would have shot the Onyx Green himself now. Another unforgiving colour to spray is gloss black and that’s exactly what Bruce is spraying his next project, using aerosols, a special order 2000E; the panels already painted are totally flawless.
The rest of the project comes under the heading ‘attention to detail’. Bruce had stickers made for the dampers, because you can’t get them anymore, and did the same for the ones on the slam panel. The interior was thoroughly cleaned and refitted, the dashboard being abraded and recoloured black. With the car completed, Bruce conducted a systematic shakedown. ‘I have a set route around the forest that I’ll drive until I’ve clocked up about 150 miles. I don’t like cars that are modified but we had a spare three hours so we replaced the four-speed gearbox with a five-speed. Now, the car can cruise at 75mph at 3000rpm, instead of the four-speed’s 50mph,’ explains Bruce. So that’s it: Bruce Mcdermott’s proven ‘How To’ guide to creating a concours-standard car. What’s next for Bruce? Surely the sky’s the limit for him. ‘No, this is it for me,’ he says with finality. ‘When I’ve finished restoring the two cars on the driveway, I’m not doing any more.’ Really? For someone who’s just getting into their stride and completing such high quality restorations, we can’t imagine that only two more restored cars will roll down that driveway. Watch this space.