1966 Ford Lotus Cortina expected to fetch £200,000

A 1966 Lotus Cortina is heading for auction, but as it’s one of just two works cars – and driven by Graham Hill and Jim Clark – it should fetch £200k.

We’ve all seen the price of performance Ford Escorts and Ford Sierras go through the roof in the last year – with prices over £100k becoming almost common – but now we have a fast Ford from an earlier era up for grabs, and it’s expected to hit £200k when it crosses the block with Silverstone Auctions.

But this 1966 Ford Lotus Cortina is a very special Lotus Cortina, one of just two ‘Group 5’ Works cars built and drive in anger in period by the likes of Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Jacky Ickx. So it has history and provenance.

Strictly speaking, this is a Consul Cortina Developed by Lotus, but we all know it as a Lotus Cortina and it was built in relatively small numbers for Ford to go racing with a car which looked like a Cortina but was almost pure Lotus under the skin.

This Group 5 works car was built for the 1966 British Saloon Car Championship and had its first – limited by rain – outing at Oulton Park with Jim Clark behind the wheel, followed by successful outings in a range of events culminating with a win by Graham Hill at the 1967 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch on 12th March in its last works outing.

The Lotus Cortina ended up in Africa where it stayed until it was brought back to the UK by Cedric Selzar, Jim Clark’s race mechanic, following which it had a full, sympathetic, restoration.

Still with its original body shell and period race mods, Silverstone has estimated at £180-200k when it crosses the block at the Autosport International sale on 12 January 2019.