One of the more engaging elements of the Ford scene is that everyone’s working from a blank canvas. Sure, there’s only a finite number of different models, variants and trim levels that rolled off the production lines over the decades, but that does nothing to quell diversity in the scene today. For any Ford you care to name, you can never be entirely sure what to expect until you see the car in the metal – and when, for example, someone says that they’ve engine-swapped a Mk2 Fiesta, you shouldn’t immediately assume they’ve dropped a turbo CVH or an ST170 in there. Just ask Stefan Matthews. He wanted to engine-swap this 1.1 L from the outset, and there was no way he’d be using a Zetec – it had to be something more offbeat.
Indeed, offbeat decisions have informed Stefan’s motoring passions since he was a teenager. “I’ve always been around and involved with cars,” he explains, “and at the age of 15 I loved split-screen
