TOWIE – THE ONLY WAY IS EXCELLENT

David Jackson is now 71 years old, and he comes from a family of engineers. It took him a while to find his calling though, working first in insurance after leaving school before starting in the motor trade working as a panel beater for Ford main dealer J P Hensmans of Brentwood. After that he started his own business, Jackson Coachworks, later moving into management with another main dealer for several years before becoming an insurance assessor for an independent company.

I mention all this here because otherwise you may wonder how a self-employed pest control operative could turn out cars as perfect as this. Pest control operative? Yes, because having served his time in the motor trade, David had decided a change of direction was called for and gone to college to qualify in that profession. At the same time he had decided to 'get back on the tools' and restore some vehicles of the types he had worked on back in the day – Minis, Imps, Cortinas and the like.

Clearly, it is a Cortina that is our focus today. And not just any Cortina, but the eternally desirable Cortina Lotus. This legend came about because in the early 1960s Ford wanted to homologate 1000 saloons for Group 2 racing, and Lotus was developing a twin-cam