Easter last year, and Dan Barbary was out with a mate shooting some rabbits late evening around his wife’s grandfather’s farm when one of those ‘wascally wabbits’ ducked in between two sheds.
To Dan’s surprise he caught a glimpse of the back of an old car.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me there was a Cortina laying out here!” Dan said, surprised at what he’d stumbled upon in the shed. “Ah, that old thing,” his mate replied, “yep, been here for years."
It was too dark to get a decent look at the Cortina, but with the torch from his iPhone he checked all the usual cancer areas and had a quick peek inside. “Geez, she’s not too bad” Dan thought to himself, raising an eyebrow, before asking his mate to see if his wife’s grandfather might be interested in selling it.
A few months went by, and Dan hadn’t heard anything, but then as luck would have it, he bumped into the grandfather when he came to visit his relatives in Canberra. It turned out the Cortina belonged to his brother, Ronald Martin, who had since died. Ronald and his wife Jean had bought the car new back on the 7th of June 1974.
The TC Cortina was nowhere near as popular as its predecessor the Mk 2 Cortina. This was due mainly because of the competition from Japanese manufacturers making huge inroads into the market, and a bad reputation of the Cortina for poor quality and reliability. None the less, the Martins walked into the showroom at Giles Bros Motors the local Ford dealer in Temora NSW for a closer look. They were greeted by Jack Giles, the dealer principal who also doubled as the salesman. Jack showcased the Cortina offerings, and the Martins settled on an upmarket XL model with a 2.0-litre four-speed manual version in Polar White with saddle trim.
The Martins drove the car daily, recording every kilometre in a logbook. In fact, so detailed was the log, it included the exact number of kilometres travelled whether for business or private use, along with the purpose of their journey and the name of the driver. After Ronald Martin passed away, the Cortina ended up on his brother’s property used by a farm hand as a town runabout until it was parked up in the shed around 2007. “I knew that farmers don’t like getting rid of their cars, so I didn’t hold out much hope,” says Dan.
Every month or so, Dan would remind his mate to keep asking about the car until one day in late December he was told to give the grandfather a call. “I called him later that day to learn that he was finally ready to let the Cortina go,” says Dan with excitement. At this stage, Dan had only ever seen the car once, and that was at night by a phone torch. “I wasn’t 100 per cent sure what I was getting myself in for, but my memory told me it was a clean original,” recalls Dan.
A few days into the New Year, Dan hooked up a trailer and made the four-and-a-half-hour drive to collect the car. “It turned out the car was good, if not better than I remembered,” says Dan. “Aside from a few dings here and there, everything was intact, even the original jack and toolkit were still in the boot. Thankfully, there was no sign of rodent infestation, just a wasp nest in the engine bay.” Needless to say, Dan was a happy camper.
Getting back home to Canberra, Dan unloaded the Cortina and gave it a quick hose off and a wipe down with a rag. He performed an oil change, topped up the radiator and tried to get the 2.0-litre four-banger going. “The points were not playing the game, and the fuel pump wasn’t picking up fuel so I rigged up a gravity fed system to get it running, and threw in a new set of points,” exclaims Dan at his delight when the car started. “She now starts, runs and drives, and gets up to speed without any funny noises.”
The Cortina now sits under Dan’s carport, he has plans to replace the shockers and buy a new set of tyres, then register it, and start driving it to work on rotation with his other cars.
Source: Survivor Car Australia.
What do you think of this paddock find Cortina? What's the weirdest place you've found a car? Tell us in the comments.
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