Eventually of course, especially in the early 70s, anything with a 1300cc motor is going to seem a little gutless to an 18 year-old boy from a country town. And so it was with the purple Escort.
What initially took my eye was a brand new TC Cortina 2000 complete with GS sports pack and this is exactly what I had on order by sometime mid-1973. This was back in the days when you ordered cars to be built at the factory just to your spec.
But while waiting for my car to be built something just a little more powerful came available as a used car with very low mileage, and it was the ultimate Cortina of its day. A bright yellow 1972 TC Cortina XLE with the 250 cubic inch (around 4 litres) straight six shoehorned out of the Falcon and into this smaller body. Mine was a four speed manual and was one of the very few that was built without the “luxury” vinyl roof. Rego number RYE-283.
It belonged to a couple of “farm boy” brothers that had decided to trade up to something larger and I quickly decided that a 250 6 cylinder was going to meet my needs more than a 2000cc 4! And a good decision it was, those 2 litre OHC Ford motors from that period turned out to be pretty troublesome.
In their day these things had everything you could want on an Aussie built car, except of course for adequate brakes or suspension! Cloth trim was standard, mine was in white with contrasting black cloth, radio, tacho, wood grain dash etc. I of course put in the obligatory 8-track player and also fitted the, at the time, ubiquitous R.O.H. Dragmags.
Make no mistake, these things could really go. At 4000 rpm in top gear the speedo would show an even 100 mph and they had heaps of torque for towing just about anything. They didn’t really handle all that bad, in a sort of a big Aussie six kinda way but their front-ends used to go saggy very quickly.
I made my fastest ever (as driver) trip Adelaide to Murray Bridge in 37 minutes (very) early one morning on the old road (freeway Adelaide to Crafers, then winding country road the rest of the way) in this car.
The photo above is not mine, but is pretty similar in colour and overall appearance, even though this is the pommie variety.
So, that was car number 4, and Ford number 2. If you are getting sick of Fords then you better stop reading now … there are lots more where these came from!