How The Ford Cortina Became A Top Seller In Britain But Proved Too UK For The USA

For over half a century, each of the Big Three American car makers have had European branches building products that were either competitive or even dominant in their markets. If you’re a business major, you’d naturally think that Ford, GM, and Chrysler could have easily just imported these things and kept their archrivals at bay on North American soil. Global domination, right? Wrong.

In reality, these under-the-same-umbrella imports were very much a hit-or-miss proposition; often, they were the more miss than hit even when all factors pointed to them being big successes. Ford had such a product in the late sixties that inexplicably bombed, and you’ve probably forgotten that it was ever sold here. Let’s revisit the second-generation Ford Cortina.

Also, The Merkur Name Was Dumb

Ford has had success over the years with products made by their divisions across the pond. The baby-Mustang Ford Capri was sold here in both Mark I and Mark II form, and for several years of its 1970-78 run, it was the second-best-selling imported car in the United States, right behind the VW Beetle.

The Fiesta was a decent seller as well, and I’ve written before about how this sprightly little car was one of the better cars offered at late seventies Ford dealerships (admittedly,  a low bar).

At the same time, Ford’s excellent Scorpio luxury sedan and cool Sierra XR4Ti seemed like they could have been left-field hits with late-eighties yuppies, but instead served mainly to keep the floor tiles secure at Lincoln-Mercury dealerships.

During the years it was built, the Ford Cortina was always near the top of the UK sales charts, if not at number one. A betting man would have put money on this small sedan succeeding in North America against other European rivals that had only a fraction of Ford’s dealer network. Well, it turned out that would have been a very bad bet.

From Dagenham To Detroit

In the years before stringent emissions and safety regulations, it seemed automakers could sell anything and everything with wheels in the North American market. Goggomobils and other strange machines could be hawked from gas station parking lots and the government really didn’t care, since only a few oddballs and cheapskates would buy those kinds of cars anyway. For a company like Ford, the Falcon was a “compact car,” and anything smaller wasn’t worth selling. Despite this, some dealers did offer a new compact from Ford’s European division (which was actually sold as a “mid-sized” car in Old Blighty).

Launched in 1962, the Cortina was actually styled by the person responsible for the Edsel, having been banished overseas after that car’s failure. While BMC (later British Leyland) was pushing the limits of car design with Mini-like front-drive and space-efficient designs on “Hydrolastic” suspensions, Ford went tried-and-true using a very basic design with a front four-cylinder engine driving a rear live axle on leaf springs. Despite being designed to be inexpensive for Ford to produce and consumers to buy, the Cortina was a good-looking, pleasant-driving car by the standards of the time, not a cheap-out.

Ford even offered a version of the Cortina with a Lotus-modified twin-cam engine and heavily tweaked coil-spring suspension that got rave reviews and proved successful in racing, most famously driven by F1 great Jimmy Clark in touring car racing.

This first Cortina was sold in North America and actually became Canada’s second-best-selling import, but in the United States, most dealers and buyers didn’t know what to make of it. Introduced for 1964, dealers in the states only moved 4,100 Cortinas that year, eventually increasing to 7,932 sales by 1966.

By the late 1960s, however,  American buyers were getting hip to the charms of small, economical European imports a notch or two below what the Big Three were offering as “compacts.” And Ford seemed to have just the car for the market.

Could 165,000 Brits Be Wrong?

For 1967, Ford of England launched the restyled Mark II Cortina, arguably one of the first truly “modern” looking British mainstream products. It would be hard to understate how important this car was for the UK and the excitement surrounding the upper models. Hell, even obnoxious, heartless Jezza almost breaks down crying when talking about it.

This Cortina seemed like the ideal car for American Ford stores to combat the rising import tide. Oddly enough, Ford marketing tried to pitch it as the Ford “Model C” to make it appear to be a revolutionary everyone’s car like the Models T and A from decades past.

Unlike a number of other compacts of the time, you could get a Cortina in anything from a two-door coupe to a four-door sedan and even a wagon with actual rear doors, unlike a Volkswagen Squareback or Opel Kadett.

The first 1967 American-market Cortinas looked virtually identical to the ones sold in the UK, but with the 1968 model year, the new NHTSA safety regulations kicked in requiring the Cortina to get side marker lights. For reasons that I don’t understand but am afraid to ask Jason lest we be here all day, giant domed amber turn signals were tacked onto the grille. They could have at least tried to make them look like fog lights or something. What is it with those things? The outer lights are all amber now, so why the extra Pep Boys-style lights?

North American cars also got backup lights hanging off the rear bumper, and they all appear to have bumper guards.

By the way, I would very strongly not recommend driving your ’68 Cortina up to the wheel arches in salt water, as I will elaborate on a little later. What a strange brochure cover, implying that the cars were just tossed in the Atlantic and picked up around New Jersey.

The boxy restyling of the Mark I model was quite contemporary and was more refined than close competitors like the BMW “Neue Klasse” 2002 or the Datsun 510. Now, despite the Cortina bearing a resemblance to the iconic BMW and Datsun, the little Ford couldn’t come close to matching those competitors in terms of refinement. The chassis was a modified version of the first-generation car that was hardly revolutionary when introduced in 1962. That’s not to say it wasn’t amusing to drive.

A 1968 Car and Driver test of the 1600 GT coupe version criticized the noisy engine and harsh ride that “hasn’t been traded for good handling” and “its cornering speeds are not what we would expect of a car with sporting flavor.” The magazine suggested more roll stiffness in the front suspension, and also mentioned that numerous aftermarket suppliers had the kit to make the thing into a “genuine pocket terror.”

Despite this, the GT version of the American Cortina had a two-barrel carb, higher compression ratio, and special exhaust manifold on the “Kent” 1600cc four. The engine’s 89 horsepower in a 2200-pound car created a car that Car and Driver said “feels tough, like a midget super stocker, so we treated it accordingly. It didn’t even flinch- it just kept coming back for more.” Zero to sixty in 12.2 seconds is laughable today, but it would beat any number of cars introduced a decade later in the teeth of the malaise era.

The interior is certainly quite sporting, with every gauge you can think of and even a console featuring a clock.

With the bigger marketing push, the new 1967 car more than doubled the earlier model with sales of 16,193 cars. Impressive, but still a far cry from the 165,000 sold in the UK that year, which made it the UK’s best-selling car. American dealers moved over 20,000 cars in each of the two years, before dropping off a cliff to around half that number for 1969. After a half-hearted 1970 model year, the Cortina disappeared from the United States. At least the 1969 model got rid of those odd extra turn signals in the grille and put them into the sheet metal below the bumper instead.

What caused the precipitous drop in sales? Well, I dread giving the pat, stereotypical answer, but sadly British Leyland wasn’t the only car maker perpetrating the stereotype of English cars from this era. The Dagenham-built Cortina suffered from quality issues as well as oil leaks and the dreaded electrical maladies immortalized by countless hackneyed jokes. Oh, and you thought that Datsun 510 and BMW 2002 rusted out in showrooms? They had nothing on the Cortina’s ability to rot its floors, sills, and front-clip sheet metal. It would seem those who bought Cortinas from Ford’s vast dealer network didn’t come back for a second one after their less-than-spectacular experience with their first.

Canada, however, didn’t give up on the small English Ford, and things got very weird.

Remember, They Bought Ladas Up There, Too

For 1971, Ford introduced the rather “Detroitized” Mark III Cortina with “Coke bottle” styling that was reminiscent of a shrunken-down Mercury Montego. Four inches wider than before and with a new all-coil suspension system, a larger two-liter was available as well.

As a bigger and heavier car, you’d think it might have been a great fit for America, and at least Canada decided to give it a shot. Reportedly, around 12,000 were sold in 1972.

One very odd find in my research: this picture circulating from the Ford archives shows the nearly-identical German Taunus version of the Cortina wagon with Canada-spec marker lights and a CAPRI license plate. The car even has the same “Rostyle” wheels as the little mini-Mustang Capri. What in God’s name is this?

My only guess is that Ford of Canada decided to drop the Cortina but might have still wanted a small wagon to complement the Ford Maverick (that had no wagon version) and decided to import the better-built (sorry) German version to sell alongside the (also German-built) Capri coupe. I see no evidence of this thing existing other than this image, so it might have been a failed proposal. If you have any information, please spill the beans in the comments.

The Mark III Cortina ceased to be imported to Canada after 1973, ending yet another exercise in North American auto giants bringing in what should have been sure-fire hits from their foreign divisions. More proof, if you even need it, that a “World Car” is a hard thing to build.

You’d Rather Be Tailgated In The Cortina Than The Pinto, Right?

Ultimately, what did the Cortina in was not quality and reliability issues, but the same thing that killed the later US-market Fiesta. Just as that little hatchback was made redundant by the launch of the 1981 Escort, the Cortina was pushed aside by the Escort’s predecessor: the much-maligned 1971 Pinto and the Mercury Bobcat twin in Canada.

Please don’t make me say that’s like going from the frying pan into the fire.

Top graphic image: Ford