ALTERED ESTATE
Three-door MK3 estates are few and far between these days, especially as solid as Rob Amat’s example. But that hasn’t stopped him mixing it up a bit.
The cult of the hot estate has taken quite a while to bubble through into the mainstream. Audi’s Porsche-tweaked RS2 of 1994 was arguably the starting point for the genre when people started to really prick up their ears, and the feeling began to spread that perhaps it was possible to take your hedge clippings to the tip and then dominate a few B-roads on the way home. Big engines and big glasshouses started to go hand-in-hand — Volvo shoved a T5 into the 850 (then took it BTCC racing, just to confuse people), Subaru started flogging rally wagons, and then Audi took their ball back and squished big motors into every estate they had. Hell, the secondgeneration RS6 had a 5-litre V10.
Classic Ford enthusiasts, of course, have been observing all of this whimsical tomfoolery with a wry smile. For while the big dogs have been hammering each other back and forth with their hot wagons with increasing intensity, people like us have been doing this stuff since the ’80s. Unless it was a company van (and even that didn’t have to be a stumbling block, to be honest), any three-door Escort estate or combi van worth its salt would inevitably end up bristling with RS Turbo running gear and exterior addenda at some point or other. It’s just what people did, it annoyed the squares. A proper punk conversion, taking the sensible car of suburbia and reworking it for the racetrack — or, let’s face it, for Southend seafront.
It’s for this reason that it’s pretty unusual to find Mk3 and Mk4 Escort estates these days — they’ve either been worked into the ground in a commercial or family setting, or stuffed full of peaky turbo thrills and then wrapped around a seafront bollard in a fit of exuberance. So if you do find one, take Rob Amat’s line as gospel and grab the damn thing with both hands. Who knows when you’ll spot another?
Mine all mine
“This is the first real resto I’ve ever done,” he admits, but it’s quite a way to start. “I’ve always ended up mending other people’s cars, I just wash and polish mine!”
Rob began his Ford journey impressively early, with his first car having been a Fiesta Supersport, which was followed some time later by an astoundingly clean Orion 1.6i Ghia — which still exists on the scene somewhere — and what he describes as ‘the handbag’… a white Mk4 Escort convertible to you and me!
a proper Marmite car,” he explains. “Love it or hate it, you’re going to remember it.” So given the relative obscurity of the model these days, was he in for an agonising round-the-world trawl, or endless months of wrangling with recalcitrant forum members? Er, no, actually. Rob got a bit lucky.
“20 minutes on an auction site and the thing was mine,” he laughs. “It was a bit crusty, but a weekend of welding sorted that out — a new floorpan and a battery tray and it was ready to roll! Cue a fuel pump failure, and then the fateful phrase ‘Oh, that’s a bit dirty, let me just…’ and here we are.”
Zetec inside
And where we are is gawping jealously at a very modern evolution of that old-school turbovan behaviour. There’s no forced induction here; instead of dropping in the old boosted CVH, Rob’s moved with the times and plumped for the popular Zetec option — an engine that’s as affordable and abundant as it is easily tuneable. “It’s a 2-litre Silver Top from a Mondeo,” he reveals, “although it’s now running an Escort water pump and front wheel-drive sump in order to clear the exhaust. Oh yes, and there’s the Ninja ZX-6R bike carbs! It’s running NODIZ management and, thanks to the Quest Motorsport inlet (http://questmotorsport.co. uk) and the exhaust, which is a modified and
“IT WAS A BIT CRUSTY WHEN I GOT IT, BUT A WEEKEND OF WELDING SORTED THAT OUT — A NEW FLOORPAN AND BATTERY TRAY AND IT WAS READY TO ROLL”
wrapped ST170 manifold going into a full Sportex system, it’s now putting out 160 bhp.”
All of this effervescent thrust is helpfully channelled via an XR3i gearbox, which Rob favours for its shorter ratios for acceleration, coupled with an uprated RS Turbo clutch. He’s also thrown in a Puma gear linkage, as this reduces the throw by 25 per cent.
You can see how this is all coalescing into a proper retro seafront cruiser, can’t you? The hot motor, the fit-for-purpose transmission… so of course a few chassis mods were inevitable. No point going off half-cocked.
The front brakes, then, are RS Turbo items with uprated discs and pads, with braided lines firming up the pedal feel nicely, while the suspension is a fast-road Apex set-up that drops the thing down by 60 mm. Rob’s gone all-out on fancying up the undersides, too:
“I’m obsessive about cleanliness — if it gets wet I’ll be underneath it all week polishing the bits nobody sees,” he laughs. “I’ve had everything under there powdercoated, too — the anti-roll bar, hubs, rear A arms, engine mounts, brake servo arm, even down to the steering rack brackets!”
Sleeper spec
Now, with all of this potent mischief bubbling away beneath the surface, it’d be easy to go overboard with the exterior, but Rob had other plans. “The paintwork is all original,” he says, “so I wanted to retain that. For a while I ran the car as a bit of a sleeper, complete with GL-spec bumpers and a full factory interior, with just a set of RS500 wheels as a clue, although
“FOR A WHILE I RAN THE MK3 AS A SLEEPER COMPLETE WITH GL-SPEC BUMPERS AND A FULL INTERIOR”
“I’M OUT IN IT RAIN OR SHINE — SUNDAY BLASTS EVEN THE ODD RUN TO THE TIP”
recently I’ve changed it from subtle to noisyslap-in-the-chops.” The interior is a case in point here, its freshly retrimmed ’90-spec RS Turbo Recaros joined by a six-point roll cage and enough stripping to perk up a whole summer of stag parties. There’s no rear seats, no spare wheel, no jack, no radio, no nothing.
“Even the glovebox is out of commission, as the cage is in the way,” he grins. “The electric windows work, though!”
So how did things go, for a first full project? All plain sailing, or a pain in the backside? “Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, actually,” Rob says. “The Zetec was the only thing that presented any real hurdles — it was a ‘bits in a box’ engine as it had dropped a valve seat by its previous owner, but it came together alright in the end.” With 160 bhp and the grin-inducement of bike carbs, we can take ‘alright’ as a massive understatement.
“It’s not a trailer queen,” he continues. “I’m out in it rain or shine — chip runs to the coast, Sunday morning blasts, traffic light GP-ing Corsas, even the odd tip run!”
Four play
Sounds like Rob’s got this hot estate game nailed. Forget your ballistic Audis, this tasteful blue longroof is where it’s at. But with perfection seemingly achieved, where does he go from here? “Oh, there’s a few rumours going around,” he smirks. “All I’ll say is… all-wheeldrive.” And with that Obama-esque mic-drop, he’s out, off to annoy some boy racers in Vauxhalls before grabbing some chips. Just like the Ford boys did in the ’80s.