A CAR used in the Great Train Robbery has been sold by an Essex dealer.

A Lotus Cortina owned by heist mastermind, Bruce Reynolds, and used to reconnoitre the robbery scene, has been sold for about £100,000 to an unnamed buyer.

The souped-up 1963 Ford, which would have cost about £1,100 new, was sold by J D Classics, based on the Wycke Hill Business Park, Maldon. The car was advertised as “Lotus Mk1 Cortina. Bruce Reynolds’s Great Train Robbery car. BMK 723A. 3,000 miles from new. Impounded by the Metropolitan Police until 1980. Full history. Unique”.

The robbers stole about £2.6million from a mail train on August 8, 1963, after stopping it on a bridge in Buckinghamshire.

Reynolds was finally caught in 1968 and spent ten years in prison.

The Cortina is the latest historic car to be sold by JD Classics, which has handled motors owned or driven by racing legends including Fangio, Jack Brabham and Jim Clark.