by Russell Hayes Once there was a Cortina on every British street corner, but now only a handful of the four million made survive and the rest are fond memories. For 1962 the Cortina was rushed to sale as an economy car, but it rocketed to the top of the sales charts and stayed there for 20 years. To mark 50 years since the introduction of Ford s best-seller, this exhaustively researched history tells how it grew to be a worldwide success. With first-hand accounts from key people and evocative period photography, the design and development of all five generations of Cortina is explored in detail.