THUNDERSALOON MK2 ESCORT
It first took to the track in the late ’70s, now Steve and Dan Minton’s Thundersaloon Escort is back, and rocking Cosworth BDX power.
The Ford modifying scene has changed immeasurably over the last three decades. Back in 1987, the Mk4 Escort was all fresh and new, so the tuning world had got used to the idea of hot front-wheel-drive Fords — after all, the Mk3 Escort had been around since 1980. But nevertheless, there was still an undercurrent of yearning for the rear-wheel-drive thrills — a lot of people still thought that a Blue Oval wasn’t proper unless it steered from the rear.
For some diehards that’s still the case, although the world’s moved on and it’s no longer true that sending the drive to the front is solely an exercise in packaging and efficiency — today’s front-wheel-drive hot hatches routinely have 300 bhp from the factory, which are the sort of numbers that would have made a Mk4 Escort owner dribble in the ’80s.
The Mk2 Escort you see here represents the zeitgeist of Ford tuning aspirations back then — a build which appeared on the cover of sister title, Fast Car way back in 1990 and is the real deal. A pukka race car from back in the time when everything was sepia-tinted and Twitter was just something birds did outside your window on a spring morning.
’70s survivor
A 1975 Mk2, this car was originally built up as a race car in 1979 by a chap named Steve Minton along with his brother, to compete in the Wendy Wools Special Saloon Car Championship — which was very free on regulations! From 1980-1985 they also competed in various Special GT meetings. The diverse Special Saloon series ran through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, as forerunner to the Thundersaloon series; cars competing here were big-hearted evolutions of recognisable mainstream cars, with fat bodywork and improbably wide slicks. Lunatics, basically. And as series regulations evolved, this Escort found itself competing from 1987-91 in the British Thundersaloon Championship, racing against such big names as David Leslie, John Cleland, Dave Brodie and Gerry Marshall. At this time it was
running a Hart 420R engine – a Formula 2 twin-cam screamer from the company that’d go on to develop Ayrton Senna’s F1 motors. The car was retired in 1991 and stored until 1998, at which point it was sold. And that could have been the end of the tale, had Steve Minton’s son, Dan not happened upon a surprising forum post online in 2004…
Up for grabs
“I saw a post on Ten Tenths about the Minton Racing Escort being up for sale,” Dan recalls. “I managed to get hold of the guy who had it in Hastings; Dad and I went down to have a look at it and, sure enough, it was the car! On the way home we stopped into a pub and talked about whether it was worth saving, as it been through three different owners over the 10 years and was in a really poor state as well as not having been driven. The guy was also a little reluctant to sell it, although the fact that he was expecting