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The name Ford Corsair was used both for a car produced by Ford of Britain between 1963 and 1970 and for an unrelated Nissan based automobile marketed by Ford Australia between 1989 and 1992. ==Ford Consul Corsair (1963-1965), Ford Corsair V4 (1965-1970) - Britain== The Ford Consul Corsair (later known simply as the Ford Corsair), manufactured by Ford UK, is a midsize car that was introduced at the London Motor Show in October 1963 and available as either a saloon or estate from 1964 until 1970. There was also a convertible version built by Crayford, which is now very rare and highly sought after as a classic. Two-door Corsair saloons are also rare, being built only to order in the UK, although volume two-door production continued for some export markets. Only one example of the fleet model, the Consul Corsair Standard, is known to exist. The Corsair replaced the Consul Classic range and was essentially a long wheelbase re-skinned Cortina (the windscreen and much of the internal panelling was the same). The Corsair had unusual and quite bold styling for its day, with a sharp horizontal V-shaped crease at the very front of the car into which round headlights were inset. This gave the car an apparently aerodynamic shape. The jet-like styling extended to the rear where sharply pointed vertical light clusters hinted at fins. The overall styling was clearly inspired by the early 1960s Ford Thunderbird, though in transferring the look to a British family car, the overall effect is something of an acquired taste. This American styling cue had also been adapted by Ford, in Germany, for the (at the time controversially styled) 1960 Ford Taunus 17M. The car was initially offered with the larger , single carburettor, 1.5 L Kent engine that was also used in the smaller Cortina, in standard and GT form. The range was revised in September 1965, adopting new Ford Essex V4 engines, making it rough at idle and coarse on the road. This engine was available in 1663 cc form at first, but later in 1966, a larger 2.0 litre L version was offered alongside. One marketing tag line for the V4 models was "The Car That Is Seen But Not Heard", which was a real stretch of the ad man's puff, given the inherent characteristics of the engine. The other tag was "I've got a V in my bonnet". A 3.0 litre conversion using the Ford Essex V6 engine was available in Britain in conjunction with Jeff Uren's Raceproved company and was known as the "Corsair Savage." An estate car by Abbott was added to the range on the eve of the Geneva Motor Show in March 1966, and in 1967, the Corsair underwent the Executive treatment like its smaller Cortina sibling, resulting in the 2000E model with dechromed flanks, which necessitated non styled-in door handles, special wheel trims, reversing lights, a vinyl roof, and upgraded cabin fittings. The 2000E, priced at £1,008 in 1967, was positioned as a cut price alternative to the Rover 2000, the introduction of which had effectively defined a new market segment for four cylinder executive sedans in the UK three years earlier: the Corsair 2000E comfortably undercut the £1,357 Rover 2000 and the £1,047 Humber Sceptre. The Corsair's performance was good for a car of its type and period, with a top speed in its 2.0 L V4 version of as measured by the speedometer,〔Measured at by Motoring Which? April 1968 issue〕 and exceptional acceleration at full throttle resulting from the progressive 28/36mm twin-choke Weber downdraught carburettor. A popular story circulated that if the car were driven at speeds over , its wedge-shaped nose would generate sufficient lift to make the vehicle dangerously unstable. The Corsair was replaced by the Mk 3 Cortina in 1970, at which time the enlarged Cortina became Ford's midsized car, and a new smaller model, the Escort, had already filled in the size below. The new Ford Capri took on the performance and sporty aspirations of the company. Over its six-year production, 310,000 Corsairs were built. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ford Corsair」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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