MEMORIES OF A GREAT CAR

Stuartturner

“The Mk1 Escort was a year old when I arrived at Ford and it was immediately successful. But we’d seen this coming. When I was at BMC, I said to them: ‘We’ve got problems coming…’ and those problems were triggered by the Lotus Cortina. My best memory is of a car whose general configuration made it so competitive. It was just a good package.”

Russell Brookes

“Doing the [Ford Escort] Mexico Championship, I won a drive on the Jim Clark Rally in 1973. I went down to Boreham to try out the car – don’t forget this was an RS1600 and the quickest thing I’d driven was a Mexico with 86bhp! I rolled halfway through the rally and finished second, 20 odd seconds behind Roger Clark. After the rally, I went to Roger and told him I’d have won if I hadn’t rolled. He said: ‘F*** off. I’d have driven quicker if you hadn’t rolled’.”

Martin Holmes

“Chris Sclater was the first driver to win a championship with a Ford Escort and I co-drove for him in 1971, when we won the British. The improved rear suspension on the Mk2 was great. Chris and I finished second on the Circuit of Ireland in 1971, but we were leading for a long, long way then we went off on the final morning. We went off into a bog and the only way for us to get the car back was to actually roll the car back onto its roof, through the bog and onto the road. There’s nothing like the noise of hearing a windscreen crack and smash when you’re rolling the car over! We got going again and finished second to Adrian Boyd.”

Judy Clark

“Roger seemed to win everything he started in LVX [RS1600]. He won the Scottish, so many events. Those times, the late 1960s into the 1970s were such lovely times, when Roger was right in the middle of developing the Escort. Roger and I got married just after he won the Shell 4000 Rally in Canada in an Escort. We went off to Greece for our honeymoon and he won the Acropolis!”