Using the project name of "Archbishop", management at Ford of Britain in Dagenham created a family-sized car that they could sell in large numbers. The chief designer was Roy Brown Jr., the designer of the Edsel, who had been banished to Dagenham following the failure of that car.[8] The Cortina, aimed at buyers of the Morris Oxford Farina and Vauxhall Victor, was launched on 20 September 1962.[9]

Also from 1962, it was manufactured in other countries such as at the Ford factory in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

The car was designed to be economical to buy, cheap to run, and easy and inexpensive to produce in Britain. The front-wheel drive configuration used by Ford of Germany for the new Ford Taunus P4, a similar-sized model, was rejected in favour of traditional rear-wheel drive layout. Originally to be called Ford Consul 225, the car was launched as the Consul Cortina until a modest facelift in 1964, after which it was sold simply as the Cortina.