INSTEAD OF A FAST FOUR, THIS
CONVINCING LOTUS CORTINA
TRIBUTE HAS A SUPERCHARGED
FORD V8 IN IT. RIGHTIO!
IN THE early 1960s, British Ford and
sports car designer/manufacturer Lotus
put their corporate heads together
to create the Lotus Cortina. Special-
build bodies were shipped from Ford’s
Dagenham, UK factory to Lotus, where
a Ford-based but Lotus-headed twin-cam
four-cylinder engine, close-ratio four-speed
gearbox and coil-sprung rear suspension
were installed. The finishing touch was
a green slash down the sides and across
the butt of the otherwise antique white
paint, plus a trio of Lotus badges. As with
Aussie muscle cars these days, the value of
surviving Lotus Cortinas has shot through
the stratosphere.
This is not one of those. This car, owned
by Simon Peryer, is a convincing tribute,
but instead of a fast four – something
like a twin-cam Nissan SR20 or Honda
S2000 transplant, for instance – it has a
supercharged Ford V8 in it. Rightio!
Simon was born Aussie, but as he grew up
in NZ, he considers himself a Kiwi. Now in his
early 50s, he’s lived and worked both here
and there, and the here and there continues
with him now living and working in Oz and
the Cortina back in NZ. It shares garage
space with a Mustang, while his Bolwell
Nagari (a past Targa Tasmania runner and
SM feature car in August 2005) has been
brought back to Australia after eight yearsacross the ditch. So yeah, Simon is a proper
car nut.
“When I was a teenager my mates had
Cortinas and I had an Anglia,” he says. “New
Zealand didn’t have the bigger cars, or as
many of them, so that’s what was popular
at the time. I bought a Mk1 Cortina four-
door GT with the remnants of a Zephyr V6
in it, which had been a great car before the
engine blew. I bought it off a mate but just
never got around to finishing it.
“So later, I thought it would be nice one
day to have something similar and do
it properly!”
For Simon, ‘doing it properly’ meant a V8,
not the Zephyr V6 he lusted after as a kid.
But finding a good car to begin the build
wasn’t easy. “We spent 18 months looking
around New Zealand for two-door shells;
there really are some rough ones out there!”
he reckons. “I even looked at a concours-
quality restored one. It was a beautiful car- but even though it would have cost me less
[to build the project] had I started with that, I
couldn’t bring myself to chop it up!”
Although Ford built cars in NZ right up
until the 1990s, the Cortina Simon found,
with the help and planning of mates Andy
Culpin and Matt Walters, is an Aussie-made
example that was imported to Kiwiland in the
early 1970s.
“It was a rolling shell without an engine or
SUSPENSION
The cleverness in this car’s build dives deep, right
down to using a Subaru Forester power steering
rack mounted forward of the crossmember with
the stub axles swapped left-to-right to suitWHEELS
Those Minilite-type wheels (actually Performance
Superlites) are a gorgeous era-correct addition
to the Cortina’s tribute appearance. But it takes a
keen eye to notice the five-stud steel hubs in place
of the factory four-studs, due to the upgraded
ex-Mustang brakes