Forget circuit racing. Ignore the howl of a BDA on a forest stage. Never mind the existence of AVO, Twin Cams or the RS brand. The Ford Escort was created purely for profit — by stacking high, selling cheap and making millions of mass-production machines for the general motorist. Practicality, economy and ubiquity were the aim of the game.
Indeed, when the great Blue Oval first introduced the Escort badge, it was attached to the nose of a chubby three-door estate based on the Anglia/Prefect 100E saloon of 1953. With monocoque construction (as opposed to its predecessors’ separate chassis), MacPherson strut front suspension and semi-elliptic rear leaf springs, the 100E set the small Ford standard for the next two decades. Only the 1172cc sidevalve engine, wheezing out 36 bhp, let down this otherwise modern package.
In 1955 a
