Geoghegan Family Cortina In New Zealand

[Ray Bell]

I think we once established that the Geoghegans had two Cortina GTs in modified form...

One a 2-door and one a 4-door. Isn't that right? Dale would know, I'd expect.

[Terry S]

I think we once established that the Geoghegans had two Cortina GTs in modified form...

One a 2-door and one a 4-door. Isn't that right? Dale would know, I'd expect.

Yes the Geoghegans had two black Cortina GT’s, one four door and one two door.
The four door was released in Australia some time before the two door. Ford gave them a four door to develop for racing. At this time they were also entering four doors for Firth and Reynolds.
I am not sure how long the Geoghegans raced it, and I can see no photos of it on the regular sites.
The main touring car event of 19864 was the Australian Touring Car Championship. This was a single race and not a series. It was held at Lakeside in July.
The week before Ian Geoghegan was practicing the four door at Oran Park when he inverted it at Energol and wrote it off.
Ford immediately sent up a two door from its press fleet of two door Cortinas. All the good bits were hurriedly transferred across to the two door. They just made it to Lakeside practice in time.
Geoghegan went on to win the ATCC, his first of five. The other four were in Mustangs.
With their Lotus Cortina on the way, the two door GT was redundant to their needs.
Tom Geoghegan (Ian’s father) did a deal to sell the car to local Liverpool racer Barry Seton. There was an unusual clause in that if Seton wanted to sell it at any time the Geoghegans had first right of refusal to buy it an agreed price.
Seton only ran the car at two meetings, Warwick Farm and Oran Park. He quickly realised it was only as fast as his old 48-215Holden. After a strip down they realised it needed a serious upgrade to become competitive. “Our winning GT Cortina of the recent Lakeside meeting did not perform as expected because some of the good gear was missing”. “Tom Geoghegan purchased the car back without hesitation or question for the original purchase price”. The quotes are from Joel Wakely’s excellent book.
Sometime later the car was sold to George Garth from NSW Central Coast. Realising it could not compete against the increasing number of Lotus Cortinas in improved production he ran it as a Sports Sedan. He was very successful at Oran Park, prior to the arrival of more sophisticated V8 sports sedans.
Over time he took a lot of weight out of it and fitted a Lotus twin cam engine. The most obvious external change was the fitting of split front bumpers.
It is understood Garth still retains the car.

[superroo69]

Hi Terry

Thanks for filling in an important fact that had me puzzled. I was aware that Barry Seton raced the car - based on race reports which indicated that both the Geoghegan GT Cortina and the Lotus Cortina raced in the same event, with Seton in the Lotus - but was not aware that he owned it at that time. This now makes more sense. And yes... George still owns the car, but according to Graham Mein, its in fairly poor shape and despite George's assertions that he will fix it one day, Graham thinks this is unlikely and the car might end up just rotting away. Sad.