n the last installment I discussed in detail the period leading up to 1963 and the release of the Consul Cortina GT. I'd had a great deal of success in my 'Fanglia', but it was time to move on. We had accomplished a great deal with the car which was conceived and developed in our family backyard and Ford asked if I'd be interested in doing some of the development work on a version of the Cortina which was being tweaked over by Lotus.

I was reluctant at first, mainly because I was only interested in the job if I was the one calling the shots. This would have been impossible at Lotus, even though I was good friends with Col and Jim. I asked Ford if they were considering racing the soon to be released Cortina GT. The official reply stated, "Not at this stage". This seemed illogical so I told them I would help them out down at Lotus only if they allowed me to do some development work on the GT. They agreed, so off I went to Lotus to give them my two bob's worth whilst tinkering with the GT after hours.

The Type 28 showed real promise. Real whiz bang with alloy hang-on panels, Elan 2.5 gearbox and that great Twin Cam engine. By this time too, the engine had been enlarged to over 1500cc with a five bearing crank. They were a very strong, well designed engine, although Col said that they had a problem with conrods breaking on the dyno, so I submitted my design from the Anglia. First problem solved. Soon after they had the prototype engine fitted with my rods. I offered to road test it in the Fanglia, so in it went. The initial reaction was one a sweet revving engine, on that would respond to tweaking very well. By this time we were ready to start chassis development on the Cortina. Lowered struts and springs were first on the agenda, which transformed the car. One problem I found while driving the car was that the rear end was quite vague. I thought about it a little and concluded that the whole thing had to be attacked from another angle. I drew up a rough sketch for Col which was the basic design for the A-frame rear end. He agreed that it may work so one was hastily cobbled up. The design worked quite well, Jim being quite impressed by the car's potential.

From there on it began to go downhill. The car was approved for production in late '62. Once released in early '63, problems began to arise with the A-frame, which was stressing the rear axle assembly. Col tried to blame me, saying it was my 'stupid idea', but I retorted by telling him he was the one who OK'd it! Anyway, we came up with a fix for the race cars. By '64 Jim was blitzing 'em in the championship. Meanwhile, back at the lab, I had been working on the GT project for some time. I found that the 1500cc pushrod engine could make over 100 horsepower with my own spec camshaft, bigger valves, some head porting and a 28/36 Weber. Cosworth were going to build the engine for Ford so I sent it down to them. They argued that it wasn't tractable enough with my camshaft, best that I detune it. What did they want? A bloody girly's car or a GT?

Anyway, reluctantly I agreed, and with a milder camshaft, about 78 horsepower was achieved. With development, the race engines would make over 100hp. I also wanted to run the A-frame rear before we realised it was stressing the rear end, but the beancounters knocked it back. Lucky in one way I suppose. They also knocked back the close ratio gearbox. The factory was beginning to see the potential, and asked me if I'd consider setting up a race team. Problem was, I couldn't see myself maintaining my sanity whilst driving, running a race team and doing development work, so I declined. The job was offered to Wilment racing who promptly took the project on and began building a race-spec GT Cortina.

Around the same time, I'd decided to explore the limits of the Kent engine. I reckoned the five bearing crank was overkill, it was heavy and had higher friction levels than the three bearing bottom end. Anyway, I had proved to myself that a three bearing engine was capable of the job. Others disagreed, saying they were fragile, but like I said, these chaps think that they're the experts. I ran one to 9000rpm for two years and never broke a crank. I modified a 1500 block to accept a forged 86mm stroke, three bearing crank. With a tall deck sleeved 86mm bore block, we were looking at the first two litre Kent engine. With a twin cam head and a small supercharger with Tecalimit-Jackson fuel injection we had 205hp on the dyno and an engine that could rev to 10000 plus. Not too shabby for 1963, eh? Problem was this engine was not viable for either production or racing (no class at the time), so it only ever went into a road car for testing purposes.

From then on the development side slowed down a little. We worked on getting the leaf spring rear end to work properly, developing some radius arms onto the rear end which were to be introduced on the facelifted 'airflow' model Cortina in late 1964. This would also be integrated on the Lotus series as well. So much for the A-frame, which admittedly had its problems, but is still used to this day in Appendix J cars. They also dropped the 2.5 gearbox, so I wasn't too happy about having to work with a compromised package. The stress was getting to me, and by the end of '64 I told the factory to stick it up their clacker.

I continued working out of the backyard, doing engines and some developmental work, although it was generally a quiet time for me. So I decided to take a holiday to Australia. A great country, I remember thinking at the time, which I thoroughly enjoyed visiting. Soon after I returned to the UK in early '65, my father passed away at the age of 71. He'd left me a vast amount of money, besides other things, which I didn't quite know what to spend on. Should I start racing again? It seemed the logical thing. But one night, sitting at the local in a drunken stupor, I decided to pack up and head off to Australia. I felt like it would be a new beginning for me, I had nothing to lose, so off I went…