Ah, the Escort. Player on the world stage. Ready for anything. But at the end of the night, left alone here in the yard. Ford made a splash with the supposed “World Car” Escort, although in reality it shared precious little with its namesake across the pond. Over here we really only ever got neutered, “safe and sane” examples. Even the GT versions weren’t anything overly hot, more show than go. The Turbo GT? How many ever left the showroom or even entered it? However, as a basic commuter or run-around car for a budget conscious shopper that for some reason didn’t have a Toyota, Nissan, or Honda showroom nearby, this was still a big improvement relative to what came before.
While the whole Escort range in these early ’80’s years wasn’t unattractive and featured generally modern styling reminiscent of the Euro version, the wagon especially managed to look good, solid, and like a decent proposition. Even with a modicum of US-market gingerbread, it didn’t go overboard with it.
No, I shan’t tease you any longer, once again we have a vehicle with a red interior that looks almost showroom fresh. Actually that’s not just red, it’s “Canyon Red” in Ford-speak, paired with Oxford White as the exterior color like any contractor grade F-150 or Ford van.
This here is a GL trim level, the Escort was available as an L, GL, LX, GT and Turbo GT, although the latter two were not available in wagon form. In fact I don’t believe I’ve seen an Escort Turbo GT although it exists in the brochure. The GL though has many of the basic creature comforts included and was a decent middle of the road option. The GL was also the only trim level that was available with a “Squire” option, a decidedly non-euro woodgrain exterior trim package.
Instead, this one sports optional mirrors in body color. According to the brochure “bright”. i.e. chrome are standard and there is an option for “racing” mirrors and yet another option for “sport” mirrors. The “racing” version apparently comes with a convex one on the right side, the “sport” one doesn’t specify. Does the average Escort wagon purchaser really need three mirror options on one trim level? I spent way too much time looking at the brochure, just astounded (and jealous, frankly) at all the ways you could option your cheap wagon back in the day.
The seat upholstery looks wonderfully durable and actually comfortable in the way that many fabrics of yesteryear were. There’s a whole lotta red goin’ on here, folks, but at least the shifter gets a mini console around it as opposed to the Fairmont we saw a few weeks ago where it just kind of poked out of the floor. The steering wheel contains the Ford “Fingertip Speed Control” buttons, there’s space for oddments on top of the dash and also fairly plush looking carpets.
However, fairly sad-sack instrumentation remains a hallmark of the domestic budget class. As is fairly common on European cars at least, the speedometer seems to have little markings on it that may indicate the shift points for maximum economy but they look a bit weird here, with perhaps a range at 10-15, another at 35-40 and another around 75mph which seems somewhat odd. The first two also have two dots each, the last has one dot.
But perhaps it’s for something different as these cars also had an upshift indicator light that came standard with the manual equipped 1.6l cars Not much excitement overall but at least it’d be hard to run out of gas, that gauge is a tough one to overlook.
Unfortunately we can’t figure out the true mileage from this odometer…
The center stack has all kinds of goodness, the buyer here went all out. First, an AM/FM and Cassette stereo unit. And then they sprung for the A/C as well. And this car has a 5-speed, still not always standard in this class at the time. The cigarette lighter is buried all the way at the bottom just like in the Fairmont.
And up above, next to the piece of clear tape covering up a minor wound, is the upper console, with date and time displays as well as map/reading lights, all with a red surround. This is the kind of stuff that costs a manufacturer money, stocking all these little optional parts in various colors, no wonder we only have two interior colors nowadays and something like this would just as likely come in black or be engineered into the headliner to avoid the colored surround trim piece altogether.
It’s pretty snug back here, but the seat folds 50/50. No cupholders, lap belts only. At least the windows roll down, albeit manually.
Even the messy cargo area has plush-ish carpet on the hatch as well and there’s a cargo cover, not currently deployed with what looks like a full size spare under the floor area. Ford advertised a total of 58 cu. ft. of cargo space back here, presumably with the rear seats folded.
Remember the 5-speed? That denotes this engine as being the High Output 1.6l for high-altitude states as the regular 1.6 CVH four wasn’t offered with the 5-speed. So this engine produced 80hp as opposed to between 65- 70 for the standard one. There was a fuel-injected version available but you had to step up the at least the LX trim level for that.
Lots of rock chips but that’s nothing unusual here in Colorado. The passenger side headlight trim looks a little askew but that’s because it was laying on the ground before I propped it back up there for the pictures. Overall this looks in fine shape.
Purchased at Dave Taylor Ford in Longmont, CO, this one then appears to have spent time in Laramie at UW, and then there’s also an Indiana University sticker. The body looks in pretty good shape so I’m guessing a quick grad school program in Indiana. Much longer there and this wouldn’t have made it back without a few holes in it based on the stories I hear from the Indiana CC Field Office.
I kind of like it. I don’t know if I would actually like owning it but it looks like a generally well taken care of car with a lot of utility and a decent number of frills for a 35-year old car. What goes wrong on these? Or is it just another case of can’t-find-anyone-that-wants-a-stick-shift-wagon-with-a-red-interior? It even has a roof rack!
This ad’s from the year before but still basically the same car. Apparently nine out of ten buyers liked it so much they’d buy it again according to an unnamed survey. The “FS” engine is the “Fuel Saver” engine, mated to an extremely high 3.04 axle ratio (as opposed to 3.73 on our example and only available with a 4-speed but not in California or High Altitude areas and absolutely certainly positively not in the higher altitude areas of California itself.
Assembled in Wayne, Michigan. Sadly, not much demand for this particular Escort’s services. Or parts. This one’s been sitting here for a couple of months now and not much has changed beyond the rear badges having been pried off and one of the windows mysteriously breaking. At least we get to enjoy the pleasure of its company on our screens for a few minutes.
Related Reading:
Carlsberg66’s COAL on his 1985 Escort
PN’s CC on the entire 1981-1990 Escort generation in the U.S.
That was likely one clean looking car before it entered the yard. Even the engine bay looks clean.
I wonder what the story was here. Broken timing belt perhaps?
That would be a killer, as the engine is interference, ask how I know….
Really? Interesting, I know that the later 1.9L CVH Escorts were non interference engines. Seems odd that the earlier ones wouldn’t be.
Yeah the early ones were interference engines and the customer backlash meant the 1.9 had to be non-interference. For a large number of the buyers this was their first vehicle with a timing belt and for those that had Pintos the 2.0 and 2.3 were non-interference. So you had a lot of people who were really pissed and Ford did end up fixing some of the car out of warranty if the customer made enough noise.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was nothing significant wrong with this Escort. To me, it looks like the kind of car an elderly person would have driven for 30+ years and then passed away. Maybe it ran at the end, or simply had a dead battery, or whatever, but whoever inherited the car figured it wasn’t worth trying to advertised a car that would sell for a few hundred dollars maximum. So they just took it to a junkyard.
Just a guess.
Yeah, especially if the relatives are out of town. Even more so if they can’t drive a manual…List the house with a local agent, hire a company to clean it out after picking through a few things, have the car towed to a yard…Kind of depressing but I can understand it.
“the wagon especially managed to look good”
Like most of the ’80s era Ford wagons. There was a reason we called Ford the “Wagonmaster!”
I had a 1982 white four-door to drive throughout Colorado. I got it new. This was after my 1981 Citation fiasco, forcing my bosses to find me another set of wheels while the lease was expiring. Upon seeing it, and after having experienced Pontiac J-2000, Cavalier, Citation and Omega – I was very underwhelmed when they showed it to me.
However, I discovered that it was a very good car. Although it was smaller than the other small cars, it had better space utilization, better visibility for the driver, a good quality interior, adjustable seats, and a nice IP design. It was smaller than the Citation which had an ability to be enormous with the seats folded down, and it didn’t have that awesome “Big Gulp” sized cup holder between the front seats – the Escort was better in everything else.
The engine was better than the Citation, which ran so badly every time I encountered a hill – (in Colorado) – the gas mileage was just as good, and the little Escort didn’t force me to curse attempting to cross the Continental Divides, like the Citation, Cavalier and J-2000 had.
Remember, us guys had to deal with Gremlins, Pintos, Vegas and Chevettes. The Japanese cars were around, but with the exception of the Civic, Japanese cars were just narrow little tin rust buckets that were made well. The Omnirizon was out, but who knew how long Chrysler would even remain in business? So, the Escort was a very good car at a very good time for Ford, since nothing but their Fox bodies and the Escort were selling for Dearborn during those hard times. Panther love was still unrequited and Ford was planning to drop them.
So – I have good memories of this good car. Today, it might look about as appealing as an old shoe, but like the Fairmont and other Fox bodies of that era, Ford was getting its act together for a very successful 1980s run. This car helped doing that for them.
It was a good car.
Are the kilometer markings in the center of the speedometer being confused for a tachometer? Always hurts me to see a well cared for older car being discarded, but time marches on.
No. Look at the little dots near 10-15mph, 35mph and 75mph. What are those?
I always assumed these odd dots were for calibration, the speedometers in MN12 Tbirds with the Sport analog cluster(which has a separate tach) has the same dots but at different speeds.
I have seen those markings on several brands of cars over the years and believed they were “speed limit” Mark’s.
I may be mistaken but some Mark’s were in the 25/35 and another set in the 55/65 range.
Bought a red over black first-year SS Wagon, selling a ’76 Monza. Brochure pic attached of identical.
First new car out of college. Was adequate for taking friends around, and after cracking the block on a ski trip to VT, had the dealer put in a new one and got maybe another two years out of it before I moved into the city and didn’t want to keep it at Chateau des Parentes, so off it went.
Don’t miss it.
Not the same model year, but I saw this vintage Ford Escort commercial with Telly Salavas and narrated by Casey Kasem.
11.9% financing! What a deal! I’ve lived through those times which is why my kids don’t understand why I don’t pay off my 4% mortgage.
You reminded me of the 13% GMAC financing on our 1982 Chevy Cavalier.
As a one-income family with one child and another coming, finances were tight and a year later we gave the Cavalier back minus the after-market stereo I had put in. Glad we didn’t own a house at that point. Mortage rates in Canada were still hovering around 20%.
We have very few good memories of the early eighties. A learning experience it certainly was!
I had an ’82 L 2-dr hatchback, an ’87 GL wagon, and a ’92 LX sedan. The wagon was the best of the bunch with a 5-speed and fuel injection, and the amount of stuff it could haul was amazing.
The ’92 was basically a Mazda with a Ford badge. Somehow, something got lost in translation with that one.
It’s kind of crazy remembering just how few early model Escorts survived just into the 90s, where I was quite the astute car spotting kid with a photographic memory, and can’t really remember any. The original front end always looked odd to me, and not for any particular reason other than it being unfamiliar to my eyes that were trained to know the aero composite headlamp facelift versions that were still common at the time. This thing survived longer than every other 84 Escort did for the entire length of my lifetime up until now.
The Wagon is definitely the best bodystyle, it looks like a perfectly scaled down Fairmont/LTD wagon. I kind of like the original front end design too, if for nothing else providing a nice transitional continuity with the late Pinto front end. One of the things I tell friends who aren’t really into cars but might know the buzzwords, when I see an old Escort I’ll say “see that? It has a Hemi”.
I was wondering if someone would pick up on the Hemi thing, you didn’t disappoint! The front end is attractive, and it improved when they put the blue Ford logo back in it, the first year or two didn’t have that.
When I moved to Michigan in ’86, there were just TONS of Escorts around. Everybody and their cousin got Ford Employee Pricing, under which the cheapest L hatch was around four grand. Also, there was plenty of anti-foreign-car sentiment still in Michigan, so most folks wouldn’t consider a Sentra or Civic.
Well….just paint it brown and swap the engone for a diesel…and you’ll have a FWD brown desel wagon. Not the proverbial, but close enough!
Wow. There appears to be minimal UV damage to the paint. plastics, and upholstery. More reflective of a 2-3 year old car. Not 35 years. I’m guessing it was parked indoors for a long time.
Various telltale signs of cheapness, including the rear seat painted metal hardware on the seat sides. The one element that I recall made theses feel especially inexpensive, was how tinny the doors sounded when opened and closed.
Yes I can concur. My mom had an ’84 Escort with the same red interior and I distinctly remember the dash already having cracks in the early ’90’s.
I was going to say the same thing. Those red interiors would fade with moderate sun exposure, and this one looks like new.
And it would have been worse on this one with the high altitude it ran at.
Here’s my different sort of CC effect, posted today. 68 mpg and the tach missing from the OP Escort! https://autoweek.com/article/classic-ads/1984-mercury-lynx-boasts-196-refinements-gets-68-mpg
I, too, am kinda sad when I see a vehicle in this condition in a boneyard. I certainly get it; who wants to put money into a car with essentially no value? But still…
BTW, is Oxford White one of the longest used colors by any automaker? My ’15 Fusion is Oxford White.
Enjoying the junkyard posts, Jim.
I guess it depends on the person. My 91 Mazda 626 and my wife’s former 90 Mazda 626 fits that category. Yet I have put several thousands into the cars to make them even more reliable than they were so essentially fairly new. Then some jerk felt the need to steal the 90 Mazda last year.
I looked up the paint code, this particular formulation of Oxford White went from 1983 through 2001, though the last few years seemed to only be on trucks.
It seems that a new version of Oxford White picked up in 1991 and continues to the present – I wonder if the change involved a switch from single-stage paint to clearcoats.
I have no doubt that some paint names are recycled more than most people’s plastic bottles. The 1960s staple of Wimbledon White is a modern Ford offering too.
As I think about it, I wonder if
The brochure does indicate that this is not a clear coat color for this year as opposed to some of the others so your theory could hold water.
I miss the days when you had a spot on top of the dash to put a little bobbing head dog. This Escort has that slot right on top of the passenger side of the dash.
My son had a ’98 Escort that he bought for a song in 2005. One of his main purchase criteria was that the car had to have a manual transmission, which this one did. It was a sturdy little beast.
Oh man oh man. The interior shots, specifically the dash, takes me back to my childhood. From 1988-1994 my mom had an ’84 Escort 2 door, 4-speed, silver but with that same exact red interior. I remember the little coin holders in front of the shifter. That shelf on the right side of the dash is where I left a purple Crayola crayon sitting and after the hot summer day it was melted and dripping off of the dash, haha.
That was the car I first shifted albeit from the passenger seat. She would let me shift gears while she drove.
You were just getting trained to drive a car in England. 🙂
Timing belt is highly likely as I’m going to bet that is 110k on it and while the belt may not still have been ready by mileage it could have been 15, 20 or more years old and just plain rotted.
A bad clutch is another possibility as this is about the right mileage. Can you even find the parts? They used to be on the shelf at any parts store. I’m also betting it would be hard to find anyone that wanted to do the job and if they did they would quote an outrageous amount of hours, since no one knows what they are doing. Back in the day I could do one in these or a Tempaz in a leisurely 2.5 hrs.
I’m really enjoying these junkyard writeups, Jim–keep ’em coming! I like going to sites like Junkyard Life, too. Derelict cars have always fascinated me since the earliest age that I can remember as a kid. I think that it’s always been because I see the magical quality that these brilliant machines have, despite their exterior. I guess I always felt like I could save them? The thing that I always liked about the unwanted, junked cars, is that they always were totally different than the ones that I’d see driving around on the roads……I suppose it was like a history lesson, especially growing up in the non-internet generation, and with the engines in various states of decay, it provided a bit of a mechanical lesson, too.
One thing that I really like looking at in the junkyards, is clues for any sort of story, which is what you’re going for here, too. How did it get here, and why? The Escort is one of those cars that was seemingly everywhere, and I didn’t pay much attention to them at the time, but now that they’re almost completely gone, there’s something that fascinates me about that aspect. Maybe because every trend that comes and goes is, in some ways, shovelling another round of dirt into our eventual grave, and that I don’t want someone to abandon me when I’m old just because I’m not relevant anymore.
Again, red interior in this one. Is it because red interiors were just more popular, or just coincidence? Also, did they really offer 3.73 gearing in these? That’s amazing, because with the manual and the light weight, these things must have been pretty fun.
Thank you, I do plan to keep writing them. Some of these are like the anti CurbsideClassic – a lot of the CC’s we see are pretty junky but someone is keeping them going and on the street which is a good thing. And then there are some of these cars that look perfectly serviceable but likely aren’t and thus are in the junkyard with this as the last opportunity to take a picture of them.
And of course there are also the completely worn out ones that look like they should have been here years ago, such as the big Mercedes from a few weeks ago…
In 1983, my former wife and I bought a brand-new Ford Escort. I believe it was an LX. It was fairly loaded with a/c, am/fm radio, etc. We both preferred a manual transmission, so it had the 5-speed. Ours was a pretty light blue with contrasting interior. It was a good deal because my former father in law worked at Ford, so it was bought on their so-called A plan.
As nice as that car was in appearance, etc., neither of us ever TRULY liked it. I’m not sure why, all these years later. So in 1985, we traded it toward a Ford Tempo. THAT car ran and ran and ran. My former wife was still driving it in 1989 when we divorced.
My first car was a 1982 Escort GLX wagon with the 1.6L H.O. engine and a close ratio 4-speed. It was relatively loaded for its day and even had a tach and temp gauge. Mine was medium-light metallic blue outside with a matching blue interior. Like the red interior in this one, everything was blue. So much more inspiring than black everything in modern interiors.
I bought my ’82 Escort with about 102,000 miles and drove it until about152,000, when the timing belt broke due to low oil pressure causing too much drag on the valvetrain. With a non-clearance engine that was already getting pretty tired, and a decent amount of rust, it was towed to the junk yard.
Other than the packaging, which was very good, I think the 1st gen Escort was actually worse than its Pinto predecessor. Maybe not objectively worse, but really disappointing driving dynamics, and already behind the Japanese competition even in 1981 when launched. And yes, I’ve driven both Escorts and Pintos and I know which one I’d take.
I had an ’87 three-door GL with the 1.9L engine and a 5-speed; I loved that car. They must have switched the transmission model when they changed to the 1.9L engine; reverse was down and to the right on mine. Ford got a lot of mileage out of that instrument cluster, though; I had the same one in the ’89 three-door Pony model I owned next!
I’m another “keep the junkyard tales coming” fan.
We had an ’84 wagon in the Mercury Lynx variety, though today’s red interior looks awfully close to what I remember. Not much on-ramp oomph with the automatic, but drove it across the country several times without incident. It was the newest car I’d ever owned, but if there were any big shortcomings, I certainly overlooked them. I thought of it as notably more “modern” than the 1980 Pinto wagon it was replacing.
Will do, George! Thank you.
I love it! It is a wagon, it has a 5 speed and it has red interior. I don’t care what it is, I’ll take it.
That said, I was never much of a fan of the Gen1 Escort. Having spent a decent amount of wheel time in a Plymouth Horizon, these were really disappointing to me. I got a quick drive in a friend’s 81 Lynx and I found it an overall downgrade from the Horizon in looks, driving dynamics and overall feel.
And yes, if that car had spent much time at IU it would not be as nice. A friend of my oldest son brought a pristine 63 Fairlane hardtop from his home in California. By the time of his senior year it had big holes in the rear fenders. Maybe one of the owner’s grandchildren went there. It is certainly the right color combination for an IU fan. 🙂
The Escort looked the same on the outside for 1984 but got a completely revamped interior that year. The dash, previously a typical blocky 1980s design, got a makeover I thought looked quite radical at the time, with a swoopy shape that wrapped around the driver some. Too bad the fittings were all of that cheap black plastic. The clock moved to that overhead console from the dash. The door panels were new, with armrests and latches that looked rather AMC-ish. The center armrest was new the previous year iirc. The rear seat had two new features – it was split 50/50 for the first time rather than folding as one piece, and the seat cushions were hinged to fold forward before folding the backrest down. This allowed for a flat floor, where previously the folded seat area was about 5 inches above the main trunk floor.
I too miss all the individual options and interior color choices you could get even on a cheap car like this one.
Stellar find, Jim. It’s a shame this one couldn’t have been saved, to have made it this far. This ’84 was produced just two years after the Ford Escort was the biggest-selling car in the United States (for ’82).
That looks like it should still be on the road. Red velour, manual transmission, solid exterior, a worthy emissary from four decades ago. That’s enough to make it interesting.
I have a short daily commute on roads that are truly dull, and if it weren’t for the crash worthiness of a 35 year old economy car I’d happily drive this little wagon back and forth.
I would have loved to get my hands on it. If there is one thing I can do well, well there are several, and that is completely renovate this car mechanically. Aircraft carrier, plane or car they are pretty much the same i.e. mechanical machines. Once done then I would think about the exterior body work and paint although this one looks great on the outside.
I had an Escort wagon that I bought from a friend and rebuilt/refurbished it. Mine had the same color/ interior as this example. Scavenged parts from a Mercury lynx version: Vent windowed doors, rear air deflector, wheels, etc. for a one of a kind “custom”. The 1.9 and 5 speed suprised many an unwary driver in day to day slice ‘n dice traffic maneuvering! Sold it and later regretted having done so! 🙂
When we lived in New Hampshire, we had an Escort wagon from about this period. It was a decent little car and I was quite happy with it for what it was. Unfortunately, I noticed one day in 1992 or 1993 that the right rear wheel looked a bit wonky. Turned out that the upper shock tower had rusted out, so the strut was no longer attached to anything solid. That was the end of that car.
My middle sister had an Escort as her first car out of college…I think it was an ’84…would have been 1987…I helped her pick it out of a used car dealer. It was a pretty good car, other than having fuel delivery issues…they installed an auxiliary fuel pump on it..also, I recall the ignition module on the distributor going…she had it till 1991 or so when she bought a Tercel. She used it in a car pool going from south Austin to Smithville Texas and it held up to the commute (maybe 20-30 miles each way).
My friend from my first job after college bought a 1981 wagon when they first came out; his 1974 Audi Fox was so rusted from Vermont winters that the seat fell through the rusted out floor pan…and he didn’t want to fix it. Back then the interest rate on new cars was only 16% or so (24% for some used cars) so he wanted to buy new. I lost track of him, but he still had it in 1988 or so when I went to visit him.