On a recent junkyard trip, I came across a car I never knew existed. I was vaguely aware of the slow-selling sporty Escort EXP Ford dabbled in for a brief period in the 1980s. However, I had no idea the ugly duckling coupe got an aero-styled update. Approaching from the rear, I was bewildered to discover I had not come upon a Fox body Mustang in hatchback form –given its similarity in appearance from this angle– but a second-generation EXP.
Running from 1985-1988, the second generation EXP received the updated Ford Escort’s front end, leading to a much more generic –if significantly more attractive– car. It nevertheless managed to sell less in its four years on the market than the EXP’s entire first production year in 1982. The model’s total numbers are unknown since its sales figures were lumped in with its Escort brethren in its last year of production, but it’s likely under 100,000 units. It wouldn’t be until 1998 that Ford tried again their hand at crafting a compact sporty coupe from the Escort when they unveiled the ZX2.
A niche EXP convertible variant, an on-off ASC McLaren conversion, an experimental EV, and even a low-production turbo –that actually became available– never made much of an impact on the public’s imagination throughout the model’s run. Nearly all EXPs sold were basic non-turbo models. What few performance additions the EXP got, the regular Escort received as well, and often in greater quantities. The consistent dullness of the cars that actually reached consumers undermined the sporty image the model was supposed to project.
Even if potential customers didn’t defect to Honda to buy the much sportier CRX, there wasn’t much reason to pick an EXP over a two-door Escort. It was about a wash aesthetically speaking and even the two-door Escorts had usable back seats. Something like this GT trim Escort hatch would have been a much more liveable car with roughly the same sportiness.
That’s right. The poor EXP was cursed with possessing not even the vestigial back seats typical of small, sporty cars. It might have resulted in less wasted space, but not offering even the possibility of bringing additional passengers is a big deterrent.
This interior may have held up well for its 37 years and 160,154 miles, but it’s hardly the most inspiring surroundings ever put in a car. Everything you see here is lifted straight from your then-everyday Escort.
Plenty of sporty cars based on more pedestrian underpinnings forgo interesting interiors. However, things were hardly more exciting in the engine bay. This is the same 1.9 liter fuel injected inline-four producing 90 horsepower that could be found in your typical Escort sedan. Admittedly, the car only weighed 2,388 lbs, but the rest of the driving experience was no more hair-raising than the power output. A turbo version called the Sport Coupe was available with a then-respectable 106 horsepower, but it wasn’t commonly optioned.
Our featured car is the more common base trim that wasn’t even gifted a passenger’s side mirror. It’s a basic small car through and through, beneath the thin veneer of vaguely Mustang-ish sportiness.
In the end, the EXP was too dorky and unexciting to attract sales success. It was too compromised with its lack of rear seats to make a strong selling as a sporty commuter while being too pedestrian in its driving experience to sell on sportiness. It was the worst of both worlds. From our modern vantage point where the semi-sporty commuter coupe segment has gone entirely extinct in the United States, the poor Ford EXP looks even more ridiculous.
For a car that sold in small numbers and never attracted much enthusiast attention, it’s remarkable this particular example managed to survive so long. It’s unlikely I will ever see another EXP, either on the streets or in the junkyard, so I thoroughly enjoyed this brief brush with one of Ford’s forgotten failures.
Related CC reading:
CC Outtake: Ford EXP (Gen2) – Will This Make It Look (Or Sell) Any Better?
The “Junkyard Sculpture Garden” (22 Oct 12024) shows a junkyard with similar “jack stands”. Are those common? They sort of miss the point of round.
Every junkyard I’ve ever gone to uses them
They’re the standard for junkyards as they end up with a lot of spare wheels. However, it’s not uncommon to see cars fallen off of them.
Thanks (both). It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a junkyard, but I would think I’d have remembered those. They just look wrong to me. Again, thanks.
I believe your assumption that Ford was trying to channel some Mustang into the EXP is correct. The dash logically would be pulled from the regular Escort as tooling up a new dash, even if mildly different, would have cost Ford quite a bit and not added to sales.
I think the customer Ford was looking to attract was someone who didn’t want a dowdy Escort and the GT version of that either, but couldn’t afford a Mustang or its higher insurance – while staying in the Ford family.
Growing up in suburban Detroit, these were everywhere as likely corporate leases to kids of Ford engineers and executives based on my experience. These replaced the Couriers to some degree as cheapo leases. I think back then Ford self-insured their lease vehicles to employees but I could be off on that.
Precisely! My kid brother bought an ’88 EXP GT as his first new car. He REALLY wanted and could afford a Mustang GT, but he was a young man in his mid-20s and insurance was ludicrous. I really pushed for a Civic Si, CRX or FX-16, but he was a Ford man.
It served it’s purposed for 5-6 years but was nothing to get excited about. It did look kinda cool though….
Yeah, the Honda CR-X is a far more successful iteration of what the EXP was trying to be. It’s obviously based on the Civic yet has a certain flingable appearance and personality that would be difficult to obtain in a four-seater. The EXP by contrast looks, feels, and drives like an Escort with its roof chopped a few inches lower. There is a small market for two-seaters as long as they look like two-seaters – think MX-5 Miata – but the Escort EXP looks like the economy car it is.
There were several cars of this sort back in its day. The Toyota Paseo was another – both generations shared much of their sheetmetal and interior with the Tercel, but had a lower, shorter roof (though Toyota managed to fit a +2 rear seat). The results weren’t much more successful than the EXP. The 2nd-generation Nissan Sentra was available in a coupe version that shared differed from Toyota’s and Ford’s offerings by sharing its name with the standard 2-door hatchback and 2-door sedan variants, but was conceptually the same nonetheless. Also the 1983 Nissan Pulsar, whose NX coupe variant was less practical than the 2- and 4-door hatchback Pulsars, and shared front fenders and the lower portion of the doors, but had a unique front clip and roofline. Anyone remember the Hyundai Scoupe? I think that one got fully unique sheetmetal, but it still looked and drove like a less-practical Excel, and practicality was about the only thing the Excel had going for it. (Hyundai also haplessly tried to sell it in the UK with the same name; in the US “Scoupe” is play on words that’s pronounced “scoop”, but the British pronounce “coupe” as ‘koo-PAY’, so Scoupe becomes ‘scoo-PAY’ which doesn’t work at all.)
There are doubtless other “semi-sporty” economy-car-based coupes I’m forgetting about. I didn’t find any of these alluring enough to warrant owning rather than the more practical standard 2-door hatchbacks they were based on.
The only 2+2 small sporty hatch based on an economy car that genuinely had its own personality BESIDES the CRX that k can think of is the Mazda MX3. It might have started out as a 323, but it doesn’t share all that much, as my friend has found out. He has had pretty bad luck trying to daily drive a somewhat decrepit MX3. It has rear wheel steering, but like zero horsepower. It’s hilarious fun and doesn’t feel or look at all like a shortened 323.
I bought it’s cousin, the Mercury LN7, for a winter car for one season. It looked pretty well worn when I picked it up for $300 in the fall of 2000, but it ran fine. Having the 4-speed (maybe 5-speed?), made it a little more fun to drive and it never let me down. It only cost me an oil change during my ownership. It was gone the next spring when my ‘94 Chrysler Lebaron convertible came out of storage and was on the road again.
The vaguely sporty appeal sure did seem to wear off of these quickly once they became older used cars. The Mercury version is much easier than any of the Ford variants today. Your car would make quite a CC!
I would have liked a “nomad” three door Taurus or Sable wagon with the SHO engine, sunroof, and manual transmission if they were going to make something in this vein. Using the Taurus platform would have been much more cost efficient for Ford too because of the volume of sales at the time. Oh well…
Interesting how little has been picked from this JY offering. seems only the wheels were deemed as having any merit. even the unobtainium headlamps are still there. showing just how extinct these cars are in the US today. Seemingly like every marque produced, there is an online group that discusses old escorts. FEOA.net & it has a discussion subgroup for first gen escorts -as characterized by their CVH engines. i know, cuz I own an 87 wagon inherited from my great uncle & his son… now if i only knew where in the world this car was- and- were it a wagon, the NLA rear shock/struts, if functional, would be worth a harvesting visit.
The EXP is at Pull-a-Part in Norcross, Georgia. I took these photos the weekend before this posted so it’s probably still there. Likely no one bought the wheels. That yard wholesales them to a third party but sometimes they miss some.
My photos of the Escort GT hatch are old and it’s long crushed. Good luck on your parts hunt.
In 1986 I went to our local Ford dealership and test drove an Escort GT, a V8 Mustang LX and several Rangers before buying a new Ranger. I’m not sure I even noticed any EXP’s. Perhaps I subconsciously looked away. I had driven the first gen as a rental a few years earlier, and it was not a positive experience. But like most older cars it’s refreshing to see one now, if only in the junkyard.
Great find. Yes, these seem to have all disappeared. Good riddance! 🙂
I have never seen in the metal, but I would love to have one of those 1st gen 84-85 EXP Turbos. I believe they actually made 120hp. The seats and steering wheel were Mustang GT bits too. Very cool car
review here..
Interesting little cars .
I bet unless the cam belt snapped the engine is still good in this junker .
My boss in the late 1990’s had one I was interested in as my then current G.F. had a 1984 Escort L (stripper) two door hatchback that I rather liked, it was cheap and cheerful and stood up to her zero maintenance very well indeed .
My boss wanted $2,000 fir his high mileage ex commuter car and the paint was all blistered from the California sun so I passed .
Had he offered it for reasonable $ I’d jumped on it as I like tiny little Econo – Boxes .
-Nate
The 1.9 is non interference. I got 300,000 out of one in an old wagon with a 5 speed.
During the mid-to-late 80s I had to be all about the insurance if I wanted to afford a place to drive TO that wasn’t my folks’ house (you poor kids today…).
Maybe the reality wasn’t what I was led to believe, but was definitely told 2-seaters were no bueno – maybe I could’ve afforded to GET a CRX, MR2, or even this thing but would be treated as though I had a Corvette when my premiums came due.
I’d have even preferred this over the Pontiac 6000 I had.
Insurance costs are still pretty killer for me. I don’t put very many miles at all on my only car but insurance companies don’t seem to realize that some people really do only drive their car to church and the grocery store. I commute by train, which is how I get away with my only car being 39 years old.
Ironically, a pre-production EXP styling concept from 1981, featuring hidden headlights and a Merkur XR4ti-style bi-level rear wing, was probably the best looking EXP.
Pretty sure those must be just retractable headlight covers rather than popup headlights, but that front end does also strongly resemble the Dodge 024/Charger/Rampage and Plymouth TC3/Turismo/Scamp nose (before their 4-eyed facelift).
Wow – I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a latter-day Escort EXP on the road. I remember when the original just “EXP” was new, and I thought it looked cool (even with the frog-eye headlights), even if I had wished it had the LN7’s rear glass.
Reading about them later, they were heavier than the Escort with the same powertrain. The equation then became whether it looked cool enough to compensate for the lack of a back seat. The jury’s still out. I saw nothing really wrong with the looks of the same-year Escort GT.
My wife and I were car shopping when her 83 Mustang with the horrible Essex V6 began overheating.
The Ford dealer tried and tried to get us to take a new 86 EXP. But it was so boring. So, we leased a new Mustang with the 2.3 engine. At least it was loaded with options. But oh my was it slow!
I’d forgotten all about these! Great find.
Probably in 1985, I gave a ride to a guy I worked with who had one of these. When they first came out I hadn’t yet done the extensive search I did in ’86 when I was shopping for a car, trying out quite different types of cars, including 2 seaters (namely the MR2 and the Bertone X1/9), so I hadn’t yet come to the conclusion that these weren’t right for me…though the added storage space in the hatch of the EXP would have been attractive, there just wasn’t enough space to be my only car. I still don’t often carry rear seat passengers but once in a while I do.
As far as the insurance penalty for 2 seaters, well, maybe people turn into maniac drivers when their back seat is eliminated, but I don’t think much of that idea. My grandmother on Dad’s side (who never learned to drive a car) used to think that any small car (guess smaller than full sized) was a sports car….so the Datsun 710 I was driving at the time with it’s 1.8 litre automatic was sporty? I don’t think so…though of course it did have a rear seat.
Anyway back to 1985, I was still working for Datapoint Corp, they’d transferred me from San Antonio to Austin, and one of the techs was taking a day off to watch the Boston Marathon and needed to get his EXP serviced, so I gave him a ride to the service place.
Funny thing I’d only moved from north of Boston to San Antonio a year before.
My middle sister ended up with an ’86 Escort…other than problems with the ignition (failure of hybrid modules) and fuel pump issue, it wasn’t a bad car…maybe not exciting but it got her where she needed to go..but I still think those poor EXP owners should have been given a break on their insurance cost.
I’m a bit intrigued by the EXP. Not because there’s anything great about it – no, more because it was a bit ambitious – unlike so many of the “sport” models that were nothing more than a spoiler and slightly nicer set of rims. To succeed, it would have needed more power, to be better to drive, and significantly more attractive than the Escort. Or at least a couple of those. Unfortunately, it failed on all counts. Maybe Ford should have recognized they needed to do more, or not bother. The look says “Escort” more than “sporty,” the powerplants were underwhelming, and dynamically, it was just an Escort – plus some unneeded ballast. But here’s the thing: it was a risk that didn’t pay off, but the product of the kind of risk-taking that green-lit the likes of the SVO Mustang, the Taurus SHO, and probably a few other cars we can be glad Ford built during that era.
I’ve never seen one in person that I can think of, and maybe that’s what makes me want one more than anything. It’s of an era where Ford was willing to take a chance, unlike today’s bland crossovers. Ultimately, Ford regrouped and came up with something better – what the EXP should have been all along – in the Probe. Sadly, like the EXP, it had a head-scratcher of a name. But at least you didn’t have to walk past several other glaring criticisms to get to that one.