Once below the snowline, we veer east again under a freezing, clear sky, the crescent moon peeping between peaks as we home in on the welcoming lights of Cortina. It’s been a brilliant drive and, unlike our counterparts from 1964, we’ve kept our borrowed Ford largely horizontal and entirely intact. Mind you, there is one remaining Olympic bobsleigh track wide enough to drive a car down. Now we just need them to launch the Ford St Moritz.
The Crazy Gang
The 1964 Salute to Cortina Champions celebrated more than 200 competitive wins in 26 countries for the humble Ford Cortina, launched just two years before. Alongside Jim Clark, the field of 19 drivers included luminaries such as Colin Chapman, John Whitmore, Jack Sears, Vic Elford, Eric Jackson, local Olympic sledder Lino Zanettin and speed polymath Henry Taylor – a British bobsleigh team captain turned Formula 1 pilot turned Ford works saloon racer.
Their challenge was to navigate a half-mile section of the Cortina d’Ampezzo bobsleigh track used for the 1956 Winter Olympics in a collection of two- and four-door Cortinas. The cars came in road-going GT trim, which meant an uprated, 78bhp version of the 1498cc Kent four-pot with a Cosworth camshaft and a kerb weight of 864kg – though some baited gravity by driving four-up.
As for the results, a Ford insider reported: “It was never intended to be competitive but rather a celebration of the Cortina’s successes. However, it quickly developed into a match between the race and rally drivers, with each side doing considerably more runs than originally envisaged. The Cortinas were absolutely bog-standard – with the result that the front suspension struts broke through the top mounts.”
Competitive spirits thus unsated, a snowball fight broke out, during which Clark slipped a disc in his back, causing him to wear a corset for the subsequent South African Grand Prix (which he won). He really did need that doctor after all.
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