The 58-year-old motor mechanic is Ballarat’s (and perhaps even Australia’s) “Mr Cortina”, at least when it comes to the original Mark One model.

He has half a dozen in his dream garage in Ballarat North, several at home and a couple here and there among his otherwise broad and exotic collection of cars.

Mr Shirley can lay the blame for his consuming passion for the original Cortina on a woman, namely his late partner Julie Osbourne. “It was Julie who got me into Cortinas.

She had a real passion for them,” Mr Shirley said.

“To be honest, I used to hate them but I guess I got caught up in her passion for them.

“When we met, I had three cars: the HQ, a Honda Civic and a work car, and she had two Cortinas.

“As a one-eyed Holden fan I had tunnel vision about cars.

But when I was driving in Julie’s Cortina one day I realised it was so nimble and stopped really well.

So I thought I’d buy one. I got it for $500 in Creswick. It went okay but it was too slow, so I put in a Nissan Sylvia turbocharged 1.8-litre in it when Sylvias were brand new.”

Mr Shirley still has that car. It won the Ford Cortina class outright at the 2009 All Ford Day in Geelong. It ended up being the first of dozens he has bought.

At one stage, he had 27 Mk I Cortinas although he has since scaled back his collection.

“There was a time, say about 10 years ago, when it was an addiction,” Mr Shirley admits.

“I had 27 but it’s easy to do when you can buy cars for $500. “It really was too much. You begin to forget what you’ve got.”

Fortunately, with Mr Shirley’s background as a mechanic (his father had a Massey Ferguson maintenance centre in Skipton), he is able to work on the cars himself and with his friends.

Mr Shirley said later Cortinas tarnished the nameplate’s reputation but the original Mk I Cortina, built between 1963 and 1966 is rightly regarded as a classic.

“They were the ones which won Bathurst in 1963, 1964 and 1965, so they have real racing credibility,” he explained. “Mark Is tend to the only Cortinas which people are interested in.

“They were very basic but they were a very good package for their day. They had Macpherson strut suspension in 1963, and front disc brakes.

“Later ones were terrible bloody things. They tried to put the big Ford Falcon six-cylinder engine in a car never designed for it.

“They got too hot and they couldn’t handle.”

Julie’s love of the Mk 1 Cortina manifests itself in a popular website: www.cortina-mk1.com, which is a hub for Mk 1 owners across Australia.

After Julie died following a short battle with cancer, Mr Shirley took up the standard and is now the cortina-mk1.com webmaster.

Cortinas are not the extent of his love of cars though.

He also owns a Nissan GTR R32 (the original “Godzilla”), a Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG, an E320 Elegance, a Lexus LX470 four-wheel-drive, a VU-model Holden SS Ute and very formidable power boat.

“As a mechanic you get to test drive other people’s cars,” he says.

“You get to learn every car has good points and bad points. “Because of that I appreciate all sorts of cars. I’m not anti-anything.”

More great Ballarat Cars stories, pictures and video here.