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Mk1 Ford Escorts - share the love


Dick Longbridge

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10 minutes ago, Pete-M said:

I don't know about the fire. 

That's a shame, I got rear 1/4 trim cards, rear lights and front struts for my 1300 Sport from Graham.  Decent enough prices as well. 

He was definatly been the cheapest for all the panels I've bought, and he offered a very good price for the yellow mk1 so he's more than fair to deal with and a no agro sale.

Some of his stock would be irreplaceable and I bet it's took him a long time to recover from it.

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On 2/21/2021 at 9:59 AM, Dick Longbridge said:

Mk1 with a mk3 registration? Something really weird going on there. No trace of it anywhere, so long gone I assume, despite the huge work involved. 

My eyes still hurt, so here's a rather lovely Dutch more door to restore the balance. 

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I think that's a Portuguese plate, but a very nice four door regardless.

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Back in the early eighties, 83/4 I think, I had a Mk1 Escrote van on a G plate so quite an early one. It was somewhat basic but got me and my tools to work which was all I wanted. At the time I was living on the south coast in Weymouth and had met and chatted about motors with a surfer type who had made a shorty bay window VW van by chopping the middle third out and adding a Porsche engine. Permanent wheelie bars because, as you can imagine, no weight upfront.

Anyway, we were down the quay having a beer one evening and he said to me, "you've got an Escort do you want a Mk2 RS2000 ?".  "Sure I do but there's no way I can afford one". Says I. "Well I know one for £350" says he. "350 quid? You're havin a giraffe".  Turned out that some young guy had been going a bit too quickly, as one is wont to do at that age, and had rolled it side over  several times and had been brought to a halt by a big tree. Right across the roof at the B pillar. Every panel on both sides were dented, badly, and the only glass left was the rear screen. 

You may be thinking, why didn't he get a shell and swap everything over. Early 80's, Mk2's hadn't been out long enough to get one from a scrappy that was any good and the only other way would be one from Frod.  Worth doing now but not back then.

So we went and had a look. Mistake number one.  Mistake number two was  a 550 quid rebate from the tax man that was heating up alarmingly in my pocket. So, obviously, a deal was done. 

Had a mate who had been a mechanic but  had moved into recovery work. Still had a garage and kept his two trucks there. Got him to drag it over to his place and over the next week or two we swapped everything onto the van. It did go well I will say that. Outwardly a bog standard van, green with a brown tide line. Fun at the lights though.

 

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On 2/23/2021 at 2:27 AM, Noel Tidybeard said:

nope, no love for them here

an average car at the most- would rather have an ado16

When new the ADO16 did in fact outsell the Escort, the difference was that they also seemed to outrot them, when people,were trying to keep old bangers on the road in the late 70’s the Escort was a lot easier to work on and bodge through an MOT. 
Even without the image problems in popular culture Reginald Molehusband vs Roger Clark. Basil Fawlty vs Hannu Mikkola etc etc  The ‘ 1100’ was always seen as a car of the 60’s whereas the Escort was a trendy 70’s car and yes I know the MK1 only outlived the ADO16 by one year.

I would imagine a VdP 1300 was a similar price to a Mexico in about 1972, what a choice and I wonder if anybody ever had both on their shopping list?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last night I dreamt I had a mk 1 Escort under a tarpaulin at the bottom of my garden. It was an unusual model because it was a convertible conversion by Crayford and had also been fitted with a BL E series engine.

In the dream I was showing it to my uncle. He was unimpressed.

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On 2/11/2021 at 1:41 PM, wesacosa said:

my second car , in about 1998, was a 69 Mk1 1100 deluxe which had been resprayed yellow and had a vinyl roof and home made quarter bumpers. I wanted a sensible car with my Uni grant money but the Thursday morning trip to buy autotrader saw that in my price range (£350 I think) someone had nicked the rear seat and smashed the rear windows so it had two bits of hardboard painted black instead of windows. I ran for the rest of the uni year until it ran out of MOT and then dumped at a mates house who sold it for £100 and we split the money 🤦🤦🏼🤦🤦🏼🤦🏼🤦

Appears to still be on the road but now red and running as a 1.6 (DEV939G)

 

managed to find the only 2 pictures I took of my mk1, and they are shit 😂

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On 14/02/2021 at 21:25, AndyW201 said:

Great thread! I've always been a MK1/MK2 lover myself, which makes it all the more pathetic that I've only owned the one, and barely went anywhere in it!

First experience was in the early '80s. Dad had sold his L reg Hillman Avenger and bought a T reg Chrysler example. It was an ex police job, but was in great condition, apart from a bit of a tappety engine. Dad was persuaded by a local 'mechanic' that the engine was on its way out, due to the high mileage, and he had a 'good' engine ready to put in. Which was an absolute dog, shit starting, and never ran right. Defeated, Dad sold it at a loss, and needed a half decent, cheap car quickly as Mum had got a job at Billingham, meaning a 25 mile drive every day. My uncle Jimmy (him and Dad used to work on each others cars, but Jimmy was a Viva HC nut) got hold of an Escort MK1 estate, through a colleague at the fire station where he worked. PTO 715M was a very clean example for its age (8years old when we got it) though the shiny Sahara beige paint looked fairly recent and there looked like a couple of traces of filler here and there. What a bloody great car! Took mum to work and back 5 days a week, took us out on family trips and holidays, never needing more than the usual Sunday tinkering and servicing, and flew through the MOT, by all accounts it was rock solid underneath. It got a natty two tone paint job when Mum was turning right into a tight junction and caught the side on a MK3 Cortina bumper corner. Jimmy took it into the workshops at his work, filled the gouge along the sides, and painted the sides in Ford Roman bronze, up to the swage below the side windows. It looked pretty smart. Eventually it got traded in, in 1985 for a brand new B20 Nissan Sunny. The Escort soldiered on for another couple of years as a works van for a local window cleaner.

Mk1s & 2s were pretty much the default car of choice for the young lads around our way. Memorable ones which tickled this teenagers fancy in the late '80s - early '90s were

EWW 365H, 1300GT, white with red Mexico stripes, bubble arches and banded Lotus steels,

GVX 82N, 1300E, Jade green metallic, (nearly traded in my MK3 Escort for this one),

SKS 819T, This was a weird one, MK2 Mexico reshelled into a MK1, in primer with Mexico wings and wide superlite alloys. Was one of the quickest things in the area at the time. (The bloke that owned it would be my future boss when I went to work on the taxis!)

OXG 95M, (immaculate RS2000, white with blue stripes, guy has owned it now for over 30 years)

SOW 801N, Another RS2000, in THE colour scheme, Modena green with dark green stripes, white genuine Minilites with polished rims, quad Cibies up front and period Castrol windscreen sunstrip. Absolutely perfect.

GVN 685N, This was a customised one, that had had a bit of VW Cal-look type work done. De-bumpered and de chromed with smoothed front and rear valances, shaved door handles, rear light apertures welded over with new tail lights mounted behind circular holes, dropped on its arse, finished in peppermint green and running on RS 4 spokes with colour coded spokes (later on series 2 RS Turbo rims). Quite a well known car at the time, it was featured in a few car mags.

RHK 928M, a work colleague had this one. A 1300E 2 door that had been resprayed Daytona yellow. It looked just  gorgeous lowered 2" on polished RS 4 spokes, 1600 crossflow with 4-2-1 manifold, full Janspeed system, retrimmed fishnet Recaros and a pair of football sized Cibies. Sadly after a few years, and it was reaching the 25 year old mark, an MOT revealed that the sparkly stick would be needed, and that the strut brace was doing perhaps more work than it was designed for... Was swapped for a Mk2 Astra GTE.

And among the ones that got away,

PHL 730G, Early grey 1300cc van with Sun-Tor conversion. Think it was a retro-fit job as it had no side windows. Was up for sale at a local 'gravel lot with portakabin' dealer for £795 circa 1995. I was tempted but there looked like a lot of welded repairs with copious filler on the lower regions. But I had perverted ideas about the standard grey van exterior with lowered suspension, RS 4 spokes, fruity exhaust, etc,

OJR 585M, a tatty 2 door 1300L in white with period slotmags. Smithy, a local jack the lad who lived near us was smoking around in this one. For a 1300, it sounded quite lairy and certainly seemed to go well. He sold it to a lad called Shorty, a mate of my brother's, who was the go-to guy in our area for budget priced welding and mechanical repairs. He often bought shitters to do up and sell as well, and there was nowhere on an old Ford shell that he didn't know his way around. He got the required  bits of OJR done, resprayed it and MOTd it. I was taking driving lessons at the time, and once my brother heard that OJR was up for sale, he went to look over it. My brother had a bit of a reputation at the time as an "enthusiastic" driver (read- fucking maniac) and he came back saying "you are NOT buying that". It was a little bit naughty, being a 1300L shell with a 'built' 1760cc crossflow with twin Webers, going through a 1300 box and diff, strut brace, quick shift, 6 clock dash, and the rare RS centre console. It was quite a car but my brother was right, I'd have probably killed myself in it...

UXG 293J, getting nearer to my driving test now! In the local paper was an ad "MK1 Escort, recon engine, long MOT £295 Ono" That was the ad. It wasn't far so we went to have a look. It didn't look great, it had a horrible flat orange paint job with the roof in Matt black, both sides had been caught on a gatepost or similar and hadn't been filled very well before the paint job, and the bottom of the front wings looked a bit frilly. But! It was a 2 door! It had a 6 clock dash.  It had quarter bumpers. On looking underneath, I saw it had front discs, popped the bonnet and there was a remote servo. Could it be? Bloke came out with the log book, yup, 1300GT! Sadly the chances of the recent 'recon' engine being of equivalent GT spec were non existent. But, the underneath was rock solid, as were the front inner wings and strut tops (showing Goodwood green as the original colour). Sadly I forgot about this one and plumped for the rubbish MK1 Metro with MG bits I had looked at instead. Always kicked myself not getting the Escort though, especially when the bloke rang back the next week and said I could have it for £150 and Shorty said he could have had the bodywork sorted and sprayed in a couple of days...

Eventually, in 1995, I finally got hold of one. I was running around in a new Rover 100 at the time and was just starting to mod it a bit. I was seeing a girl in Hartlepool at the time, and every time I passed along Catcote Road, I saw VLY 484M, a Daytona yellow MK1 1300L 4 door parked up. After a while, a For Sale sign appeared. Over time the amount started to drop, once it dropped to £300, I had to stop and knock on the door.  I had a look around the car and I could not believe it. Wings, doors, sills, rear arches - like new. The rear panel had been replaced and the welding on the inside wasn't the tidiest, but it was solid enough. Only holes were one right in the middle of the front valance and a tiny bit of rot on one of the bonnet hinge panels. One of the best shells I have ever seen, shame it was a four door! Then, with the bonnet open I noticed, Shit! a servo! front discs! A 1600 crossflow with a 4-2-1 manifold! It went on... Swift big-bore exhaust, MK2 Ghia seats, RS 4 spokes (sadly the flat faced type, as seen on the Fiesta supersport) and four spare solid doors. The woman selling said she had only had banger racers at her door and if I wasn't going to banger race it, I could have it and the spare doors for £250. I couldn't get the cash out quick enough. The service history was amazing. It had one lady owner in Essex for the first 20 years and everything it needed, it got and everything was recorded. Piles of receipts for every oil change, waxoyling every few years, every time it had tyres (Mrs Moore must have been a quite sprightly old gal as she specified the front discs when new and she had a set of Rostyles with Goodyear Grand Prix S rubber fitted in 1979!). Only real problem it had was that the servo was knackered, and a replacement took some finding, one eventually turning up in a 1300E at the old H.G Block scrapyard in Gateshead. I got it MOTd and kept it at the back of the taxi yard I worked at. Sadly  I was working two jobs at the time and I barely had any spare time for a hobby car (nothing much has changed over the years). Before it deteriorated badly I put it up for sale. A guy from Sunderland phoned and  asked "the MK1 for sale, is the reg number VLY 484M?" It turned out he was previous-but-one owner, and he had done the body resto and the engine swap. He came up that afternoon in a Mk2 Cortina GT and a trailer, and it was away. I got back what I had spent on it, and sold the spare doors on later. Still regretted it.

I did like the one I eventually owned, just wish I'd had a few more as, barring a lottery win, there's no way I'll be having another!

Yay! Having a clean up today, and came across the one photo I have of VLY, circa 1996.

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  • 3 weeks later...
13 minutes ago, Austat said:

This looks good and is reasonably priced at 5 grand:

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Escort pickup converted from van to pickup for council use back when it was new.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1402292693469994/?ref=search&referral_code=marketplace_search&referral_story_type=post

That looks to be £5k pretty well spent I'd have thought. It looked lovely with the rear canopy setup a decade ago - would definitely be easy to add some value for not-a-lot of expenditure. 

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52 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

I really don't get converting the van into a pickup. The estate works much better.

One day I'll find the article on a converted van that had the lower roof from a saloon/estate, that looked good.

Here's a nice standard-looking Mk1 back in 2009:

1970 Ford Escort GT Mk1

I'm not going to copy and paste someone else's photo, but a quick Google will show what it looks like now.......

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I haven’t posted on this thread yet, as I didn’t really have much to say (!) except to bore you with tales of the very first car I drove... yep it was an escort Mk 1 - brown in colour.  
 

It was a work mates, we took it down to the local industrial estate and he allowed me to drive round the car parks and definitely not on the road, oh no no no that would have been illegal of course. ahem.
 

 I went on to get a driving license and buy a MK2 1.1 Low Compression with drum brakes all round, it was so gutless I had to ask people to get out on steep hills, so I could pull away.
 

anyway... reason for posting here, look at this I spotted this morning... I wonder how much ‘Arthur the Escort’’  might be worth? Did they actually make pickups like this?

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