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Roll your rally car and you’ve got a problem if you need to reshell it quickly. Now MotorsportTools has new, off-the-shelf Group 4 Mk2 Escort shells.
New Escort Group 4 shells Roll your rally car and you’ve got a problem if you need to reshell it. Not any more as Motorsport Tools has new Group 4 Mk2 Escort shells.
Perhaps the most famous role of the Mk2 Escort was rallying and the car’s involvement in his discipline is still massive. From its humble beginnings, the car’s motorsport development progressed into the Group 4-spec rally car. And it’s now developed even further into what’s known as Modern and Ultimate-spec Group 4, allowing it to cope with the very latest events.
Filled full of roll cage and altered immensely to cope with not just Tarmac but gravel stages that demand a higher ride height, the Group 4 shell was and still is the work of many specialist shell-builders. And the problem is, many have their own spec, and the quality can vary immensely. There are good homebuilt cars and there are incredibly detailed Pro-built works of art. The problems start though when the car’s damaged — and let’s face it, they do get damaged. Yes, they’re built to take it but not many can have failed to witness the horrendous, multi-roll annihilation that can occur with intense rallying that’s often displayed on social media. Nasty, but thanks to the Group 4 shell’s development, the occupants are more than often able to walk away.
The trouble is, after such an occurrence, you now have a shell that’s smashed to bits. If you want to get back onto the stages, then you’ve got a pretty long wait because a Group 4 shell isn’t something a fabricator will complete in a day. On top of that you have to find a suitable shell from which to work, which these days can be hard work unless you pay big bucks, or spend a lifetime welding up a teabag!
Motorsport Tools — run by Carwyn Ellis — is well-known for being rally car-orientated in a very big way. We’ve featured several of their finished cars for which they produce an immense catalogue of parts to help you turn your Escort — and other classic Fords for that matter — into a motorsportcompatible car.
The concept that Carwyn’s now come up with is to produce off-the-shelf (OTS) Group 4 rally car shells based around the Mk2 Escort. The idea is pretty obvious — if you want a ready-built shell that’s been dry-fitted so you know it’s virtually ready to go, and ready-painted so that all you have to do is slot in your components (or indeed buy the majority of them from Motorsport Tools), then they have them on the shelf.
At this early stage, Carwyn intends to have a stock of cars in three colours — red, white and blue — but if you want one to special order, that can be catered for, and the range is intended to be expanded to cover not just Group 4 but other areas of motorsport. Obviously, we need to know a bit more about this concept so we invited Carwyn to guide us through Motorsport Tools’ intentions and explain how it all works.