Cars – No 5

So, after a brief break while I have been pissing myself laughing over the dismal performance put in by the ferals last weekend, it is on to my fifth car, Ford number 3, a brand spanking new 1975 Cortina XLE with, once again, the 250 cubic inch 6 cylinder and 4 speed gearbox. (The 4 speed gearbox by the way in this and the earlier TC was apparently straight out of the Falcon GT, you can learn lots of stuff on that internet thingy!)

This was my first “lust” car, a car I saw and just had to have. By this time I was working with Fischer Ford, along with my sister and cousin and of course my uncle Kevin.

One of the jobs that fell to the most junior salesman was to trip around swapping new vehicles from one dealer to another to meet customer needs. At the time it was nothing for us to do the Murray Bridge to Adelaide trip twice a day. My record was three times, although my 20th birthday was spent doing the Bridge to Adelaide and back in the morning, then the Bridge to Mildura and back in the afternoon and then back to Adelaide for the evening.

Anyway, I digress. One particular day I had gone to Bowden Ford, Adelaide’s biggest dealer at the time located on the old Para Motors site on West Terrace, to swap a vehicle. While I was waiting I spied the car above sitting in their showroom. Forest Green in colour, with tan interior and brown cloth. And … wonders of wonders … no bloody vinyl roof that came standard because it came optioned from the factory with a steel sunroof.

I was on the phone straight away with our sales manager asking him to arrange to swap the car into us as soon as he could.

Once again the Dragmags were fitted, along with another Clarion 8-track. This was also the first car I had with aircon, an aftermarket unit fitted in our workshops.

Overall it was very similar to the TC, although a little more refined in terms of its road noise insulation. Just as powerful however, I towed a 25 foot caravan with it quite easily. In today’s terms nothing special … but back in 1975 this baby at about 95mph at 3 am on Monarto Straight with the sunroof cracked open and Ross Ryan’s My Name Means Horse cranked right up on the 8-track was an absolute blast.

This one eventually went to a mechanic from the Fischer Ford workshop when can number 6 came along … yep, we ain’t anywhere near finished yet … in fact I don’t think we are even getting close to half way!

So, car number 5 was a 1975 Ford Cortina TD XLE 250 manual.
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