Today is a milestone in my 1/32 car collection... I have obtained one of my Holy Grail models - the Airfix Mk1 Cortina. There are Cortinas available from Scalextric and Revell but these are slot-racing cars and not detailed static models. The kit was available until the early 70s then vanished - only to reappear retooled as some kind of street dragster, thus wrecking the chances of the original kit ever reappearing.
That just leaves the Sunbeam Rapier, Bond Bug and Vauxhall Victor Estate on my most-wanted list.
My dad had one of these Cortinas when I was very young, white with custom racing seatbelts, although I seem to recall it was a 4-door saloon rather than the sporty Lotus marque. It was replaced by a big blue Ford Corsair. Lovely car.
Anyway, this is the kit as I saw it on eBay:
I had always wanted to build this as a Glam Cab from the British comedy film "Carry on Cabby", but as you can see from the photo below the cars had 4 doors, where the kit has 2.
What I may do instead is convert one of my Scalextric/Revell versions and spare the Airfix kit, building it as a nice clean saloon in private hands.
I'm happy to have this rare kit, and happier to know that it will never be reduced to a slot-racing toy. It will be some time before Liquid Poly meets 1960s plastic, but at least I have the model, so I'm happy with that.
The Cortina at the time of making the film had only just been released to the buying public and the Glam Cab Cortina's were Ford's own Press Cars all consecutively registered. Not all were four door but only the four door models had a starring close up role, the rest made up the numbers. If you look at the line up and the Glam Cab gates drive by scene, you will notice some two doors and an estate. A couple at the back were the very basic model with painted grilles.
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