Tuesday 1st August 2017

Ford P100 XR8: You Know You Want To

After an 80s fast Ford? For £14K you could have a FWD Escort... Or a V8 pick-up!

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While we can all look on astounded at the money now required for a classic fast Ford, the deeper reality is really rather sad. Not only does it mean fewer and fewer people can actually afford Sierras, Escorts and Fiestas, but it also means less of them being used. If you spent £100K on an RS500, would you be out driving it on a Sunday morning?

Cortina at the front...

What fast Ford fans need to do, then, is think a bit differently. One possibility is just to get something more modern; a Mondeo ST220 is very rare, very good and still very cheap, for example. And a standard, orange, five-cylinder Focus ST will surely always be in demand; this one is £7K.

The other option is a proper wildcard, and that's what we have here. This is a Cortina-based P100 pick-up, a car that was made for 20 years between the 70s and 90s with Cortina and Sierra front ends. You probably used to see a few knocking around, before they all sort of disappeared. But as you might have guessed by the 'XR8' tag though, this is no regular Cortina pick-up - there's a V8 in it.

Yes, like the other South African fast Fords featured on PH, this XR8 has 302 cubic inches of Detroit muscle under the bonnet. So it's 4.9-litres rather than 5.0 but, still, look at it! That's what V8s should look like, shiny and simple and so damn cool. There's a manual gearbox as well...

This isn't some rolling shell project pick up either, with recent new dampers, powder coating underneath to prevent rust and gleaming red paintwork. For something that's now 36 years old, it looks remarkably good. Of course there's only so much you can tell from the pictures, but there's much to be encouraged by.

... not a Cortina at the back!

And it's for sale at £14K. That's quite a lot of money for a toy - kudos if you did take it on as a commercial vehicle - but not ridiculous as fast Fords go. See, value is always relative. And when an Escort RS Turbo is the same money as the XR8, things are starting to look up for the pick-up. Which one is actually faster on a road is up for debate, but which one is going to cause the bigger stir at a classic car meet? Exactly. And when some Fiestas are for sale at £30K, this looks like an absolute bargain. Well, almost.

The P100 is registered over here, will be sold with 12 months' MoT and is HPI clear. There's even finance available, adding further temptation... Yes, it's a bit silly and, yes, it doesn't carry the same prestige as a UK car, but that's the whole point. As the market becomes ever more serious, so the fun is being taken out of some great old cars. For showing two fingers to the car collecting and cocooning crew, for being different and for presumably being hilarious fun, it's hard to think of much better than a V8 Cortina pick-up. Go on!

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FORD CORTINA XR8 PICK UP
Price: £13,950
Why you should: V8!
Why you shouldn't: Er, image?

See the original advert here

[drgoatboy]

A friend of mine had the sierra shaped P100 with the horrible diesel unit (non turbo) that you could get in the Sierra back in the day.
Surprisingly tail happy with nothing in the back. Imagine this would be a hoot, but £14k worth of fun? not so sure.....