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What Is a Ford Escort Cosworth? |
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OK. Assuming you live in North America, you already have an image of the Ford Escort - However it is not the 'REAL' image of what a true Escort is. Confused?? Let me explain. |
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If you ask any North American when the Ford Escort was introduced, they'll probably say something like 1980. But that date would only reflect when it was introduced in Canada & the United States. The "true" Ford Escort was actually a totally different car and it was introduced in Europe in 1970. This is known as the Mark 1 in British circles - the First Generation. Unlike the 1980 Ford Escort sold in North America, these were rear wheel drive and had an excellent reputation. |
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| Then came the second generation of the Ford Escort. Again, this was not sold in the US/Canada at all. Based on the same rear wheel drive formula, it too enjoyed the same success and became a very popular car in Europe. By the end of the second generation, Ford had decided a new radical change for it's 3rd generation Ford Escort.. |
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| This new radical change was, like the Fiesta, the Escort had now become a front wheel drive car. New engines were developed using Ford's 'Compound Valve Head' design, better know as the CVH. Ford decided to now (based on the great success of the earlier Escorts) to market the Escort as a World Car. What 'World Car' means is that it will marketed around the world wherever Ford had a significant production dominance. This is the first of the Escorts North Americans will remember as their first generation. However the North American Escorts did unfortunatly use a inferior non-European-built CVH engine which had it's maladies. This began to ruin the wonderful reputation that Ford Escorts enjoyed in Europe (European Escorts were using the better British-made CVH engine). Due to this stigma, Ford decided to do something about it when the fourth generation was introduced in the early.90s. |
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A 3rd Generation European Escort - Appx. Same as the North American 1st Generation Escort |
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left: A European Escort |
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Ford of America (FoMoCo), rather than rely on adopting the fourth generation of European Escorts decided on doing things different for the Escort line in North America. In an effort to rid the bad reliability reputation and save money they went to their Mazda divison and decided to use the Mazda Protege (Mazda 323) as the basis of the North American Escort. They rebadged the Mazda and gave it a reskin to resemble the European Ford Escort line. While it helped, the Mazda too wasn't as good as Ford's own European Escort line in terms of reliability. So if you ask anyone in America, what they think of the Ford Escort, the answer is usually negative. |
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left: A North American Escort (a rebadged Mazda Protege) |
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| Thanks for the history lesson but what does this have to do with the Escort Cosworth then? |
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The Ford Escort Cosworth was based off the European Escort. It is unfair as a North American to base this car on the reputation of the US/Canadian Escort which in the case of the last generation offered, wasn't even a REAL Escort at all, but a rebadged Mazda. Furthermore, the body was custom made from some European Escort panels, some custom, and the actual floorpan and drivetrain was based off a Ford Sierra Cosworth 4x4, a car which was never offered in America. (The only Sierra ever brought to the US was the Merkur XR4Ti) The Escort Cosworth was assembled at Karmann (like the Merkur XR4Ti) at Osnabruck, Germany. Even though it is a Ford, it does not share it's reputation or parts with any of it's US/Canadian built models either. For more information on the Ford Escort Cosworth, follow this link |
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