1971 Ford Cortina Savage Estate

Jeff Uren was a very well respected race driver and engineer. He drove in the inaugural year of the British Saloon Car Championship in 1958. The following year he won the series in a Ford Zephyr beating the 'Works' cars and drivers, causing Ford to offer him a job. He left in 1962 and teamed up with John Willment preparing and racing Ford Galaxies, Falcons, Cobras and of course GT40's. When Willment stopped racing Uren set up his own company with a plan to fit larger capacity engines into production cars, the Ford Cortina being the most popular. The Savage had arrived. Not surprisingly they were very well regarded and even had tacit approval from Ford. Eventually some 1700 cars were converted by the time these upgrades finished. He was also good at marketing and understood the need for 'hero cars' within a model line-up and so catered for a willing market.

The Ford Cortina Savage offered here is Jeff Uren's own car and you can rest assured this conversion had the best of everything and would have been 'signed off' by the founder himself. It was ordered and delivered in 1971 to Jeff Uren Ltd and is one of only two Savage Estates they converted. In addition to the Savage specification of Ford 3.0 litre Essex V6, Automatic transmission, Lotus gauges and RS seats were also fitted. The Savage remained Jeff's daily transport for twenty years before being sold in 1991. The fourth owner acquired the car in 2001 and had a full restoration carried out to a very high and exacting standard retaining all of the originality. The owners' handbook and service books are present.

Few conversions outside of the factory offerings conjure up such affection and credibility as Uren's "Savages'. This is a very significant part of the seventies tuning scene, it has an impeccable history that is interlocked with Ford. Outstanding value and provenance.