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The Cortina's project name was
'Archbishop'. Just for fun, Ford in Britain chose that name to outrank a Ford of
Germany project, code named 'Cardinal'.
Later, Ford's British product planners discovered that 'Cardinal' referred to a
bird, not a churchman's title.
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The original Cortina 1200
two-door saloon of late 1962 sold for only £573, which was much less than any
other car in this category. In those days, incidentally, a heater was an
optional extra - for £15.10.
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In 1963 a Cortina Super driven
by Eric Jackson and Ken Chambers broke the trans-African London - Cape Town
driving record.
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In 1964, the Cortina became the
world's first family car to have a controllable face level fresh air ventilation
system.
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One million Cortinas were sold
in its first four years - 1962 to 1966 - which up to then made this the
fastest-selling British Ford of all time.
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The Cortina was Britain's
best-selling car for 10 of the 20 years it was on sale: 1967, 1972, 1973, 1974,
1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981. It was in second place for eight years and
in third for the remaining two.
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Ford, in association with
Lotus, developed the twin-cam engined Lotus-Cortina, which became a world-beater
in races and rallies. Not only did Sir John Whitmore win the European Saloon car
race series in a Lotus-Cortina, but a similar model also won the British RAC
rally.
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For sale to Japan in the 1970s,
Mk III Cortinas had to be slimmed down by a few millimetres to sell within a
particular tax bracket which depended on a car's width. This was done by
clamping and squeezing, the newly-assembled body shells in a special fixture.
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The Cortina was the first
British Ford whose body engineering evolved through aircraft engineering stress
technology: body engineer Dennis Roberts had previous worked at the Bristol
Aeroplane Company.
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Two of the planners of the
first Cortina went on to chair Ford companies - Sir Terence Beckett became
Chairman of Ford in Britain, while Alex Trotman (later Lord Trotman) became
Chairman of the parent Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.
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The original versions of this
car were to have been named Consul 225 and Consul 255 - the Cortina name only
being adopted after the first press photographs were taken.
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Although 'Cortina' was named
after an Italian resort, it was later discovered that in Spanish the name also
means 'curtain'.
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The original high-output Cortina GT engine of 1963 was developed in association
with Cosworth Engineering - an early example of the way that Ford racing
activities were used to improve the road cars.
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In 1967, the newly-launched
Cortina Mk II was so popular that no fewer than 290,972 such cars were assembled
during the year.
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During the 20 year life of this model name, on the British market alone, no
fewer than 23 different types and tunes of engine were available in Cortinas -
from 48.5bhp to 116bhp.
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The largest engine ever fitted
to a Cortina production car was in one version of the Australian-assembled Mk
IVs of the late 1970s, which had a 4.1-litre straight-six cylinder power unit.
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From 1970 the new Cortina Mk
III was also joined, in Germany, by the new Taunus range, which shared the same
chassis engineering, but had a different style.
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The Poet Laureate, Sir John
Betjeman, once included the Cortina in a satirical poem about 'Executives'.
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Towards the end of its life,
the Cortina was treated to a complete TV programme in the BBC TV Arena series.
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In 20 years, no fewer than
788,012 Cortinas were exported from Dagenham in kit form, for assembly in other
countries. Straight-six engined versions (Australia) and 3-litre V6 types (South
Africa) were never available in Europe.
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