I’m in Huntsville, Alabama right now and I jumped onto Craigslist hoping to find a cool vehicle or two. I ran across this 1969 Ford Cortina MK II that’s down in Cullman, Alabama, halfway between Huntsville and Birmingham. It’s on Craigslist with an asking price of $1,500. It’s been in a barn since 1980 so you’ll have to go through everything, but it looks straight and solid!

The neat-freak in me always wants to clean up a car like this when I see them in decent condition but just dirty, dusty, and crusty. Although, there’s a bit of rust below the Cortina 1600 GT badge and it also looks like maybe some starting on the bottom of the driver’s side door, maybe? There are only four photos on this ad but from what photos there are it looks like a really solid car. There are no interior photos at all, unfortunately, but it should look similar to this under all of that dirty glass. An old South African advertisement is pretty crazy to see now, asking wives to pledge to do the housework before driving their Ford Cortinas. Wow.

This car hasn’t been on the road, or started, since 1980! There is no mention of the mileage but just from the condition of the body it looks like it was driven in the snow a lot if at all. But, like with any stored car, be prepared for a lot of rodent damage on the interior and possibly elsewhere. The Ford Cortina MK II was made from 1966 (for the ’67 model year) to 1970 and they were made by Ford of Britain. This appears to be a left-hand-drive car so it was either made for the North American market or another non-right-hand-drive market. I love the look of this car, and being a two-door makes it even more appealing to me.

The GTs had power front disc brakes, a blackout trim between the tail lights and on the grille, a wood steering wheel, buckets seats, and a few other goodies that didn’t really make the car any faster but gave it some bling. I love the look of the stock wheels. I wouldn’t change a thing on this car; just clean it up, get it working like new, and drive it.

D’oh! Ok, there’s a little work to do under the hood, but if I would have been in storage for 36 years I’d need a little work under my hood, too. I’m guessing that not all of those years were spent inside of a barn due to the pine needles and acorns under the bonnet. Mice and other destructive rodents may have carried some of the acorns under there but I’m not sure if they would have put those pine needles in there. This is Ford’s Kent 1.6L Crossflow inline-four cylinder with around 93 hp and 97 ft-lb of torque. This car only weights a ton so that’s not a bad amount of power and the 4-speed manual transmission will help to make it a fun car to drive. This same engine was available for the Ford Pinto in 1971, ’72, and ’73, but I’d much rather have this Cortina GT. Have you seen a Cortina GT before? Or, better yet, have you ever owned or driven one? What do you think of $1,500 for this example?