Ford Cortina

Driver: Paul Marston
Class: ProET

If you want to add this text to the page and the link to the blog, unless you want me to send you the whole blog? Sometimes opportunities just present themselves which are just too good to pass up. This Cortina is one of those opportunities.

Built as an ongoing project over the past 20 years by its previous owner, I have watched this car grow and grow to its current spec, which now makes it potentially one on the top 10 fastest doorslammers in the country. What makes this Cortina so special is the technology hiding inside a pretty innocent looking Cortina, I mean, its Cordoba Beige!!!

Under the skin currently sits around 1400hp. But the potential is there to easily get 2500hp, it has all the right parts, its data logged and has proven over the years to be a very reliable platform. So with our partner in the joint venture Comanche Racecars we will be developing this Cortina over the winter of 2016 and into the 2017 season. You can follow our progress via the blog on Eurodragster.

June 2016 Press Release on Eurodragster

An opportunity arose a few weeks ago to purchase a Racecar that of its type has been on the top of the bucket list for a long time. I did think that I was going to have to import one from the States as they are pretty thin on the ground in Blighty. Never the less when it came up I was interested enough to go look see. Now it is fair to say that this will be a very long term project as the Racecar will need to be completely repurposed before it can be used but I could see the potential and comes with a great pedigree. The car in question is Jon ‘Moose’ Hollingworths Street Eliminator Twin Turbo Big Block powered Mk5 Cortina, a deal was done and it now resides at PMR HQ in Romford.

Its Bill Felstead from Fester Racecars fault really that I bought it, as Bill has always been harking on that with so much power you need a lot of control. It must be fuel injected, small big block, 88mm Turbos, data logger, etc, etc. To put it simply this Cortina has it all, in fact its very similar although not as powerful as fellow Top Sportsman competitor and former title sponsor Matt Wrights mighty Rolls Royce.
It ticked all the boxes, plus it receives technical support from John Sleath Racecars. John Sleath Racecars has built, designed, mapped, developed and supported the Cortina all its life. I am pleased to say that this will continue and we are looking forward to working with John Sleath Racecars with this project.
The aim of the project is simply – To remove weight that is now not required and see how fast it can go with slicks and a wheelie bar. There is no rush or agenda as I honestly did not expect to be given this wonderful opportunity. It costs nothing to think and before we start on this one, it will receive a lot of thought before any firm decisions are made.

This car will be a challenge as our knowledge of Turbo cars although not non existent, this is a whole different level. It will be a fascinating journey.

November 2016 Press Release on Eurodragster

CORTINA BACK ON TRACK

CORTINA 2024 Update

For details of the complete rebuild of the cortina. Please refer to www.eurodragster.com blog section. Go to the news menu and then click blogs and select Paul Marstons Twin Turbo Cortina, for the full rundown of the build. To be fair it has not been updated since covid and we have yet to run her again. That said, it does make for a pretty interesting read and is a testament to what can be done at home with an idea and tools.

So to bring you fully up to date. The new cold side of the turbo system was completed in 2020. Meanwhile we have dabbled a bit and performed some housekeeping. There had been a few runs put on her so at Bill’s insistence we pulled off the oil pan and changed out all the main bearings, they weren’t bad but we had a few issues with going off of the end of the track where the oil pressure got real low, you have to feather the throttle to keep the pressure up. At the time this didnt always happen as running out of track kinda got my attention!!. These monster turbo motors kill the oil with extreme heat, so we wanted to check. This did become a drawn out affair, but we got it done and have since fired her up and all seems well. The No Prep scene in the UK has suffered due to a lack of venues here in the UK for the past few years. So we have been focusing on more track events, mainly at Santa Pod Raceway. So the Cortina is ready to go at any given opportunity and is currently in storage.

Any eagle eyed followers of Eurodragster and attendees would have seen a certain Cordoba Beige Mk5 Twin 88mm Turbo, fuel injected big block Ford Cortina at the very last RWYB of the season at Santa Pod last Sunday. There are pics in the Sunday RWYB Gallery. There is also a short video clip of the launch and a super slo-mo courtesy of Aaron Springford on our PMR FB page.

After sustaining a drivetrain failure at the Open Sport Nationals at SCR in August. It has taken a while to get all the parts and pieces back together. This was due to it being a new Racecar to us and although we were fairly sure it would break something at the Open Sports Nats we did no know what, so did not have spares readily available. FYI it broke a rear UJ which damaged the Axle Yoke, destroyed the Propshaft and first gear in the Transmission. The spares situation is now remedied and the drivetrain is now a lot stronger. The simple reason why it broke was the Cortina had never seen slicks before, so we figured the grip would be the downfall and we were right.

All we intended to achieve on Sunday RWYB was to get a couple of hits with the correct launch boost and see if it broke anything else. Well it didn’t break anything and on the two hits we got a best of 1.25 60ft with it still turning the tyres a little. On the second hit Paul got it out to 330ft under power but it overpowered the track and started skating pretty bad before the 1/8th mile so wisely Paul clicked it. This now gives us a solid platform to build on, there is a lot to do with the Cortina over the winter months. But before we did any of that we wanted to find out what the first incremental’s were in its current guise. The tune will stay the same when we return to the track next season initially, just upgrades in other areas will be taken care of. There is no point in adding more power until you can use what you have currently, properly and efficiently first.

Just to keep you feeling warm over the winter you can watch us freeze and monitor our progress with a new blog that will go live on Eurodragster over the next week or so and WILL BE regularly updated over the off season.

Meanwhile special thanks go out to Bill and Luke at Comanche Racecars, who have been instrumental in moving this project forward. Chris Issaccs at CIRC, Gary and Aaron Springford at DRE, Terry Robbins at RRC, Eric Seccur at JW Performance Transmissions, all the PMR Crew, especially the Crewchief and Sefton Whitlock who always do a superb job. Eurodragster of course for being who you are. Special mention to Dave Warren and the rest of the Santa Pod Track Crew for all their track prep efforts, much appreciated and does not go unnoticed by us.