There's a bloke who turns up at NW classic car shows in a mint green Carousel who reckons to have turned down offers of over 5 grand for it. I've no idea if what he says is true but it is showroom fresh.
Old Ford prices have gone stratospheric in recent times. When I was a teenager you could pick up reasonably tidy RS2000s for about £1500 (but couldn't insure them). Now, reasonably tidy ones are 5 grand and minters are 10 grand. As 2-door Escorts have become so expensive there has been a bit of a knock-on for other models. Tidy Capris, Cortinas and Granadas all fetch decent money. Rough ones (other than 2-door Escorts) are still worth buttons because restoring the bodywork is mega-expensive due to poor panel availability. I got rid of my last Cortina in about 1992. My Dad traded it in on a Rover 213 and got about £300 for it. It was quite straight too. I seem to have spent my entire motoring life driving stuff that was too old to be desirable and too new to be a classic.
I still have some fondness for MKV Cortinas as I proposed to my wife in one. It was the car everyone's Dad had and was, by the standards of the time, good for just about everything.
It was desperately out of date by 1982 but bear in mind that BL were still knocking out the Ital at the time and they though that the telescopic shocks on their cart springs were state of the art. Of the mainstream car makers, only Vauxhall had made the change to FWD in the incredibly conservative mid-range market. As a car, the Sierra was streets ahead but everyone and his dog hated how it looked and ridiculed the allegedly aerodynamic wheeltrims which later became the industry standard. It's amazing how far we've come though. The only real difference between a Ghia and a base spec was a bit of velour inside and a sunroof. No central locking, no e/w, no a/c, no 5-speed boxes.
