While the title of Ford Corsair was actually given to an entirely unrelated car produced by Nissan and marketed by Ford Australia in the late eighties, the model that is now considered as a classic is the Ford Corsair that was made by Ford Britain in the sixties. This is the version we will be looking at here.

The original version was actually named the Ford Consul Corsair and was introduced in 1963 while production of this model ended in 1970. Regarded as a midsize car the Consul Corsair was available in both estate and saloon models, while a convertible version -- now extremely rare and very collectable -- was also built by the company known as Crayford.

Another extremely rare and collectable version is the two-door Corsair, which was produced in Britain to order only. In addition, there is said to be one single example only of the Consul Corsair Standard still in existence.

The Corsair was in fact, part of the Consul range that also included the Classic, the Capri and the Cortina. While the design of each of these cars was obviously quite different, they all shared many similarities in terms of construction and mechanical components.

The Ford Corsair itself was mainly characterised by its unique design, which was considered as fairly bold at the time of production. In particular, the sharp, V-shaped, horizontal front end with inset headlights gave the car its unique and unusual appearance. This also gave the car a certain aerodynamic appearance which was further extenuated by the back end, where the fin-style back wings gave the car a jet-like look. In fact many believe the styling was inspired by the classic, American built Ford Thunderbird model of the early sixties.

The original engine was a 1.5 litre, single carburettor that produced 60bhp. Then in 1965 the engine was modified with a V4 conversion, which many specialists believe was actually a poorer version as the car would tend to feel much coarser on the road. A 2.0 litre version was subsequently added in 1966.

A year later an estate version was produced as was an 'executive-style' model that included a vinyl roof and stylish wheel trims. The executive model was introduced to offer a less expensive alternative to the Rover 2000 which at the time was dominating the recently defined executive saloon market.

Unfortunately, the Corsair's road performance was regarded as being less than impressive with an average top-speed of a mere 93 mph. However, when a British racing team set new records at Monza, Italy, where they drove a Corsair for 15,000 miles at an average speed of over 100 mph, the car's bad reviews were proven to be unfounded. Nonetheless, in 1970 production of the Corsair ceased as the Ford company concentrated on the increasingly popular Cortina and the new, smaller Ford Escort.