MST MK2
TESTED 8.7.21, SNOWDONIA ON SALE NOW PRICE £102,000
Not a Ford Escort by name but one by appearance and by nature, this retro rally car represents restomodding taken to the next level
HistoricalhighlightsofAugust 1980 included the release of Microsoft’s first operating system, Xenix, the University of Aberdeen conducting the first full-body MRI scan and the birth of future child actor Macaulay Culkin. In the pop charts, David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes disproved Abba’s The Winner Takes It Allby replacing it at number one. Less remembered by posterity isthe quiet death of the Mk2 Ford Escort, the final example of which rolled out of Halewood that month.
As a road car, it was little mourned. The combination of rear-wheel drive and a back axle suspended between apairofleaf springs seemed archaic even then. The Mk3 Escort’s use of frontwheel drive and peppy overhead cam engines was much more in line with the automotive zeitgeist.
Butasarallycar,the Mk2 Escort would be sorely missed. Ari Vatanen won his sole World Rally Championship in one the year after the road car was retired. (This connection was celebrated at last weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed by the Flying Finn’s reunion with his original car and co-driver David Richards.) Yet even as rallying moved into its era of turbocharging and four-wheel drive, the humble Mk2 Escort’s combination of affordability and tunability kept it popular with amateur competitors.