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, 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 and a new range of engines.

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

Rust is the great enemy across every generation. Check the floors, sills and inner sills, the front wings and inner wings, the rear arches, the boot floor and the suspension mounting points; the factory rustproofing was poor and the cars rot. A shiny Cortina can hide serious corrosion, so inspect underneath carefully.

Mechanically there is little to fear from the simple engines and gearboxes. Originality and identity matter increasingly as values rise, particularly with the Lotus Cortina and the 1600E, where recreations exist, so verify a car is what it claims to be. A sound, honest, correct car is always the better buy than a cosmetically tidy one hiding rust.

Current value and where it sits

The Cortina covers a wide span. An ordinary saloon starts around £3,000 for a usable car, good Mk1 and Mk2 saloons and the 1600E sit between roughly £10,000 and £20,000, and the Lotus Cortina leads the range from around £35,000 to well beyond. Values have risen as the survivors have thinned out, even for the once-disposable ordinary cars. 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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