Want to buy this MkV Cortina? It’s first owner, Frank Sheach, has put the unregistered car up for sale after owning it for just seven years.

Frank bought the car in 2005 from the supplying dealer, TC Harrison in Dundee.  But the dealer had owned the car since it was delivered from the factory back in 1982. When this Venetian Red MkV Cortina rolled off the production line, no one knew it was set for a very different career to most of its fellow 2.0 GLs. “It’s one of the last built,” Frank says. “I wish it had been a Ghia, but there you go.”

We asked how the car ended up in this potentially unique, unregistered status. “It was delivered to TC Harrison and straight away covered with thick anti-corrosion wax over every surface underneath. Then it was put into heated storage as part of the TC Harrison car collection”. So it’s still in perfect condition? “Absolutely,” reckons Frank. “It’s not just like new. It is new”.

With its long-term storage and subsequent display alongside new Fiestas in Harrison’s Scottish dealership, is still effectively a brand new Cortina MkV, complete with that particular 1980s new Ford smell. “That caused me some problems,” Frank says. “I had spent a long time and a small fortune restoring a MkV, then just as I was finishing it, this one became available. So I bought it intending to register and use it.

“But my fellow club members in the Tayside Classic Car Club urged me not to register and use it, and the DVLA was not helpful either – initially they said it was a new Ford from the supplying dealer, so would get an 05 plate on it. But that would have meant it would have to meet contemporary Construction and Use regulations, meaning compliance with emissions, airbags, ABS and such like. So they then said it would have to go on a Q plate, which I fought. By the time they’d agreed it could go on an age-related plate, I’d decided I wouldn’t drive it or register it, just take it to shows so other people could also enjoy it.”

So what is the last un-registered, 92-miles-from-new Cortina worth? Frank would like to know as he’s keen to “sell it on to a good home.” Should he auction it? Put it up for grabs online? Or accept a good offer from a club member? That’s for the market to decide.