TEENAGE KICKS

Cast your mind back to the early 1990s. If, like me, you’re old enough to remember those days, you’ll recall tripping over Mk2 Escorts everywhere; supermarket car parks, town centres, or, my personal favourite, the short-oval hot-rod and banger tracks. The UK was littered with the things.

It was a similar story all across Europe, as owner of this rather special Mk2 and Finnish national, Mikko Paajanen explains: “They were totally worthless cars here in Finland. You could buy one for just a few hundred.”

But, as in the UK, the love for the iconic Mk2 never wavered, and as supply diminished the demand for old-school fast Fords only got greater, and with it their values rocketed.

But this is not a tale of buying a classic Blue Oval for a future pay-out. Far from it. This is a story of how