No good deed goes unpunished. I was recently a bit less than complimentary about the unloved 1990 European Ford Escort Mk5, when filling in some backstory for my recent Damn Good Design about the Escort RS Cosworth. I wasn’t exactly sticking my neck out with a scalding hot take for the sake of internet notoriety; the standard car was widely panned in the automotive press of the time as being a badly steering, wooly handling, cheaply built and cynically executed piece of junk. I remember reading those stories and being distinctly underwhelmed when I saw the thing at its launch at the 1990 Birmingham International Motor Show.
But because the internet loves nothing better than making smartarses like me eat their own words, friends of the site and Weird Car Twitter royalty Sion Hudson and Jim Magill got in touch and offered me a go in Sion’s recently purchased, one owner from new, 62,000 mile 1990 Ford Escort Popular. Having had a later model as his first car, Sion has a bit of an attachment to this shape Escort. He found this one on the UK version of Autotrader, and paid £1200 for it. Car weirdos from the internet. A Mk V Escort. What fresh hell indeed.
If you haven’t read my piece about the Escort RS Cosworth, do so now. Your goth uncle desires fealty. For those who are too pressed for time, here’s a quick recap: In the mid-eighties Ford of Europe was short of funds and resources, thanks to slow initial sales of the Sierra and the drawn-out development of the Mk3 Fiesta.
The 1990 Escort was designed to be as cheap to build as possible, but sold at a higher price to make up for lost profits, despite it being little advance over the car it replaced.
Here’s What Autocar Said
How bad was it? Autocar magazine, which ran a first drive feature against the Escort’s main rivals in it’s 29th August 1990 issue summed it up thusly:
“How can Ford have got it so wrong? The flaws in the new Escort/Orion are so obvious we begin to wonder, naively perhaps, if the engineers and product planners have driven the competition in any serious manner. And even if they have, do the right men in the key positions understand what gives a car the flair, poise and balance that makes it more than just mere transport? Or is Ford so influenced by its accountants and marketing department that their vast budget was only spent in the most visible ways?
These are serious questions to have to ask the world’s second biggest car maker after driving and analyzing its new, and potentially top-selling, models.
You will know by now that in these three twin tests we came away preferring to drive the Ford’s Italian, German and British rivals, even though two of them are about to be replaced by new models.
And that is an appalling indictment.”
That is word for word what they wrote. For this piece I bought copies of the offending issues from eBay, scanned the text and read the article (actual research, never let it be said we don’t give you more for your money here at The Autopian, so cough up). Having now driven the car myself I think Autocar were guilty of the twin crimes of being snobbish and full of finest-grade road tester bullshit. But first grab your Generation X passport and a four-pack of your favorite alcopop because we’re going back to the beginning of the nineties.
This Thing Is So Old
The linear passage of time has been compressed by the advent of online archivism. Today, me driving a car from thirty-three years ago doesn’t have the seismic archeological shock that driving a car thirty-three year old car would have done in 1990. Back in 1957 that would have been the grinding, three-speed side valve Ford Anglia 100E, a 1956 model of which was the car Mother Dearest was driving when I was hatched into an uncaring world. You can take the boy out of east London, but I’m forever stuck in the shadow of the Dagenham plant.
The Anglia was a fancier version of the Popular, back then the cheapest new car in Britain. This is how this bottom-of-the-range Escort got its name. Retailing for a princely £8220 (£19,425 in 2023 money) the Escort Popular is so basic the tailgate is butt naked of any trim designation – hilarious given Ford had this sort of model hierarchy heraldry down to an exact science. Inside there’s more blanks than an episode of Blankety Blank (Match Game for you tea throwers). It’s a car that cruelly laughs at your tightfistedness and mocks you for it. There’s an ashtray but the cigarette lighter is a blank. In front of the ladle for stirring the gearbox there’s storage for cassettes but the standard fit stereo is only an AM/FM radio, the ability to play tapes conspicuous by its absence. Instead of a rev counter you get a car outline graphic with a couple of warning lights. The steel wheels have their modesty hidden by the briefest of center covers.
It Has A Racing Engine. Sort Of
Mechanically it’s thin gruel as well. Pop the hood and you’re greeted by an expanse of empty space in the middle of which sits Ford’s 1.3 liter HCS (High Compression Swirl) engine, which can trace the origins of its design back to – ahem -1959. But – and don’t laugh – this is an engine with competition pedigree. Earlier ‘Kent’ 1.6 liter versions were bolted in the back of Formula Ford racers, and in ‘crossflow’ form powered some of the hotter rear wheel drive Escorts. To update the old nail for nineties emissions standards and unleaded petrol, the HCS bins the crossflow head and bolts on a new one with a lower compression ratio and hardened valve seats. Breathing through a carburetor with the diameter of a cat’s nostril there’s a rippling 60bhp and 75lbs fit at gods knows what engine speed because the only rev counter is an Mk1 eardrum.
The horses are noisy but they are willing. Being someone else’s thirty-three-year-old car I didn’t thrash the bollocks off it, and I wouldn’t have been setting fire to the tarmac if I did – the quoted 0 -60 time is a glacial 15 seconds. There’s not the wriggle-your-toes responsiveness of the old crossflows that was part of what made those old Escorts fun to drive, but it was fine; keeping up with modern traffic in and around town wasn’t an issue.
You access all that road burning power through a four – four! – speed gearbox. Even in 1990 this was fucking stingy, even by Ford standards. I can’t remember the last time I drove something with that few forward speeds. David’s truck maybe? The shift is fingertip easy but approximate in movement. The gears are all in there somewhere but the shift action is tuned for lightness of touch rather than accuracy. Likewise the steering – I’ve steered pedal boats with better responses to helm inputs but the upside to that is it’s light to twiddle when maneuvering, so considering there’s no power assistance that’s probably a fair trade.
With 13” steelies, decent sidewall height and spongiferous seats, the ride quality in this old Escort took me by surprise in the comfortable way it bobbed along. Like the frog being slowly boiled in a pan perhaps we’ve become too accustomed to newer cars turning our spines to paste in the name of sportiness. Ford spent a lot of money (over £1bn) in making the Escort as cheap to build as possible and one of their cost-saving innovations was the way the seats were made – the fabric was vacuumed into a mold and then the foam was injected in and glued directly to it – which is probably why there’s no side separate side cushioning. The car was criticized for a lack of lateral support but come on – it’s a family hatch not a bloody XR3i.
The interior looks modern for the time and the shapes are pleasant. What little stuff there is all works (apart from the radio which needs an unlock code – remember those?) and although the materials don’t really pass what Sion calls ‘the flick test’ the fact it’s all held up well is a testament that Ford did know how to screw a car together. It’s spartan but comfortable, like an old blanket. Being a boggo Popular there’s no adjusting the steering wheel or seat height – I had to sit with my legs splayed, not really becoming someone of my status, but I would never normally be seen dead in the cheap version of anything anyway.
Acceptable Mediocrity
Once you’re recalibrated to the fact you’re driving a car from 1990, you know what? The Escort was absolutely fine. I didn’t recoil in horror at the way it drove, the way it looked or how it felt. It was an exemplar of acceptable mediocrity. Was it really that much worse than its rivals at the time? Let us return to the august pages of the world’s so-called oldest car magazine and their first drive test against the Escort’s key rivals.
First up they compared what was expected to be the volume seller, the 1.4 LX against the Mk2 Vauxhall Astra 1.4 LX. They admit the Escort is roomier, more powerful, faster, has a much better dashboard, and looks more modern than the Astra, which was introduced in 1984. Yet they declared the Astra the winner.
Then they put a more upmarket Escort 1.6i Ghia against a Fiat Tipo. Autocar describes the Fiat as being undergeared, having shitty ventilation, thrown together build quality and poor digital instrumentation. Yet they preferred the Fiat because of its better gearchange and more secure cornering stance. This is pure road tester gobshite. It gets worse. The final comparison pairing was the top-of-the-range Orion Ghia 1.6i against a Golf of unstated trim level. The Golf has heavier steering and a ‘choppy’ ride, less power and they’re basically making up fuel economy figures saying in the text the Golf’s 33 mpg is better than the Orion’s 29. Yet in the specification box the Orion’s consumption figures are better than the Volkswagen’s at all speeds. And buried in the small print is the fact the 1.8 single-point injection Golf is not actually available in the UK. At this point, It just feels like they don’t like the Escort and are moving the goalposts to criticize it.
Ford quickly added a front anti-roll bar to tighten up the front end and in this form Autocar gave the Escort a full road test a few weeks later in their 3rd October 1990 issue. In their summing up of that test, they described the car as being designed for ‘Mr & Mrs Average’. What their snide remarks ignore, is that was Ford’s entire fucking business model, and it had served them well for decades. No Ford had ever been the last word in driving finesse or engineering sophistication, even the sporty ones. They were simply reasonably well built middle-of-the-road cars for people who just needed transport. And this is where I think Autocar were just being elitist snobs. Rather than judging the Escort on what it was, they didn’t like what it represented; the default choice that appealed to working people from all over the UK, not just east London.
The 1990 Escort wasn’t a great car, but it wasn’t categorically an awful one either, and they facelifted it within two years. Could it have launched a year later with better engines? Probably but it would have been more likely two years and Ford couldn’t wait that long. They did the best they could with what they had, an ethos working class people are extremely familiar with. I have a complicated internal relationship with my background and where I’m from, and all the accompanying cultural baggage that surrounds it. The Escort might not have been for me, but it was for my people and despite all my pretentious preening I will always defend that.
Many thanks to Sion and Jim for meeting with me up so I could have a go in the Escort. Sion has a disturbing addiction to poverty spec cars so if you want some more base model brilliance and a closer look at the Escort check out his YouTube channel Morsels and Motors. Jim is father to collection of Fiats including a Panda and Cinquecento. This pair of reprobates drive around Europe on various adventures but mostly just to try out different McDonalds. Their YouTube channel is Also Driven, so give both a like and subscribe. 
- The Escort Cosworth Is A Legendary Rally Machine That’s Hiding A Big Secret
- Nice And Cheap And Simple: 1998 Ford Escort ZX2 vs 1999 Chevy Cavalier
- Ford Predicted The Fast And The Furious Craze When It Built The Pocket Rocket Escort ZX2 S/R: Holy Grails
- Let’s Look At Some Sweet Ford Escorts Because Tomorrow’s Not Promised
- McLaren F1 Chief Engineer Gordon Murray’s Mk I Ford Escort Is A Restomod Masterpiece
So to sum up, the Mk5 Escort has:
A bad driving position
Numb manual steering (how does THAT even happen?)
A lawnmower engine
A 4-speed gearbox in 1990 with a bad linkage
Lousy little brakes
So which controls are pleasurable to operate, again?
The brakes were fine. The numb steering thing isn’t that odd. There’s some preconception that all analogue cars are automatically communicative and great to drive, which is utter horseshit.
My first car was an Escort Mk IV, it was an atrocious car. The Vauxhall Nova I replaced it with drove better and was far more reliable.
Also worth pointing out that Ford’s Richard Parry Jones did acknowledge that criticism of the Mk V Escort (not just Autocar, I remember Car magazine hated it too) did encourage Ford to do a much superior job on its replacement the Mk1 Focus.
Yeah it wasn’t great. The point is Autocar slagged it off despite admitting it was better than rivals in some areas. They were cherry picking.
Aaaa-HA !!!
My hat to you, kind Sir.
We need more critiques of car review articles. That’s what I enjoyed most about this story.
That car was for my people too. People like my mom, in fact! I learned to drive on hers, it was an ’87ish wagon and perfectly fine!
We need more basic transportation. Yes, when everything was basic transportation, cadillacs and Packards really stood out. But now even the low spec cars have power heated seats, power windows, power mirrors, self dimming rear mirrors, and so forth. It is time to bring back the basic car with a basic price and let owners upgrades as they see fit. Great memories are made by snatching a tilt column from the salvage yard to upgrade your ride.
I hear this a lot, but it would never sell. Look at the adjusted price of that Escort – nearly £20k in today’s money. The Dacia I tried is almost as basic as you can get and stickers for £15k. They can’t get much cheaper.
It wasn’t so long ago that the average car loan was 20% down and 36 months. Anything more was too much car. Now with sky-is-the-limit loan terms what’s an extra 48 months for some heated seats and alloy wheels?
Exactly this.
“the ladle for stirring the gearbox”
Yet another excellent turn of phrase. Stuff like this is why I finished reading an article about a mediocre 1990 escort in 2023.
My 1st car was an ’86 Escort, and it was in the shop more than on the road. Every week was something else, from constant overheating to electrical gremlins. Coming to a stoplight during the summer meant I needed to blast heat on high in triple digit temps to prevent overheating. Headlights were like 2 candles shining through a sheet. Its maroon dash was already cracking by 1998, and the speakers blown. When it did run, it stuttered and stalled. Maybe it lived a hard life, but on its best day it was a sad, slow, under-powered pile of malaise. It died on me the night before a hot date with Emily Hamilton my junior year. The Escort sucked.
TBF that describes roughly half the passenger cars in the US market in the 1980s. A bad economy and a rough recovery from new emissions regs meant a decade of junk on wheels. The Japanese marques were more likely to have reliable drivetrains, but managed to rust away even faster than their domestic counterparts.
The refinement we enjoy now didn’t really take off until the 1990s. It just occurred to me that I can’t remember the last time I saw a car with a seriously cracked dash. I’m sure they’re out there, but the ’88 Corolla I drove in college had two at 100k when I got it and two more after I ran it another 120k.
While everything you say is true, it doesn’t make the ’86 Escort a good car.
What’s Emily up to now?
That ship has sailed my friend, that’s an alternate universe where Escorts work.
I loved my Mazda-based poverty spec 92 Escort. Bought brand new senior year of high school for whatever high interest rate dumb me signed for but payments were $99 per month.
The 1st gen U.S. Escorts were indeed trash. My bargain-basement-shopping father couldn’t even stomach it; he went for a Cavalier instead. The Mazda-based 2nd-gen was quite nice as econoboxes go for that era. I had one and was sad to part with it when the growing family needed more space.
My parents very briefly had one in the early 2000s, but a fancier 1.8 – Possibly a Ghia! It’s the only car that has made me physically ill as a passenger. In slight defence to it we were on a road rally at the time (though that was never a problem in the old Felicia) and the car had previously been owned by a beekeeper and the inside smelled very strongly of beeswax.
Not long after the headgasket blew, so it was scrapped and replaced with what would turn out to be my first car, a 1992 Polo Coupe, which was marginally better and smelled less of beeswax. Another shitbox as it turned out.
Get his lordship over here with the Ghia,
This was the last car my father bought new (the facelifted version in 1994). To me it represented burgeois decadence, only four years after my father traded in the Renault 4 for a Fiesta, which itself got traded in for the Escort just 4 years into ownership becaue my father felt like despite the repairs, it never drove well after a minor head-on collision in 1993.
I resented my father for getting a Fiesta – and moving away from Renault – at a time when he could’ve spent less money and gotten a brand new Renault 4 (time proved me right for a while when he decided to get a cheap used one in 1996, but it didn’t run well so he passed it on shortly afterwards).
I hated the Escort with a passion. It always smelled like cheap plastic and was a stupid purchase. My father drove it for like 20.000km over 6 years and it got passed on to my sister, who tried to sell it a few years later with maybe 30.000km on the odometer, in pristine condition, still smelling like new. The damn thing was virtually un-sellable. She could not get someone to pay €500 for it so it was crushed for a rebate on a new car purchase, so at least there’s that. Thinking of that car getting crushed in pristine condition, still with that horrid new car smell is like Zen meditation for me.
What a dumbass, my father. He didn’t even discuss buying the Escort with my mom, and because the car was the same colour, brand, and vaguely the same shape as the Fiesta, he even pranked her by not pointing out she was stepping into a new car when we picked her up from work straight from the dealership. And she fell for it, and I laughed, and now I’m in therapy, you fuckwad! Why did you not get a goddamn Renault 4 in 1990? You stupid asshole.
Alright this isn’t family trauma Top Trumps.
Yeah whatever, shit car anyways. I still get nauseous when the smell of 90s Ford plastic hits.
The fumes from the Dagenham plant inured me to it.
I mean I get your user name and pic, but the Renault 4 was absolute garbage compared to the Mk5 Escort. The R4 was something slightly better than a Yugo, but not as good as a Lada. The Escort was the spaceship Enterprise.
Yeah, something’s off here. The R4 was a boîte de merde of Olympian proportions.
oh no you didn’t!
Oh yes I did! And I drove a R11 for a while!
Oh c’mon, the Renault 11 was definitely the boîte de merde when compared to a Quatrelle.
I think they were a two pack of merde containers tbh.
You’d be surprised at how reliable the Renault 4 became over the years. Cléon-Fonte-equipped TL/GTL models were a radical departure form the older Billancourt-equipped ones. Way more capable and reliable engines, which were only found in early TC/GTC/TL models of the 9/11 (of which, only the GTC actually sold well). Most 9/11 examples came with more modern engines that were noticeably more prone to failure than the trusty old Cléon-Fonte.
Nah, the Renault 4 is a goddamn tank. I’ve been rear ended twice and reared into three times now and the biggest permanent damage I’ve taken is both bumpers got slightly crooked. Our Escort got rear ended at low speed a couple of months into ownership and needed a whole rear end. The Escort had injection issues while my father was still driving it; I tune my carb by ear.
I’d take virtually any Yugo or Lada over a 1994 Escort 1.4.
When I was a freshman in college I wanted to rebuild the engine in my 1979 B1 Passat, so while that was going on I bought myself a Renault 8 for the equivalent of $200 to have something to get to school and to get parts for the VW in.
A week into my R8 ownership an idiot rear-ended me when I stopped at a crosswalk to let some grade-schoolers cross. It was a less than 10mph crash, but it caused the R8’s engine to get pushed all the way into the cabin (where the rear bench used to be). To compare it to a tin can would be an insult to tin cans. Maybe tin-foil car is more like it. I never had a crash in a R4, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be around to tell about it.
The R4 and R8 are very different cars in that sense. I can imagine the R8 getting destroyed in that situation, as well as in any of the 5 times I was hit in the Renault 4. One of the times someone reared into me it was a brand new Volvo SUV. My front bumper and “handles” got slightly crooked and the hood got pushed in. I never bothered to fix the bumper and literally pushed the front of the hood back into place with my foot; the Volvo completely smashed the rear bumper, probably cost more to fix than my Renault 4 is worth.
Did we just read the origin story of a demented serial killer?
haha I think it takes quite a bit more trauma than that.
My first car was a then nine year old 1991 Mercury Tracer, sort of a North American cousin to the subject. It had no redeeming qualities.
This hurts my brain… It both does and doesn’t look like the 91 escort I learned to drive on… almost like this is an unfinished prototype. Both of these are 91’s BTW:
UK: https://photos.carspecs.us/3305e10bfcaa8566d524ef587cf8552f6d806da0-2000.jpg
US: https://photos.carspecs.us/d79534a29cfa2a7bc4b2f091ca0d9e51c06edc4a-2000.jpg
The Euro & US Escorts were never the same car. The ’81 was meant to be, but the program ended up splitting when HFII fired Hal Sperlich. Despite this Ford marketing trumpeted it as a ‘World Car’ which was total bullshit.
By the time the ’90 rolled around the US Escort moved onto a Mazda platform, because Ford had a big stake in Mazda at the time. They just needed something cheap to give them CAFE cap space to sell Mustangs, trucks and Crown Vics.
Go down under and things are more recognizable, just with a Laser badge.
Now I’m really jealous, you guys got a turbo one with 4wd!
Oh I’m an American too, but I share in the jealousy! Things diverged in the following gen as the Laser more closely resembled the Mazda, but interestingly Canada got a taste of the 3-door Laser Lynx for A year in Mazda showrooms as the 323 Neo.
When they finally got around to releasing hot versions of the MkV Euro Escort there was a four wheel drive RS2000 available. I think they sold about 4.
Up to 1990, the Euro Escort was better than the North American Escort in many ways.
The North American one was unreliable trash and could only be had with the CVH engine… which was a rough and asthmatic engine even after Mazda did some work improving it for the 1991 model year.
And I owned 1991 and 1995 Escorts with the 1.9L CVH. It had a sewing-machine quality to it. But Mazda at least made it reliable and durable.
Yeah, and the American Escort starting in 1991 was pretty slick in GT trim.
Saw a 90s Escort GT last week in the wild. There’s no mistaking it with that grill. Still a great looking car, all these years later.
My first car was a 1991 Escort with 235,000 hard driven rust-belt miles. It was a hand-me-down from my Dear Sweet Mother. She had recently upgraded to a 1996 Escort for the daily commute (40 miles each way, she rung up the miles fast). The 91 was a 5 speed and although the body was mid-disintegration, the engine ran well. The next NY state inspection doomed the car as the unibody was rusted beyond all hope of repair.
Long story short, I have a special place in my heart for Escorts.
I really like the way it looks. So simple and almost utilitarian with the unpainted bumpers and tiny hubcaps. Reminds a bit of the Muji / Nissan Micra, which was really a car designed as an unbranded white good. My Danish uncle was a Ford man through and through and always kept his cars in pristine condition. He traded up from the Fiesta and bought the cheapest version of the Escort when it came out, and if I remember it correctly, it came without the right rear view mirror. I really loved the seats because, as Adrian point out, they were so smooth, seamless and almost futuristic (because they were molded, which I didn’t understand at the time of course) and so much cooler than the seats our Nissan Prairie.
> if I remember it correctly, it came without the right rear view mirror.
That’s possible–Europe made the passenger side mirror a requirement surprisingly late.
I commented to Sion “wow it actually has a passenger mirror”
The lap of luxury.
Seems like a precursor the 9th gen Civic here. An evolution of the award-winning 8th gen, developed during the financial crisis to be cheapened, more affordable and more efficient. But by 2012 things had improved and it launched as others like Ford and Hyundai dramatically redesigned their entries and Honda’s reputation tumbled. To be fair those cars did have advantages like better interior materials or drove nicer, but time also showed some of those to have their own issues whereas the Civic at its core still had the virtues of reliability and efficiency. The rushed facelift for 2013, IIRC the MCE just pulled ahead a year, did help too; Honda couldn’t wait any longer to just skip right to that either, since the 8th-gen Civic already ran long as a 6-year cycle, a year more than normal for Honda by then.
The 2012 Camry was similar although took longer for its extensive facelift.
Thanks for this paean to the peon of early 90s British motoring. The gods are appeased.
The driving-centric setup of the interior is wonderful, in a sort of different-type-of-enthusiast manner. This was a car for driving.
And I maintain that despite years of effort on a ton of other options, the 3 dial HVAC setup hit the overall functionality sweet spot like nothing else.
Yep. It’s not as sophisticated as the Sierra interior, but the ideas are similar. Ford knew what they were doing.
IIRC we were just starting to get that kind of interior focus from Ford here in the states at that time. The first-gen Probe did a good job on channeling it, and even created this pod-with-knobs instrument cluster idea that Ford seemingly referenced for the 2017 GT.
I miss 3 dial HVAC.
My Mustang is just old enough to have it, and while it may not be super precise compared to what’s standard now, it gets the job done and can be easily operated without looking directly at it. I love it.
Is Three Dial HVAC a band name, or album title?
I’m going to say album title, band that plays at Jason’s Red Taillight Club from time to time.
It’s a DJ. Everything is a DJ now.
I firmly maintain that interior controls are fine just being: more air/ less air, hot air/cold air and loud music/quiet music.
Some sort of controls for direction, more speed and less speed would be helpful as well.
See, that’s why you’re the car designer and I’m the fat old punk.
It’s funny to hear how much higher the standards for an economy car were/are in the UK compared to the US. That base trim interior sure looks nicer than most any economy car from that era that I can remember. The door cards look nice! The plastic is hard but it all looks like it fits together properly! We didn’t get our second generation Escort until ’91, and I would bet that the tested example was certainly a whole hell of a lot nicer than the first gen US edition. I’ll admit, I’m a fan of the US second gen Escort, so I won’t crap on that.
All things considered it seems like a pretty pleasant car to me, if a little stark in that white.
Totally. From what I remember, ’80s USDM Escorts were at best haphazardly put together and featured a lot of cheap vinyl done in a kinda ’70s-holdover manner. This on the other hand looks forward looking.
Pretty much why Toyota came in and ate them alive. Ford’s business model was stuck in 1930 – crazy to think they made UK, Euro and Australia specific cars nowadays.
I think the difference is that this wasn’t exactly an economy car, I mean, it was cheap and smallish, but it would have been considered a small family car, more equivalent in market position to the Ford Tempo in the US.
Which was also kind of a pile of crappy plastic, but was still a clear step up from the US market Escort of the time. That’s part of why foreign compact cars have traditionally been better than American ones, the size classes that Detroit automakers saw as low margin rental fleet fodder were overseas seen as respectable middle class family transportation and were designed and equipped that way. Also why American cars are laughably uncompetitive overseas, send an American compact with a 2.3L 4 banger overseas and its bumped into a higher tax bracket alongside true executive cars with tax-dodging 1.99 liter engines that are easily 2 or 3 levels of refinement above cars it was designed to compete with at home
This is a very good point I think – for me, I grew up with these sorts of small domestics, and the first time I sat in a Honda Civic or similar as a teenager, I was blown away at the overall level of relative quality at a not-much-greater price.
As Americans, we’re conditioned to dislike small cars (and now, it’s almost a matter of safety, given the sheer size of everything else on the road) so I guess we tend to have viewed them with that conditioning in mind.
While things changed for awhile in the ’90s and ’00s in terms of our experiences with them, I guess old habits are tough to break.
Yeah, American automakers always saw small cars as, at best, necessary evils to give first-time car buyers something to get them in the fold and hook them, so hopefully they’d trade up to something bigger and more expensive the next time. European and Japanese automakers saw them as cars people would buy for life, maybe trade up to higher trim levels within the same model range, or more prestigious sister models within the same size class, but no real expectation that the compact was only a stepping stone to something else.
There were occasional periods where Euro thinking crept in and seemed to work – the first Nash Rambler was sold as a premium product in 1950, and we did get a period in the 2000s with the Astra and the world market Focus where it looked like GM and Ford were taking the small car market more seriously, but it’s never been a lasting commitment, more an occasional distraction
That’s a big reason I bought my Focus. It combined a (level-appropriate) European approach with what the USA does best, a (relatively) big engine. And the icing on the cake was that the Focus was Ford’s rally car during that time.
Sure, mine’s just an everyday urban runabout, nothing special, but all that pointed to Ford taking things seriously, which made me happy. Just because something’s not a sports car or monster truck doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done well.
The base model Tempo was an embarrassment.
I would drive this Escort for eternity over driving a Tempo for a year.
I’m typically apologetic towards such cars but I draw a line above the Tempo.
The Tempo was… Next level trash.
The couple of Tempos I’ve experienced are the closest thing to a haunted house in car form outside of maybe the Munster Koach, if only for all the spooky sounds it made while in motion (creeks, rattles, weird whooshing sounds from none of the door seals seemingly lining up properly, etc.)
It really was a POS.
Where’s that Tempo guy when you need him.
Wow 30 years old – that makes me feel old as remember plenty around as a kid. What that one is missing is the blue flashing beacon and the simple text of POLICE along the side as that is what our local cops used as a patrol car, in their steely wheel nakedness… dunno what the engine was though.
One of the things I really enjoy about this site. Too many outlets focus on numbers and other things that don’t matter to most people. A lot of cars win comparisons based on paper, not how they suit their intended purpose.
American car magazines are notorious for this.
I grew to hate most new car reviews because of this nonsense. It always seemed like the drivers were judging a new econobox against either an M3 or an S-Class basically. So their opinions never reflected real world users.
“The steering lacked feel and it was 2/10ths of a second slower around our figure 8 course compared to it’s competitors” my brother in Christ it’s a minivan none of this is relevant.
Seriously. Althought,context is important.
Cuz honestly, if Matt Hardigree said that in the middle of the official Autopian Shitbox Showdown video, where they each buy a clapped out minivan and then compete with them as though they were brand new sports cars, I would totally buy in to that!
Great as always, Adrian. The headline alone gave me a good laugh. Displeasure + specificity usually makes for a humorous combination.
I’ll keep this in mind the next time an imported rust-free 1990 RHD Ford Escort comes up for sale near me in Pennsylvania.
This is a prime example of a vanilla car. Vanilla ice cream is the best selling flavor, at least in the US. Why? Because not everyone likes Rocky Road, bubblegum, or mint chocolate chip. But everyone will at least eat vanilla.
And I suspect people who claim to like the really weird stuff like lavender hyacinth ice cream are just saying that.
Also, they’ll probably eat a bowl of vanilla, too. Just toss some sprinkles on there for ’em.
Exactly. It’s like buying a case of Coors Light for a party. Is it the best beer? No. Is it perfectly drinkable? Yep. Anyone who wants a beer will drink it. Get some weird ass IPA? You are only going to alienate most people.
Ah yes, the beauty of the bland middle. My sister just got an amazing deal on a very expensive horse saddle because its the opposite of bland middle. The seat is full on black with hot rod flames on it. I’m talking old school yellow at the base fading up to orange on the tips hot rod flames all the way front to back on the saddle seat. Its amazing and ridiculous. But it is so completely “personalized” that most people wouldn’t buy it.
I will take ice cold domestic swill over hipster beer any day of the week.
Well, my liver has grown bourguoise, so I can’t really stomach cheap beer (Ok, teenager excesses may have taken their toll, but I digress). And I rather have stronger beers anyway.
Back to the Escort, I do applaud your article. So much snobbish bullshit on a perfectly adequate device for their intended customers (no matter when you read this). It seems that most autojournos write for the sake of a piss-contest, not for real people working their arses off to make their living, and who spend some money (then) to read about a car they can afford with some sacrifice.
Great work, Uncle Goth, redeeming real-life artifacts.
An ostracised but brilliant ex-auto journalist whom I’m good friends with has been banging this exact drum for years.
> Coors Light for a party. Is it the best beer? No. Is it perfectly drinkable? Yep.
No.
> Anyone who wants a beer will drink it
Incorrect. I’ll go thirsty at a party if the only drink is Coors Light.
I hate IPAs and most craft beer, fwiw, at least the ones who just go all out on the hops or the molasses thick 18% abv chocolate coconut macaroon stouts.
I don’t like vanilla ice cream, and will actively avoid it. It’s just so…tasteless.
There’s always one…
Have you tried either Tahitian or Madagascar vanilla? I never thought there would be such a noticeable difference between different kinds, but, damn if there isn’t.
“Actively avoid” and “ice cream” should very rarely, if ever, be joined together in a sentence.
It’s illegal to decline ice cream in 31 states.
Those other 19 better get their ish together.
But, which one gave you more status as a company car, assuming a prospective client saw you pull into the carpark at their trading estate? The new Escort, or the aging Astra? That’s the important question.
Depends where the trading estate is. North of Watford – Astra. South of Watford – Escort.
I know nothing about either area, but I am now ready if this question ever arises.
Neither is an area, Watford is sometimes used as a demarcation between North and South in the UK.
There are dozens of other hypothetical mid points, and lots of effort in to justifying your current or original position relative to them based on class, education and exposure to areas much further North or South of where you currently are. It’s all a nightmare. South is posh and soft, North is poor and hard, all of this is broadly made up and irrelevant.
Then we have a class system draped over the top, which I don’t understand, and that I think automatically makes me middle class.
I can clearly remember my cousin, the surveyor, coming round to show off his middling spec 80’s Astra which had a spoiler, but not the GTE spoiler. None of us cared.
That nubbin of plastic made him the envy of everyone on site who didn’t have a Cavalier instead.
I understand that incremental model variations increase profit, but it also increases the number of status obsessed wankers.
But that’s just the opinion of someone who only ever got a mk1 Vectra 1.8 as a company car, so clearly I’m not important.
Ah, so the Escort is the choice for a sales territory centered on Sidcup, good to know
Exceed your targets and I’ll recommend you for an upgrade to the LX. Which gets you central locking, tinted glass, a radio cassette and full width wheel trims. Just don’t brag about it.