FORDS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN…

Today, the latest fast Focus models are rebuked for having too many doors, but back in the 1970s Ford were criticised for not building more family-friendly sporting models. But at least one Escort Mexico Estate survives today…

Way back in the early 1970s, when the air was still clean and sex was still dirty, Ford’s new AVO team thought they could do anything, and that expansion was inevitable. Although their short existence at South Ockendon ended after only five years – and the series-production of four Escort-based models – all manner of other projects had been proposed, started (and abandoned) in that time. Mike Moreton’s book (Rally Sport Fords – from Veloce) tells a riveting story, not only of the products which we all bought in thousands, or which we also might have bought if times had been different.

Ford’s problem with AVO was that sales never really matched up to the promises

and high hopes which had surrounded its birth. In the end, the car which launched the sub-brand – the Escort RS1600 – became one of the world’s most successful competition cars, but sold very badly after the first rush had ended, while the RS dealers found that the only cars they could really sell were two-door Mexico and RS2000 saloons. The RS dealers didn’t like working on RS1600s (they didn’t understand the BDA engines…), and some found the lack of options or dress-up kits on the other models a bit restricting.

Which is where this short story has its point, and where the author has a special interest. The ‘why-don’t-we ….?’ brigade (of which I was one) had their own ideas of what else could be put on sale, but Ford and AVO – who knew a lot more about marketing and financing than I did – never agreed with them. In particular I am thinking of the sad case of no four-door saloon or estate car versions of the Mexico and the RS2000. As a young married man of that period, with children and bulldogs to carry around, I dearly wished that I could have a four-door RS2000 as my daily driver, while I had friends with less money to spend who would really – they said – have queued up to buy a Mexico estate car. Personally, I begged and pleaded, but even though AVO-boss Stuart Turner was already a good friend, I never got my wishes.

AVO, though not Ford’s accountants or its RS dealers, knew that this sort of development could very easily be delivered,

for the entire painted body shells of the AVO cars were being delivered from Halewood (where hundreds of four-door saloons, and estate cars were being produced every day), and that the existing running gear could be fitted to those bodies without modification. Not only that, but AVO’s unique ‘Merry-Go-Round’ assembly line could easily cope, as during build the incomplete cars were being moved from station to station by under-body ‘slings’, which would need no changes.

So, what went wrong ? Although this is a story for which accurate statistics have not been provided, the fact is that a handful of four-door saloons (particularly RS2000s) and three estate cars (Mexicos) were actually built at South Ockendon, these being produced only to satisfy very special orders (police forces were reputedly involved), and never officially existed. But nothing was ever admitted at the time, and even though the AVO assembly line was by no means full, they were never added to the range. Everyone outside of AVO, of course, had their well-honed excuses at the time.

I didn’t understand it at the time (Stuart got bored with my banging-on for the need to provide a four-door RS2000 to people like me), and I truly don’t understand it today. Ford’s accountants, however, knew better than all of us, that the RS market place was rather smaller than many thousands of impecunious Ford enthusiasts would suggest, and with the first of the massive Energy Crises looming they firmly turned down the suggestion of a further diversification.

Those three Mexico estates eventually faded away, largely unknown and unloved, until one of them re-surfaced nearly thirty years after it had been built. A painstaking rebuild followed, the characteristic Essex registration number (YNO14L) was retained, and owner Rob Walker now shows it at Ford events all around the country. In its gleaming yellow paintwork, it is a credit to him, and a credit to the memory of AVO.

But just think. If (a big if…) the Energy Crisis had not erupted, AVO would have survived, cars like this would have gone on sale, and a series of faster, more sporting, Capris, Cortinas and Granadas might have followed. We can all dream.