Russ Cooper Rallying: 1972-3, Our "New" Ford Prefect 1500GT

“New” Ford Prefect – registration RDF980.

One of the top race or rally cars for clubmen in the late 1960’s was the 105E Anglia fitted with a 1500GT engine from the Cortina but they were too expensive for us so Oliver and I bought another Prefect from a bloke called Peter Hancocks in Gloucester. This had already been converted for the 1500GT engine but it needed a lot of work to make it roadworthy, and we spent most weekends for the next year or more working on it.

Interior as we bought it.

Engine bay looks pretty rough


Looks like we borrowed the garage

Engine bay almost finished

Interior still a work in progress

The car mostly lived on a wide grass verge outside Olivers parents house so work could only happen when weather permitted. I well remember tinkering and listening to Noel Edmonds Sunday morning show on Radio 1. Happy days !!

Sometimes engines have a problem

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Update: June 2013. Sadly Oliver's Mum died recently and I called round at the house. The evidence of our rally car build is still there, as you can see from these pictures.

Rally stickers on the garage door

Trying out a logo for our company ToCo Engineering

You can see where we painted the bootlid !

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We learned a lot and did at least 3 rallies that I can remember before rolling it on the Halewood Rally down near Carmarthen in 1973 and it was scrapped after that.