My first car

Yes, the beloved 1979 Ford TE Cortina was my first car.

I was only 15 years old when i started dreaming about driving a Cortina one day. I pictured it black with chrome simmons mags with a wild v8 motor ready to launch. Low and behold it really did become my first car a few days after getting my provisional license. I have to say that it was one of the most exciting days of my life.

Back then i was still in Year 12 (my last senior year of high school), I had no job at that time which meant i had no money, so owning a Cortina was just a dream. It became reality when my old man bumped into an old friend that used to work with him at Ford once upon a time, and he noticed he had a TE Cortina. When my dad mentioned just in conversation how much i loved his model cortina, the guy said to my dad, "make me an offer". So guess what, he did, $2,500 dollars later the deal was done. One of the best presents i had ever received from the old man was my golden cortina.

Once i finished school i enrolled into TAFE but at the same time worked in a pizzeria shop part-time to finally earn some money and begin doing some work on my Cortina. One thing i never liked about it was that it was gold in colour and not to mention had a brown vinyl roof, but i didn't really care because i knew it was going to be all black one day. So the project began, one pay check at a time. Since i was only earning measly money a full respray was way out of reach. So i started with some minor upgrades and repairs because it was much easier on the wallet.

The first modification was lowering the car and getting new suspension for a better ride. So i purchased a full set of 3" lowered Jumbo coil springs custom made by All Springs in Moorebank and also a full set of Monroe shock absorbers from K-Mart. Then dad and i installed it all one weekend and took the car for a test drive and found it felt like a completely different car. It handle so much better and didn't feel like i was in a rocky boat anymore, plus its appearance was amazing, sitting so much lower towards the ground :)

Then it was time to strip the interior to pieces. I removed all the seats, center console and the door trimmings complete out. This project was to transform the interior colour to black and get rid of the ugly original cream colour it came with. I did this by, simply respraying the vinyl headlining, the center console and the door trimmings black, installing brand new black carpet throughout and a set of black seat covers to match. Looked awesome!

The next pay check went to brand new rubber door and boot seals for the whole car. After installing the new seals it felt like a new car when opening and closing the doors and not to mention the drive was much more quiet with no air blowing between the doors and frames. Oh, and installing extra insulation under the new carpet helped with noise reduction too. Then a fair few pay checks later, i got the windows tinted by Premier Tint and then went to Ryda Car Audio and bought a pair of 7"x10" Kenwood speakers and a Gelhard Amplifier (can't remember the wattage) combined with a second hand Phillips tape deck my old man had laying around, this interior now not only looked better it sounded better.

Finally it was time to start planning for some major engine work. I was tossing between keeping it a 6 cylinder or going hard and dropping a v8 inside. It came with a bigger than normal 6, it was the 4.1 litre engine, most other cortina's came out with the 3.3 small block 6 engine, my one was the same one found in the Ford Falcons, so that was a bonus. I will never forget the day when i beat my mate's stock VL commodore in a run. It was bloody amazing because his car was like 10 years younger and was EFI too. But putting an 8 in the cortina bay would mean major engine bay and firewall mods before even putting the block in. But my decision was cut short when my old man told me that there was a Ford Laser TX3 for sale at the Ford Auctions and since the Ford plant (where he worked) was closing down soon, this would be the last chance to buy a decent car with a great employee discount. So with so much persuasion but with little regret, i became the proud owner of a almost brand new Ford Laser TX3.

So the big plans i had for my beloved Cortina had ended there. I ended up selling the cortina for $3,500 which was more than dad paid for it, so i paid him back. Here are some more pics just before i sold it (you can see the new laser tx3 in the background in one of the pics as well as some of the cortina's signatures left on the bitcherman).