I found this one in a barn in Pennsylvania .
As my eyes adjusted , I realised that the gauge pack is completely different than my 66 the chassis plate confirms that it was so far the one and only left hand drive G T wagon .
Wow , If you want to be a serious barn hunter , you've got to wear it on your chest every day .
Walk to walk , talk to talk .
If you go to dinner with somebody , talk about old cars .
What I do is go to car shows and cars and coffee .
And so I happened to meet Andy the other day at a place called Past Diners , which is on Woodward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills , Michigan .
Now we've never found in eight years of barn fight hunting this programme .
We've never seen a Rover sedan .
Can you tell us about the car ?
Well , I'm surprised you haven't come across one because most of the most of the remaining ones are in barns or fields somewhere .
But , uh , they they are fairly rare .
Significant quantity of them , or a reasonable quantity of them were imported during the sixties while they got rave reviews .
When they first came out , particularly from motor train and road and track .
The after sale service wasn't really up to par , and so the people that loved them and bought them didn't love them for very long .
So here is this car .
This is a 71 .
This is the last year that the P six was sold in North America .
It's actually a Series two car .
The the series ones had a horizontal chrome grill and a much plainer hood and the V eights , and the four cylinders had different hoods .
This is the combined hood from a Series two with the more aggressive front end .
No .
So this is a four cylinder .
It's overhead cam .
It's a four cylinder overhead cam .
Yes , two litres .
125 Horse .
Now the V eight would have been The V eight was 3.5 litre .
It's the X B 8 , 215 and that was rated in this application , I think , at 149 hours .
So how long have you had this one ?
I've had this since 2016 .
It was repainted just before I got it .
A French car dealer had acquired it down south , but prior to that it spent the vast majority of its life in the French Mari teams .
It was ordered new in Germany by a Canadian serviceman brought back with him , kicked around the Ottawa Toronto area for a good many years before moving out to New Brunswick and Newfoundland .
And I know you've got the the the The Herald , too , right ?
I do .
That's right .
And one or two others you would you like to see ?
I would .
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Oh man , Oh , wow .
I've died and gone to heaven .
So the when I met Andy today .
This is the car he had at the car as a coffee .
Can we show people how this absolutely .
If you can swing the latch there and voila !
A beautiful seat perfectly placed for you to look at the engine .
Oh , I love it .
Sit right on the wheel and do a valve adjustment .
The Triumph , Spitfire and the Herald and the had this flip up and accessibility was easy .
And for race cars , you could just unpin it , put the hood over there somewhere and really have access to it , right ?
So is that a triumph ?
Sports car engine ?
Absolutely .
The Herald was the platform that provided the running gear and modified frame for the Spitfire .
So it's the same engine transmission rear end as the Spitfire .
The carpets are being replaced , and the white paint , I think , is being redone .
But it is exactly the factory paint scheme , and the rest of the car is completely original .
So you're saying the black is black ?
Is 1963 paint ?
Yes , at the top .
That's original .
That's original , and so are the seats .
39,000 707 miles .
Yeah , I've been using it a lot lately , I've never owned a Cortina .
But I I am a Cortina enthusiast .
And , you know , Jimmy Clark raced them and tell us why what this is and then explain a lotus Cortina .
OK , this is a Ford Cortina deluxe station wagon .
Absolutely .
You might get spiked by a piece of spring wear , but otherwise Yeah , So this has got a four cylinder .
This is a four cylinder .
It's the pre cross flow being a mark one Cortina , the 62 to 66 variant .
It has the , um , the variant with the intake and exhaust on the same side of the head , 1600 Kent engines had a cross flow system with the intake and exhaust on opposite sides for better breathing .
And then the variant with a Cortina , uh , Lotus Cortina .
What was that ?
That was a , uh it was actually released before the G T , which was the higher performance version of this , but it didn't come out till afterwards because of production issues .
But it was a Ford provided body shell with Colin Chapman's twin overhead cam conversion on the 1500 cc .
Pre cross flow block .
Very successful , rather fragile , expensive to repair this is an unrestored car .
This looks like original finish , Isn't it ?
Completely Yes , it's a South Carolina car .
And I got it from a young lady in northern Michigan who found it , uh , at a restoration shop that had been using as a shop hack in South Carolina .
He he had driven .
He drove this up and down 75 a number of times between his home in Carolina and his home in Michigan .
So was this Is this a driver of yours ?
Yes .
I have occasionally slept in this at various race events .
So the bed is just long enough .
I've got mosquito screens , custom made to go in the side , windows and everything .
This is cool .
This is absolutely my wife's favourite car .
I could get rid of everything else in here , but I couldn't touch this .
Yep .
This is the stuff that gets my attention .
This is what barn front Hunter is all about .
We have three cortinas in a row here .
Wagon and two sedans .
Correct .
Are these restoration projects ?
They will be ?
Yes .
This one actually runs or did run .
Last time I had it out .
Very , very local car .
The the original owner is still alive , I believe at 100 and two .
Oh , it's just a matter of time and space and everything else .
This is just a bare body shell , but it's pretty straight other than a lot of of minor dings .
And was that a race car ?
No , I think somebody was just turning it into a Jim Clark look alike .
OK , OK , yeah , but the the green wagon in the corner is is rather special because you were talking outside about a lotus Cortina wagon that's actually a G T wagon .
And Ford never officially made G T Mark one wagons .
The Ford factory records have long since been lost for Cortinas .
However , the Owners Club collected oral testimony in the eighties from people who worked on the line , which confirmed that one , possibly two batches of 25 right hand drive G T wagons were built for the police force in Kenya .
Wow , this obviously is left hand drive , so that throws a further curveball .
The thought is that they actually made an unknown quantity , maybe as few as five for the Mounties to test in Canada .
I found this one in a barn in Pennsylvania , and I didn't I was just after the screen because I cracked the screen in that one .
I happened to be going to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving , so I stopped off on the way to look at this .
It was completely dark , but I felt my way around the screen , cut the screen out .
As my eyes adjusted , I realised that the gauge pack is completely different than my 66 .
So I snapped a flash picture in the dark and sent it off to the owners club and didn't think much more of it .
And they come back with congratulations .
We heard this car existed , but no one's ever seen it .
And then when I went back to collect the rest of the car because , of course , by that point I decided I wanted it .
I was able to clear the front off enough to lift the hood , and the chassis plate confirms that it was so far the one and only left hand drive GT wagon .
The G T .
Was a intermediary model between the Cortina Santa Cortina and a lotus Cortina , which had the twin cam motor .
So this had was it a 1600 cc push rod motor ?
This is a 1500 cc .
Pre cross flow push rod .
Yeah .
OK , I got it .
So you've got an e type over here ?
I do .
So we haven't seen an e type since this morning ?
No .
Well , I'm sure his is nicer than mine .
But this is the one that everyone gravitates to in here .
They also .
Well , why don't you put all the others away and concentrate on this one ?
The other is a Series one .
It's a series 13.8 with the rather unusual option .
I can't call it an option .
I guess it's off the market , but it's got triple webbs instead of triple S U .
So this seems complete and solid .
It is very solid .
Yes .
Will you restore this ?
I probably will , just because it's too expensive otherwise .
But it's getting to be that point where if you're paying somebody $100 an hour , you could be upside down in no time .
No time at all .
Yeah , it looks a lot worse than it is , actually .
Oh , that's a new car .
Yeah .
So where does this fall in your lineup of projects ?
Oh , everybody asked me that , and I I have no idea .
Half of these I never actually went out to look for .
I just came across them and thought , Well , I like that .
Well , this is like a little gem hidden in an industrial park .
Uh , no signs out front .
And in fact , if you didn't have your rover park there , I could have driven right by it .
Thanks .
Thanks so much for inviting us over .
We're really happy .
I met you at cars and coffee .