The Lotus-Cortina was the modish must-have in the ’60s, as adept on the circuits as instilling status radiation on the high street

Awkwardly whoops-a-daisying off the line, a whirlwind of uncoordinated din eviscerates your ears. There’s nothing so frivolous or unnecessary as sound-deadening, here. Up through the gears, each cog swap ushering in yet more commotion, camber changes dictate your path of forward motion. Seemingly abyss-bound as the testing switchback switches back sooner than you’d expected, a timorous little smile - maybe a grimace – dimples your cheeks.

A roll-call of heroes has sat here. Jim Clark. Trevor Taylor. Dan Gurney. Sir John Whitmore. Er, Tiff Needell. But, no matter how much you’d like to take a pew at the high-table of motor sport’s elite, you’ve probably left it a little late. There’s such a fine line between clever and stupid, and charging around with the gusto of yore in the world’s most valuable Lotus-Cortina barely straddles this narrow divide. Trying to emulate Clark’s deft dangling of a left front at Brands’ Bottom Bend - in rural Gloucestershire - is not an option. There isn’t enough run-off area. It’s fun trying, though.

Few drivers, if any, could massage a performance out of the original homologation special quite like Jim Clark. If winning 25 grands prix from 72 starts, or besting the establishment at Indianapolis proved his genius in single-seaters, it was the Scot’s efforts in Lotus-Cortinas that cemented his all-rounder credentials. In 1964, he won the British Saloon Car Championship at a canter. On the 1966 RAC Rally, he retired but not before setting fastest stage times. Jimmy and ’tina were made for each other. And 166RUR played its own small part in establishing the legend.

The Lotus-Cortina was the modish must-have in the ’60s, as adept on the circuits as instilling status radiation on the high street. The brainchild of Ford’s Walter Hayes, original plans called for 1000 units to be homologated as Production Touring cars for the International Sporting Code’s Group 2 category. Lotus boss Colin Chapman had been keen to produce an in-house engine, the Coventry Climax item used in the Elite proving overly expensive. With a timely injection of funds behind him, ‘Chunky’ turned to Autocar’s technical editor Harry Mundy to conceive a twin-cam head for the bombproof Ford Kent bottom end, the 1498cc four making its debut in the back of a Lotus 23 sports-racer for the June ’62 Nurburgring 1000km. Clark ran and away and hid during the opening stages of the race, leading by over by two minutes at one point, before crashing out on the eleventh tour after being overcome by exhaust fumes.

After further revisions by Cosworth’s Keith Duckworth, capacity being upped to 1558cc, this soon-to-be-a-classic ‘twink’ was inserted into the Cortina hull, along with heavily reworked suspension and light alloy skins for the doors, bonnet and boot lid. Production of the Lotus-Cortina – or Cortina-Lotus as the blue oval referred to it – commenced in February ’63 but it would be September of that year before the car was eligible to race. And, having been tested repeatedly at assorted circuits, not forgetting  the M1, its competition debut left an indelible impression.

Taking a bow in the BSCC encounter at Oulton Park on September 20 ’63, ‘Gentleman’ Jack Sears trailed home two lumbering Ford Galaxies to record a class win in his works entry. Second in Group 2 was sister car 166RUR driven by Trevor Taylor. Often dubbed the unluckiest man in motor racing on account of his spectacular Formula 1 crashes – “No, that’s not true. Hey I’m 70 and I’m still here” – the Yorkshireman recalls: “It was a fun car to drive; very forgiving. I did a lot of the grunt work with the Lotus-Cortina. Today there are lots of safety tests, you know where they drive cars into brick walls. At Lotus back in those days it was always: ‘Right, put Trevor in it! Off you go…’ Of course Jimmy was the man in our team. He could do anything with the Cortina. With any car. He was a born natural [and would finish third overall at Snetterton in 166RUR a week after Taylor’s run, his first drive in the model]. I liked racing saloons and enjoyed the techniques used to get the most out of the Cortina. You would fling it in, give it a bit of a flick and then catch the tail although on fast circuits you wanted some understeer.”

But while those first two events at the tail end of ’63 proved that that the car was fast, its handling was still unresolved. Enter motor racing’s unsung engineering hero, Len Terry: “By the time I arrived at Lotus in September ’62, the twin-cam Cortina was pretty much all there. Back then, I was just a drawing office bod so got on with my own thing unless I was asked for my opinion. When they started racing the Cortina, there were one or two problems and it was left to me to come up with some changes. I didn’t do much to be honest. The rear suspension had faults, lifting its back wheel mostly. There was an A-bracket on the underside of the diff unit with tubular trailing arms and fairly solid rubber bushes. I changed the radius arms to channel section so that it was nowhere near as rigid. With a trunion at the base of the A-bracket, there was very little roll stiffness which changed the way the car handled: instead of having bad oversteer, it became more of an understeerer.”

With these upgrades in place, Dan Gurney was next to pedal 166RUR. The Californian remembers the ’64 Sebring 250 (run the day before the 12 hours) with fondness: “Jimmy and I had a great time racing each other in the Lotus-Cortinas. It was more of a lark than something to take too seriously [he finished 16th on the bumpy airfield circuit]. Jimmy was better under braking and I did better in the fast stuff. We were overtaking each other throughout the race and enjoying every minute of it.” The US adventure for 166RUR continued with a class win for Sir John Whitmore at Pensacola, a sixth place for Peter Arundell at Riverside and a minor placing for Whitmore again at Laguna Seca. Later that year, David Hobbs had a hub breaking run with American Dave Clark to an eventual ninth in the Virginian Marlboro 12 Hours, the car being sold to Harley Cunningham of Charlotte, North Carolina at the end of the season. By which time it had gone through nine engines…

“That wasn’t unusual,” claims genial former Team Lotus mechanic, Bob Dance. “The Cortina had been homologated for touring cars and GTs. In fact Jimmy did the Sebring 12 Hours in ’64 with his Cortina running in the GT class, so there was a lot of racing going on. The engine changes were more precautionary measures than anything else. We finished most races and the sister cars [167RUR and 168RUR] won some outright. We went to America as part of the English Ford Line [promotion] and had a great time. We had some very talented drivers and put on a good show.”