A friend of mine bought a Cortina GT500 from a Brisbane Ford dealer in 1966. The dealer had held onto the car for several months after its release, the car was still new.

The salesman was a Kiwi. He told my friend that his family owned the Ford dealership in Auckland where Team Lotus worked on Jim Clark's Tasman entry in 1965. But it could have been 1966.

Anyway, after he'd handed over the money and signed all the papers, my friend was presented with a Lotus gear knob by the Kiwi salesman. This came as a complete surprise. The story he told was that it had been purloined from the Lotus during the car's time in the Auckland dealer's workshop.

He still has the gear knob. And the GT500.

But is the story true?

Or is it possibly true of another Ford dealer, not in Auckland but near another circuit used in the Tasman Cup?