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Ford Escort - the rally car dreams are made of |
When Ford gave birth to the Escort in 1968 to replace the Anglia, few people could have forecast just what effect the curvy saloon would have on the world of rallying across the globe.
Fewer still would have dared to predict that 40 years later the Escort not only remains a regular sight on rallies, but continues to notch up victories and championship titles. Surely the word 'legend' was invented with the Escort in mind!
When the original Mk 1 Escort appeared in 1968, Ford cars had already built a fine motorsport record, with high-profile victories in the world's most important rallies - Monte Carlo, Safari, Acropolis and RAC. The introduction of the Escort was to boost Ford's motorsport fortunes still further.
That year the 1.6-litre Escort Twin-Cam started a spectacular competition career with an astonishing opening season by winning the Circuit of Ireland, Tulip, Austrian Alpine, Acropolis and Scottish rallies within just eight weeks – with Britain's Roger Clark behind the wheel for four of those successes. By the end of the season, the Escort had also won the famous 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland, which helped Ford secure the World Rally Championship for Makes. Ford won the world championship again in 1969.
The 'works' Twin-Cam Escorts continued to win all over the world, while special overhead-valve engined cars dominated the 16,000-mile London-Mexico World Cup Rally of 1970, taking first, third, fifth, sixth and eighth places. Ford celebrated that triumph by introducing the limited-edition Escort Mexico road car.
As the Escort was developed through the 1970s, the 1.6-litre 16-valve RS1600 took over from the Twin-Cam. By this time, the cars had a great reputation for strength and reliability. Engines were progressively enlarged, first to 1.8-litres with 205bhp, and later to 2.0-litres with up to 250bhp.
By 1975, RS1600s had won classic rallies all over the world, triumphing in a variety of vastly-differing locations. The successes included the 1972 East African Safari, when Hannu Mikkola and Gunnar Palm became the first European-based crew to win this long and gruelling rally, three consecutive wins in the RAC Rally in Britain from 1972 - 1974, with Timo Mäkinen at the wheel twice, five wins on the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland (with Hannu Mikkola claiming four of those) and the Heatway Rally in New Zealand.
No matter what the competition, the surface, the conditions, or the country, around the globe the Escort was always successful, at all levels of the sport. Even less modified Group 1 Escorts (the 1970s equivalent of today's Group N 'showroom' category) were victorious, memorably with three outright wins in the 1974, 1975 and 1976 Tour of Britain events, which combined racing with rallying.
A new-style Escort, the MK 2 1.8-litre RS1800, emerged in 1975, and within months the Boreham-based works team had turned it into a formidable world championship machine. Its first outright victory came in the 1975 RAC Rally, when Mäkinen completed a personal hat-trick and Ford took its fourth straight win. Ford retained the RAC trophy the following year when Clark won for the second time in an Escort - four years after his first triumph.
