When launched in 1962, the Ford Cortina was an entirely new type of British car. Compared with its rivals and with earlier Fords it was light yet strong, inexpensive yet roomy, mechanically simple and cheap to maintain. It quickly established a totally new class of car, which even its rivals admitted should be called the 'Cortina class'. Not only did it sell well, but it was very profitable for Ford, which expanded considerably, and it became the most successful British car of the 1960s and 1970s.
Graham Robson has been a motori