Big Mike: Winning cars will persuade the punter
Like most people, I remember my first car well. It was a 1964 Ford Cortina, and it was finished in red. On its own fairly unspectacular, an icon of bread and butter British motoring, albeit one with pretty ‘ban-the-bomb’ taillights.
But there was a very specific reason I bought the Cortina, and even more of a reason why I had a red one. And that was my love of motorsport. For while Jim Clark was cleaning up the British Saloon Car Championship (the forerunner of British Touring Cars) in his white Lotus Cortina and John Whitmore was kicking some European arse in his red and gold one, I was in my pokey little lock-up in Quinton, Birmingham, using gold Hammerite and a set of reverse-rim steel wheels to turn my Cortina 1200 into something resembling Sir John’s giant killer.
It never did, of course, thanks to its puny but dutiful little engine, though the addition of some racing harnesses did have what today’s youth often refer to as the ‘Vicki Butler-Henderson