TIME TRAVEL

You probably have a few mental snapshots filed away from your youth, of cool cars you used to see driving around your hometown. Most of us do. These often go some way to forming your fledgling automotive affections; a quick straw poll around the office unearths snatched glimpses of V8-swapped Cortinas, an unforgettable seafront cruise with an XR2, and the little old lady who inexplicably used to drive a heavily-modded S2 RS Turbo around Whitstable in the late-1990s (there really was no explaining that one, but it truly sparked a fire for slammed RSTs, if not perhaps for old biddies in crochet hats).

For Dean Long, it was the sight of a purple Escort RS Cosworth that set the ball rolling a couple of decades ago. “When I saw this car for sale last year, I recognised it from 20 years back,” he recalls. “A local