Ford Escort Mk1: Rally Giants

Introduction

When Ford’s long-time director of motorsport, Stuart Turner, came to write his best-selling autobiography Twice Lucky, he pointed out that one of his big strokes of luck was to move into a new job at Ford in 1969, when the Escort MkI was already winning rallies all round the world. He later admitted that if the Escort had not won the Daily Mirror World Cup rally in 1970, he might have been sacked for overspending his budget by so much ...

The Escort, no question, was a car which completed Ford’s change of image. In a process started by the Lotus-Cortina (from which the Escort Twin-Cam inherited much of its running gear), it cemented Ford’s sporting reputation for the next generation. Once established, the Escort would become Britain’s most successful race and rally car of all time – and it has never lost that crown.

Let’s be honest about this – the Escort did everything that the Lotus-Cortina had promised, but could often not deliver. It was rock-solid where the Lotus-Cortina had been fragile; it was small and nimble where the Lotus-Cortina had been a tad unwieldy. More than that – it was always available, and if the money was available, everyone could buy one, along with the competition parts to go with it.

As my story will make clear, Ford Motorsport invented the Escort Twin-Cam itself, to take over from the Lotus-Cortina. Based at Boreham, the team wanted a car which was smaller, lighter, and more reliable, so that it could enter it with high hopes of success in World level rallies and in saloon car races all round the globe. Earlier in the 1960s, some Ford works entries had been gallant, but went unrewarded: Motorsport was frustrated by that, and wanted to do better in the future.

Maybe the Twin-Cam was conceived on a whim in 1967, but its development went ahead to a carefully laid plan and in two distinctly different forms (MkII from 1975) it would be competitive, a potential winner, for the next fifteen years. When the MkI, the subject of this book, became obsolete in 1975, it was only because Ford had prepared a totally restyled car on the same platform. The MkI was no less competitive than before, but suddenly it became unfashionable – and in short order the MkII took over from it.

Even so, Twin-Cams, RS1600s, RS2000s and even Mexicos had an ultra-successful seven-year career which was quite unmatched by any previous British car. A race and rally winner in 1968, when new, the MkI was still winning World rallies in 1974 and the European Saloon Car Championship too. Not even the Mini Cooper/Cooper S family, which ran out of development after six or seven years, could match that. Even today, in the 21st century, hundreds if not thousands of Escorts are still being used, and are still winning, in club-level motorsport.

Although Ford knew that the Escort’s conventional front engine/rear drive layout would always be at a disadvantage to more specialised rear-engined (or even front-wheel drive) machinery, it confronted this by making its simple little car as versatile as possible – and made sure that anyone could buy one. Over the years, not only did mountains of motorsport parts become available, but there was a choice of engines and categories in which cars could be entered.

The Escort, therefore, offered something – everything, really – for all competitors. Everyone from the impecunious clubman, to the well-sponsored team – and of course the factory team itself – could tailor an Escort to its own needs. If an Escort was properly set-up in the first place, it could give pleasure to many, and if it was equipped with all the best pieces, it could be competitive at all levels. Over the years, well-financed entrants could produce an Escort which was equally as competitive as the works cars – indeed, on the rare occasions when it happened, Ford seemed content to be beaten by one of their own private owners.

As part of the strategy, too, Ford set up the Advanced Vehicle Organisation (AVO) in the 1970s, to build thousands of the cars, while the Rallye Sport dealer organisation made sure that these cars were usually on a showroom floor, close to their customers. Not only that, but the larger RS dealers also held stocks of special parts. Therefore, a private owner in the provinces, or even in a selected European country, could get his special wheels, wheelarches, instrument panels, roll cages, safety belts, disc brake kits and alternative transmissions from a source local to him.

In so many ways, therefore, the Escort MkI became the ‘Everyman’s’ competition car. In the 1970s it dominated rallying in so many countries, and rally enthusiasts took it to their hearts. Without the Escort Twin-Cam and RS1600, Ford would never have become such a power in the rally business, far fewer British drivers would ever have made their name in the sport, and far fewer events would have been won by a British car. By any definition, this was a Rally Giant.

Graham Robson

The car and the team

Inspiration

By 1967, the Boreham-based Ford Motorsport operation realised that it needed a new car to replace the Lotus-Cortina. In only four years, great advances in the sport meant that the once-sensational Lotus-Cortina was becoming obsolete. Not only had the original-style lightweight road car – the archetypal ‘homologation special’ – recently been replaced by the heavier MkII, but several of Ford’s rivals had launched their own special models to confront it. In motor racing, the Lotus-Cortina was under threat from the Alfa Romeo GTA, and in rallying from the Lancia Fulvia HF and the Porsche 911.

From 1965 Ford began using the twin-cam engined Lotus-Cortina in rallies. Much of that car’s running gear was adapted for use in the new Escort Twin-Cam.

The Lotus-Cortina, in any case, had started life as a racing saloon car; rather fragile and lightly constructed, it had never been an ideal rally car. It took years to make the chassis and suspension rugged enough for tough, long-distance rallies, and by the time that had been done, many of its original gains had dissolved.

Help was at hand, though, when Boreham’s Bill Meade made that now-legendary remark, Blimey, one of those things would go like hell with a twin-cam engine in it! The ‘thing’ was a prototype of the new Escort, which he had seen testing on the airfield: That was early in 1967. Henry looked at me, I looked at Henry – and you know the rest ...

‘The rest’ was the birth of the J25 – the Escort Twin-Cam. Authenticated legend is that the ‘J25’ code came from the Sunday in January 1967 – 25 January – when Henry Taylor and Bob Howe spent hours at Taylor’s house, thrashing out the details of what they wanted to achieve, and how it could possibly be achieved. Walter Hayes was then consulted again, was enthusiastic, pulled all the strings at management level, a plastic mock-up bodyshell was borrowed from the engineers, and Boreham spent a long weekend fitting everything from a Lotus-Cortina into that shell.

We stopped all normal work on a Friday afternoon in March, Bill Meade said, "when the ‘car’ arrived on a truck. We shut the workshop doors, started there and then, and spent all weekend, just mocking up a new car. We knew we were short of time, so we worked to midnight on the Friday and probably did 12-hour shifts on the Saturday and Sunday. None of the drivers were involved at that stage. I’m sure they were not told until we’d actually done the job.

Bill Meade (left) was the Ford Motorsport mechanic who, on first spying a prototype Escort under test at Boreham, blurted out, Blimey, one of those would go like hell with a twin-cam engine in it! – and soon found himself building the first prototype. Driver Ove Andersson (right) was the first to drive a Twin-Cam in a rally.

It was all very rushed. We took a few measurements, but there were no drawings and not even any photographs for the record. It was just a look-see at this stage. It would be three months before we could actually have a body to keep, and we could get the drawings done before then.

This was the point at which the team realised that the only way to fit the big twin-cam engine was to skew it slightly in the engine bay, and that fitting the bigger gearbox was going to require a bit of back-street engineering with a big hammer to enlarge the gearbox tunnel ...

Twin-Cam engine

As related in the main text, the original Escort Twin-Cam used most of the existing Lotus-Cortina running gear – engine, transmission, rear axle, brakes, and some of the suspension.

The Twin-Cam engine had originally been designed by Lotus and its consultants, but needed much work by Cosworth (its project code was TA = Twin-Cam, Series A) before it could be used in road cars like the Lotus Elan, Elan Plus Two, and Ford Lotus-Cortina.

Effectively an eight-valve, aluminium-headed, twin-cam conversion of the Cortina 1500 bottom end, which had a sturdy, cast-iron, five-main-bearing cylinder block, it was built originally for Lotus by JAP. After Lotus moved its factory to Hethel in Norfolk, it eventually took over manufacture. All Twin-Cam production engines measured 82.55mm x 72.8mm, 1558cc, though this was always increased to the 1.6-litre sporting capacity limit for motorsport use. Where regulations allowed, and if rather special thick-wall cylinder blocks were employed, up to 1.8-litres was possible.

Ford used this engine in the Lotus-Cortina (1963-1966), the Lotus-Cortina MkII (1967-1970), and the Escort Twin-Cam (1968-1971)

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