50 Cents - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - 05 - Ford Cortina MK1

Part of the Royal Australian Mint's "Muscle Cars" series, this issue commemorates the Ford Cortina MK1 — a car that, strictly speaking, was never a muscle car. British-designed and family-oriented, the Cortina was imported into Australia through the 1960s where it found an unlikely second life in touring car racing, competing directly against the Holden and Falcon heavyweights that defined Australian motorsport of the period. The inclusion here is a quiet acknowledgment of that racing pedigree rather than any claim to raw displacement.

The pad-printing technique used for the colour application was the defining production feature of the entire series.