BACK in the 1960s if you wanted to give a car an upmarket feel you added some wood. For some reason, marketing-types were convinced that adding dead tree to a machine made from metal and plastic added a veneer (pun intended) of sophistication.

This trend continued for decades - even in the 1990s Ford insisted on adding fake wood to the cabin of anything wearing a Ghia badge.

But before car manufacturers started scattering mahogany veneer around the interior of its cars there was an abortive attempt to stick it on the outside.

The fake wood explosion began in America (where else) because it was a cut-price alternative to genuine wood-bodied station wagons. Buyers called them 'woodies'. The last mass production American station wagons constructed from real wood were the Buick Super Estate Wagon and the 1953 Roadmaster Wagon.

Mock wood trim was added to Fords, Cadillacs and Mercurys from the 1950s onwards. Chevrolet even tried to make the steel body of the Styleline DeLuxe look like wood by painting it with a fake grain.

This did not go unnoticed by Ford of Britain, where a modest sliver of pseudo wood was applied to the exterior of the Squire estate in 1955.

By the time the Consul Cortina came around seven years later, fake wood was firmly embedded in the Ford marketing psyche so it was inevitable some bright spark would suggest adding it to the estate variant.

The Cortina had been designed with freakish precision (although the original name, Caprino, had to be changed at short notice when someone realised it meant goat's dung in Italian) to take on the mantle of Britain's best-selling car. It was nice-looking, simple to maintain, fast enough for motorway work and capable of transporting a family in comfort. Ford asked Britain's drivers what they wanted in a car and built it for them.

The result was a sensation.

When it went on sale in 1962 Ford could barely keep up with the demand.

In a very early example of canny product placement, Ford did a deal with Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas, producers of the Carry On films, to provide a fleet of free Cortinas for Carry On Cabby. Millions of cinemagoers saw the stylish GlamCabs Fords, driven by attractive girls like Amanda Barrie, see off the dowdy fleet of Austin A50s and A60s used by Sid James and Charles Hawtree.

Hidden among all this conspicuous success was a rare marketing stumble.

An estate variant of the Mk I Cortina was a part of the plan from the start and it duly arrived alongside the saloon in 1962.

A year later Ford launched the Super estate - a luxurious version with such posh extras as wood panels down the side and on the tailgate. Supposedly inspired by the US-only Ford Country Squire and Mercury Colony Park wagons, the super estate sat at the top of the Cortina range, costing £785 19s 7d.

The Consul Cortina Super Estate was so posh it even sired its own miniature - Corgi Toys produced a scale model version complete with a plastic golfing dad figure, a caddie boy, golf bag, opening tailgate and spring suspension. Today a boxed version is worth hundreds of pounds.

There was just one problem with the wood panels: they weren't wood.

To save time and money Ford used Di-Noc, a stick-on vinyl product that could simulate wood grain (from a distance). To look at, this vinyl cladding was similar to linoleum flooring - only Ford plastered it down the side of an estate car.

The fake vinyl was framed by strips of 'seasoned pine' according to the sales brochure, but even this wasn't real. Closer inspection revealed it to be glass fibre.

The Super Estate 'woody' was a flop. What was elegant and sophisticated in America was vulgar and hideous in Britain, not least because UK cars were smaller and the plastic wood tended to dominate.

Given the choice most Cortina buyers opted for a two-tone paint job instead and the wood panels were quickly ditched.

Ironically, a year later in 1964 those forward-thinking types at Morris launched a genuine woody - in the ancient, but well-loved, shape of the Morris Minor 1000 Traveller.

Unkind critics likened it to a dodgem parked boot-first in a shed, but the Traveller achieved the kind of success Ford had been hoping for. Today it is considered a classic.

Ford, of course, had the last laugh. The Cortina carried on through five generations and became Britain's best-selling car of the 1970s. And those loathsome Di-Noc panels are worth a mint among modern-day collectors because of their rarity.