gearbox,” Simon says. “It was in the Lotus
colours and the firewall had been chopped.
They guy I bought it from was going to put
a twin-cam Cosworth in it.”
But instead of a Cossie, Andy Culpin and
Frank Wigg shoehorned a Ford 5.0-litre
Windsor V8 and centrifugal supercharger
between the Cortina’s front MacPherson
strut towers. “I could have gone a full-house
engine,” Simon explains, “but it’s easier to
get a crate engine and supercharge it and
end up with 500 or 600hp.”
But the original crate Windsor didn’t last
long. “The timing sprocket was just a cheap
item,” says Simon. “It blew apart and junked
the valves. I guess some crate motors are
not put together too well!”
There’s no more of those worries now,
with Carl of C&M Performance in Auckland
having sorted out any reliability problems.
As you can see, the engine, ProCharger and
Holley EFI is all a tight – but clever – fit into
the engine bay.
It’s backed by a Tremec TKO600 five-
slotter, and the rear axle is an ex-Mustang
8¾-inch unit riding on a four-link – with
Watt’s link – and coil-over set-up, rather
than the original whippy leaf springs. The
upper control arms extend to the rollcage
in the cabin and are hidden under a false
rear seat.
“It has really good traction,” says Simon
of the well laid-out suspension. “It puts the
power to the ground and just takes off.”
Another shakedown run with the fresh
engine resulted in the bonnet popping
open, smashing the windscreen and
damaging the turret. Ouch! A closer look at
the body during repair revealed some issues
under the Lotus-alike paint: “There was rust:
the sills, the A-pillars, parts of the chassis,
the extremities of the doors,” Simon says.
“I ended up replacing the doors and the
bottoms of the guards, and a lot of panels
were unpicked. The roof needed panel-
beating too.”
The body and paint was largely the work of
Patrick at Boss Panel Beaters in Onehunga,
Auckland. “He’s into muscle cars himself, so
he appreciated the work involved,” explains
an obviously happy Simon. “He worked on it
for about two years as a back-burner project.”
Thankfully, due to the popularity of these
cars in the UK – where the Cortina was
designed, made and probably most popular- many panels are available new.
The finishing touch on Simon’s tribute car
is the colour scheme, cheekily painted in
THE BONNET POPPED OPEN,
SMASHING THE WINDSCREEN
AND DAMAGING THE
TURRET. OUCH!
REAR
Single exhaust? Yeah, nah. The left exhaust
evokes the original Cortina’s standard four-
cylinder pipe, while the second exhaust is
cheekily hidden under the car’s rear rightBOOT
The fuel filler is in the boot, and the rear
wheelarches have been tubbed a little to
accept a bigger wheel and tyreSIMON SAYS
Why doesn’t Simon bring the Cortina
to Australia? ”I’m worried about the
regulations in Australia – the capacity of
the V8 and the supercharger – so it’ll stay
over there,” he says. Instead, he gets his
fix by getting over to NZ a few times a year
for a drive