Today's Cortina is an estate with plenty of room in the back, and apparently room enough up front for a 302. Will its price however, show room for improvement?

In a shocking turn of events yesterday 72% of you voted Nice Price for vehicle costing the better part of twenty grand… that has a nominal top speed of about 60 miles per hour. Of course that was a - made legendary in both myth and in song - and this one wore a VW Vanagon on its back like the world's most bad-ass hermit crab.

Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe contender is to Unimogs what Frida Kahlo was to unibrows, crazy…

Speaking of baby got back, when was the last time you saw a Cortina Estate rolling around? That's what I thought. Well plop your peepers on this and then get ready to pop them back in your head when you discover that its dropped Clark Kent power for that of a venerable and more Superman-like 302.

As Homer might say, hee-hee, yoo-hoo, ha-ha, oh my.

Ford's 2nd generation Cortina, like the Neue Klasse BMW and Datsun Fairlady, made being little and boxy trés cool. The wagon edition, with its subtle belt line wave and airy greenhouse, is perhaps the most earnest appearing and lends itself well to the roll of practical performer. Here, it gets the aforementioned small block V8 plus a T5 five-speed gearbox to back that up.

The wagon's stock rear end would likely cower in fear at all the torque now provided by twice the cylinder count and more than three-times the displacement, and so that's been given the heave-ho in favor of an 8" unit from a Mustang II, keeping it in the family. Brakes are said to be bigger GT discs/calipers up front and the Mustang's drums in back. Of course you better have a pretty strong set of legs on you because those brakes are not boosted.

Holding all that stuff up are a set of what are described as 13" Shelby alloys from a Capri and which are the only external indication of this car's true intent. The rest is all stock Cortina, which in my book is awesome, as is the custom-painted vanity plate on the hatch.

The rest of the paint is English white, appropriate for an English car, while the interior looks to be back in black. Sadly, this wagon doesn't have the added gauges of the GT dash. It does have an AM radio though, so if you're in LA and have got 22 minutes, it'll give you the world.

There's also a wood-rimmed wheel that's nicely fatter than stock and velour-covered seats to hold you in place. Parts for these cars are getting to be extremely difficult to find so having pretty much everything intact on this one is an excellent place to start.

Okay, I'm just going to say right here that I totally dig this ride. I would so rock it if I had the money to do so… Ah yes, there is that. The seller of this amazingly tidy and today pretty rare Cortina wagon is asking $12,995 for the right to have your name on its pink. That's a sizable chunk of change, and of course an amount that would buy you one of any number of nice 2002s or Datsun 510s, both of which hailed from the same era and were similarly boxy. Of course the Bimmer didn't come in a natty wagon as did this or the Datsun.

What do you think about this cool Ford mashup of English wagon and Colonial power? Is $12,995 a fair price for such a beast? Or, is this an English Estate that just won't sell?

You decide!

, or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to The Anti Stig for the hookup!

Help me out with NPOCP. Click to send a me a fixed-price tip, and remember to include your Kinja handle.