THE BIG RESTORATION
Mike Jordan and friend Craig Watton have brought England's oldest example back to glittering life
Go back 50 to 60 years, and they were everywhere. A decade later, they weren't. What happened to all the Cortinas MkIs? A few have survived to the present day, of course, mainly Lotuses and GTs. But humble, early De Luxes? You'll be very lucky to find a painted-grille basic Cortina today, but before your eyes here is a De Luxe – and it's the oldest Cortina in England.
Not the world, though. An earlier car, also in Aqua Blue but lacking this one's white roof, is in Wales, while the oldest of all, from June 1962, lives in Sweden. But otherwise, they come no older than Mike Jordan's example, built in the first week of August 1962. Mike should know about these primordial Cortinas: he co-started the Mk1 Cortina Owners' Club three decades ago, is member number one and nowadays is its chairman.
Mike's Ford Consul Cortina (as they were originally called), still with its original Hertfordshire registration number, looks once again much as it did when its first, and only previous, owner bought it. That's thanks to the restoration begun after Mike bought the Cortina from that original owner in October 2017 and finished last summer.
As built, 505 MRO was all one colour and sported stainless steel trims on its roof gutters, but the owner soon wanted to jazz it up and had the roof painted in Ermine White. So, Mike, to respect the Ford's history, has replicated the colour scheme and again omitted the stainless trims. 'He didn't like them,' says Mike. Such decisions would happen much later in the Cortina's rebirth. First, Mike had to get it home. 'He'd still been doing about 20 miles a year in it, but despite a current MOT certificate there were clear areas of concern,' many of which Mike would not uncover until much later in the restoration.
Mike decided to risk the journey from the owner's house near Tottenham Hotspur's ground to Yorkshire. 'It took eight hours. The engine was overheating by the time we got to Toddington Services. We had no spanners with us' – a mark of true optimism – 'so I called the AA. "Great, something I can actually work on," said the AA man when he arrived. It turned out to be a
