Ford Cortina: Britain's best-selling car of the 1960s and 70s (1962–1982)

For most of the 1960s and 70s, the best-selling car in Britain was a Ford Cortina. Across five generations from 1962 to 1982 it was the default family saloon and the company-car-park staple, the car a whole country learned to drive, to commute and to take on holiday. No model did more to make Ford the company that Britain actually bought from.

This is the guide to the whole family: how the five generations developed, the Cortina’s reign as Britain’s best-seller, and the sporting and luxury models that lift it above the ordinary. The squared-off later cars have their own pages, the Cortina Mk4 of 1976 and the facelifted Cortina Mk5, the Cortina 80.

Five generations of Cortina

The Cortina was restyled completely four times while keeping the same winning recipe. The Mk1 (1962–66) was the original: light, simple and rear-driven in 1200 and 1500 forms, and the basis of the famous Lotus Cortina. The Mk2 (1966–70) was crisper and squarer, and introduced the plush, sought-after 1600E. The Mk3 (1970–76) brought curvy, American-influenced “coke-bottle” styling, a new range of engines, and its own executive flagship in the 2000E.

The Mk4 (1976–79) returned to crisp, Italian-influenced lines and finally shared its body fully with the German Taunus, and the Mk5, sold as the Cortina 80, was a 1979 facelift that ran the model out to 1982, when the aerodynamic Sierra replaced the whole rear-drive idea.

Britain’s best-seller

The headline fact about the Cortina is simple: it sold in numbers nobody else came close to. It was Britain’s best-selling car for most of the 1970s, the default choice for the family driveway and the fleet manager alike, and the 1979 range set a registration record that stood for years. More than 2.6 million were built here across the five generations.

That ubiquity is exactly why honest survivors are now scarce. The cars were used hard, raced as bangers and scrapped without a second thought when they were simply old, so a tidy, original Cortina of any generation is a far rarer sight today than the production figures suggest.

The sporting Cortina

The Cortina was never only a rep’s car. The Lotus Cortina, developed with Lotus on the Mk1 and Mk2, put a 1.6-litre twin-cam engine and uprated suspension in the light saloon body and became a touring-car winner, most famously with Jim Clark at the wheel. It is now by far the most valuable Cortina.

Below it sat a whole run of warm and luxury models that the enthusiast market still chases: the GT, the plush Mk2 1600E, and the GL, S and Ghia cars of the later generations. They are the Cortinas people aspired to when the car was new, and the ones most sought after now.

What it is like to own

The Cortina is one of the most approachable classics there is. The Kent and Pinto engines and the simple rear-drive running gear are durable, well understood and shared across the Ford range, so mechanical parts are cheap and widely available, and the cars are easy to work on at home. The owners’ clubs are strong and knowledgeable.

To drive, these are honest, light, easy-going saloons, exactly as a family car of their era should be, with enough pace in GT and V6 form to stay enjoyable. That blend of simplicity, period character and usability is much of why the Cortina is such a rewarding classic to own.

Buying guide: what to look for

The factory rustproofing is the defining fact of Cortina ownership, and it is why a car built in millions is now scarce. Every generation rots, so inspect underneath rather than along the flanks: floors, sills and inner sills, front wings and inner wings, rear arches, the boot floor and the suspension mounting points. A cosmetically tidy Cortina hides corrosion better than most, because the shape offers so many places to put filler.

Mechanically there is very little to fear. The engines and gearboxes are simple, tough and shared with half the classic-Ford world, so a tired drivetrain should discount a car far less than tired metal does.

Where the money moves is the badge. A Lotus Cortina is worth several times an ordinary one and the 1600E carries its own premium, and that gap is precisely why recreations exist, so a car wearing either badge wants verifying against the registers before it is priced as one. The Mk4 and Mk5 sit at the other end of the range, cheap enough that scarcity rather than desirability is what makes a good one hard to find.

Where the Cortina sits in the market

The Cortina covers a wide span, from the ordinary saloon at hatchback money through the Mk1 GT and the 1600E to the Lotus Cortina, which leads the range by a wide margin; the full record, 469 recorded sales by generation and version, and why the yearly figures say more about which Cortinas came to sale than about prices, is on the page covering Ford Cortina values. Even so, a classic Ford Cortina remains one of the most affordable ways into mainstream-classic ownership, and one of the most sociable: there is a Cortina presence at almost every show in the country. For the eras the Cortina belongs to, see British classic cars of the 1960s and 1970s.

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