FACTORY FRESH

or the past 20 years Steven ‘Gibby’ Gibson has run Gibby’s Spraying Services in Harthill. He paints cars and tackles accident damage repairs by day, then in the evenings Gibby enjoys restoring old Fords — especially Cosworths. He owns some nice low-mileage examples, but Gibby had never restored an RS2000 until Richard McCulloch got in touch. “Richard loves old Escorts; he bought this one-owner 1978 Escort RS2000 in 1999. After driving past it for years he finally convinced the owner to sell, with part of their handshake deal being that the car would get restored. Richard kept the Escort in storage until 2017 then asked me to return it to factory condition. He wanted it looking completely original