According to its seller, today's Nice Price or No Dice Cortina GT is "mostly there." As an obvious project car, we'll need to decide if it's worth saving and, if so, at what cost.
One of the main differences between American football and association football, or soccer, is the scoring. Americans like everything big, so one touchdown in football yields a full six points, while the elusive soccer goal only puts just one point on the board. Under such a scoring system, soccer matches can, and often are, won by a single point. So close a game is far less common in American football, but we saw a squeaker of a contest yesterday over the 2001 BMW Z3 3.0i that came under our adjudication. Seemingly near-perfect and sporting just over 30K on the clock, it asked $15,500 for the transfer of title, which proved a vexing decision for many of us. The vote went back and forth over that price tag but eventually settled on a narrow but decisive 51% No Dice outcome.
In the 1960s, the American music scene was overrun by what CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite adroitly termed "the British Invasion." This influx of British bands was led by the biggest rock band of them all at the time, The Beatles. At this same time, America was, in turn, invading Great Britain by way of the Ford Motor Company. In 1967, Ford captured the title of Britain's best-selling car from home team car maker BMC with the redesigned and modernized Cortina.
Made available in two- and four-door saloons and an estate, the Mark 2 Cortina even made its way back to America, serving as Ford's small car offering until 1970, when the home-grown and vastly inferior Pinto took its place.
Power for the Cortina in the U.S. came from a 1500 and later 1600cc OHV "Kent" inline-four. Various hotter versions, marketed as the GT and the Cortina Lotus, with the latter's twin-cam engine, celebrated the model's success in sedan racing and have since become the most collectible of Cortina models.
This 1967 Cortina GT could be collected for a song, but based on the pictures and description, it's not just rough around the edges but in the middle and on all sides as well. The car seems mostly complete, but according to the seller, it has been sitting outside in perennially damp Washington for years and, hence, is rusty underneath. Despite that, the seller claims it to be "way to (sic) good and valuable to wreck."
The engine is the 1500 Kent four, which is matched with a four-speed manual, and it looks remarkably intact, right down to the factory air cleaner and quaint "NEGATIVE EARTH" decal on the inner fender. We don't get to see the interior, and the mileage is listed as 9,999, which likely is just made up. We do get the information that the title is clean, although considering that the car has been off the road for so long, we would have to wonder if it's in the DMV system at all anymore.
This is a really weird opportunity, seeing as Cortinas are, these days, pretty rare, considering that most have gone off the big junkyard in the sky. The ones that are left tend to command fairly high prices due to that rarity and the fact that they represent an important piece of Ford of Britain's history.
What do you say? Could this one be worth the $2,450 the seller asks to take it off their hands? Or is it too far gone to try or to even care?
You decide!
Nice Price or No Dice:
Facebook Marketplace out of La Center, Washington, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Bill Lyons for the hookup!
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