Over the years we’ve brought you numerous stories of old cars that turned out to be far more rusty than their owners realised initially. Cars without floors, sills made of filler and newspaper, rotten A-posts and nonexistent suspension mounts. So it’s refreshing to present the tale of a late Cortina that didn’t shock and horrify its owner with how badly the ferrous oxide had taken hold.
First though, a little background to the model. Codenamed Teresa, the Mk5 – marketed by Ford as the Cortina 80 – was announced in August 1979. Although of similar appearance to the Mk4 model that had been on sale since September of 1976, the Mk5 had a higher roof line that resulted in larger windows all round, and a deeper front valance. The bumpersexamples of the Mk4 and Mk5 models had been built, but sales continued well into 1983, partly due to the market’s initial reluctance to fully embrace the radical Sierra that replaced it.
