1981 Ford Cortina L review from UK and Ireland

The main issue with the cortina was always rust. they rotted absolutely everywhere. mine had new sills, new boot floor, new chassis rails.. I had 5 years of reliable motoring before finding out that the bulkhead was totally rotten. I decided to call it a day.

Water leaked onto the front carpet from day one, it needed void bushes for every MOT, but the engine was virtually indestructable. it was still running fine the day I scrapped it, just a little smokey after 190,000 miles.

The carb was knackered (fords crappy VV effort) so I replaced with a weber

This was one of the last family sized fords you could actually fix anything on yourself.

Simplicity itself to work on, and ultra reliable. they show their age by lack of 5th gear and sheer thirst of engines, even the 1.6 won't get more than about 28 mpg.

I loved mine dearly, if they still made them I'd buy one today.

Easy to uprate, get a 4-2-1 manifold (cortina GT) and a 38dgas weber from a capri 3.0 and they fly. just watch that fuel gauge..

I owned one of every variant over the years, from the poverty spec and slow 1300 to the thirsty and dissapointing 2.3.