My parents bought one new in 1982. I still remember going along for the test drive. They gave it to my brother when he turned 16. Out of a sense of fairness, my mom bought me another 1982 escort when I turned 16. Amazing how futuristic this must have seemed at the time but how dated it is now. Funny how that guy couldn't believe that that man's wife understood his work. There were female engineers even in the 70's you know.
Thank you for this. I owned several Ford Escorts and Mercury Lynx in the 1980s and 1990s the last being a 2001 ZX2 that we had purchased new. For the most part they were inexpensive to purchase/operate and were fairly reliable. I got 275K miles out of the ZX2 and only retired (scrapped) it in 2015 because it had extensive underbody rust/rot.
You are welcome! Cannot believe you got 275K out of an 80s Ford! Love our channel? Get the inside scoop on Periscope Film! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm
@@PeriscopeFilm It was the 2001 ZX2 which still used the basic 1980s design but had the somewhat more modern (1990s) Zetec engine and jelly bean body. It was a good car and never let me down.
20:00 "The plant's last Ford engine was the "Dragon" EcoBoost engine, produced from 2018 until February 2020. During its final months, it only made Jaguar AJ-V8 and AJ-V6 engines, themselves discontinued in September 2020. . By mid-2019, according to Wells, the Bridgend plant had become clearly uneconomic due to its under-utilisation, in turn arising from lack of demand for the engines made there. Ford decided against manufacturing batteries at Bridgend due to the plant's distance from their vehicle assembly factories, which are all located outside the United Kingdom, hence beyond a customs frontier from January 2021. In the first half of 2019, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover had already announced UK job losses, and Nissan had cancelled a planned investment in the UK Amid a global cost-cutting drive and citing a lack of demand for its manufacturing capacity, Ford closed the plant on 25 September 2020"
I had an 81 escort wagon paid 300 bucks for it 1999, I loved it got about 22mpg in town My wife hated it she ended up loaning it to her cuz while I was deployed on 2002...Wish any car company would make a simple car again the cash for clunkers really depleated probably alot of good used cars. I currently own a 87 Dodge Raider 98Kmiles, 89 F250 IDI diesel 19mpg w 74K Miles, a 71 DOdge W200 truck, 68K miles and just picked up a 66 Rambler wagon with 37K miles have less then $2000 in all of em.
Notice that there are no 5-door hatchbacks at that US press launch in 1980, they and the EXP weren't available until the '82 model year. Presumably the 3-door and wagon directly replaced Pinto models so they came first.
The sales pitch was “Quality is Job 1” I owned a new 1981 Escort. “Q1” hadn’t reached Job 1 on this vehicle. The quality today far surpasses what rolled off the assembly line in the US in the eighties and before.
Must be some reason why I haven’t seen one of these on the road in years... . Still see the occasional Chevette and VW Rabbit, but no Escorts. Loved the clip with the Fiesta wired up with testing instruments - my 1980 Fiesta S was one of my favorites.
The Ford Escort was the best compact emconomy car of all time. My parents owned 4 of them during their lifetime and like them very much. Most of them were basic emoco cars were owed for 10 years and were given to teenagers for them to drive. Well, guess what? One Ford Escort has endure for 30 years and is the of 170 car show awards including 57 First Place Awards (that's the recipient of those awards). I'm the original owner of an 1992 Ford Escort GT Cayme Limited Edition 2Door Hatchback. I'm member of the USMA, MOCSEM, and now member AACA. Because of my success over th6 past years with my Ford Escort , many teenagers developed tuners cars and various ideas for old Ford Escorts. If have a article about my car in the AACA January-Feduary,2022 issue of the magazine. Look it up and enjoy the story about my car, Your Ford Escort Man, Ted Frith.
The 2 door Hatchback and 5 door Wagon came out first as the Escort and Lynx, were replacing the Pinto and Bobcat. The 5 door Hatchback came out a year later in 1982, the Lynx would stay in production til 1987, it would be dropped as the Escort was giving a refreshing in body styles for 1988.
Wife had a US spec 89 escort when we met. The airforce dragged it to germany for us back around 99. It was a tough little car with a 4speed and no factory air and crank windows. The only thing I could ever fault the car for was the typical crappy ford ignition switch. The rest of it was builtproof. I will say, putting a clutch in it was a royal pain in the ass. Too bad the euro spec escorts were better looking. No thanks to US safety BS standards like 5mph bumpers and headlight height restrictions.
Reasonably reliable, though I had to replace the starter relay every 25,000 or so miles, or so it seemed. Also, the auto transmission control linkage to the engine was weak. However, it did provide very good mileage. As for refinement, the Japanese cars were way better. Nevertheless, it was inexpensive. Verdict: 6/10. That said, most cars today still don't get much more mileage than the Escort/Lynx unless they're hybrids. What's more, they're significantly heavier. My two door escort (okay three if you count the hatchback opening) weighed in around 2,000 pound empty.
Yes, they are about 50% heavier to meet crash standards. And the content has gone way up, more safety systems, more electronics for safety and for entertainment, etc.
The European version was so much more advanced and better looking. Ours in the U.S. was a hum-drum boring car and the Japanese had already been building better cars and the batch that arrived right about this same time trounced Ford in terms of quality of materials, fuel economy and features for the money.
If only America had received the UK version. America had a compromised one. I had a new 1985 anemic 74 hp Escort L for almost nine years and later a twelve year old 1986 Mercury Lynx (34 more HP, but not enough) XR3 that was a hastily repaired total. Both were transportation and not much else.
So today I find out that the US was also cursed by the cvh engine. We had the early Erica's that still had the Kent engines in them, and they outlasted the cvh by at least double the milage. The cvh was probably the cheapest built engine from Ford in that time. If they spend a bit more money on the quality of the cvh they could have been great.
If the people that owned them would have changed their engine oil!!!! They were not refined engines no, but they were reliable engines. People just need to learn how to take care of their stuff. They're on the same s*** today, destroying perfectly fine engines by not giving them scheduled oil changes. How about an oil change every now and then at least!!!! . Haha😂
The Ford Escort DID become a "world car" to a certain degree beginning with the second generation which was based on the Mazda B platform (Ford owned a 25 percent interest in Mazda at the time) and a version of the Ford Laser, which was sold in South Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The Ford Laser, by the way, first came to North America thanks to the Lincoln-Mercury Division when the Mercury Tracer was introduced in 1988 with US-market models assembled in Hiroshima, Japan (by Mazda) and Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora, while Canadian-market models were built by Ford Lio Ho Motor Company in Taoyuan City, Taiwan until 1990, when the second-generation model was introduced. From that point until the final Escort/Tracer was built in 1999, production was partially moved to Wayne, Michigan and the third-generation model was then built entirely in Wayne. Today the Wayne Stamping & Assembly is part of the Michigan Assembly Plant which builds the Ford Ranger and Ford Bronco.
I beat the tar out of my 1986 Escort. US base model 4 speed and no passenger side mirror from the factory. I jumped it a lot of times and it kept running. This was in 2003 when I owned the little 4 door fast back. It was a dark blue beauty 💙. 💙
Yes!! The same engineers that brought you the F15O, the #1 selling truck in AMERICA for 46 consecutive years and running!!! That means 46 years straight... 🤫 Make sure to keep that a secret tho! 😜
An Escort is a pile of junk. From beginning to end it was trash. Its only redeeming feature, on the earlier ones was this -- if you locked the keys in it, simply remove the third brake light (2 philips screws) and toggle the rear hatch latch. Open door, hand customer the keys, put light back in. They did change that. But the car was a heap. Someone mentioned Pinto - Pinto and Vega were not horrible cars. They had potential. They could support a small block 8 giving you a cheap rocket car. No front wheel drive econobox can do that. They are trash and have no hope.
some of the first disposible cars... Fiesta, Chevette , Escort, were some of the most poorly engineered cars you could buy... as a mechanic in those years? could not give me one...
If you're gonna buy a disposable car you need to go with Honda and Toyota 100% of the time. That way you can dispose of your civic or corolla at 400k instead of 160k.
This was back when Ford was trying to design something that consumers would actually want (affordable and gas efficient), instead of just doing woke virtual signaling with a “very gay raptor.” With brutally expensive gas prices and overpriced cars, this would be a popular design today.
@@zythr9999 - for most European cars as well (Japanese cars were usually better, but not perfect by a long shot). Have you seen the LACK OF QUALITY in most '70s- mid '80s British-made cars?
Fun fact… European and US versions had one part in common… a bolt for the water pump Every single other part on the car was different… how this was a world car is beyond me The section on the Arizona desert and the A/C performance is misleading… they show a European Escort which was NEVER offered with A/C even as an option The European Escort was widely criticised at launch for its bad ride quality, Stewart says it’s comfortable…
I had two Ford Escorts in the late 80's. One in Europe, German built, great car, 1600, 5 speed, 5 door. And then a Mercury Lynx, Canadian built, 1600, 4 speed, 5 door, chrome, fake fake everything, the worst and most utterly useless piece of shite I have ever driven. Ever since, I have never ever touched a Ford product ever again and I never will. World car my shiny metal butt.
ok @ 14 mins when they do 60 and shift to neutral, and windnis the only resistence. ?!?!?! ummmm tire compound, mass and other factors are in play also. While the competetors are shown 50 yards back. lol
LOL....smoking @ workplace - insane ! Imagine the stench of nicotine coming out from those puffing design engineers in that meeting room... I bet if those sketch papers are around, smell of nicotine is still alive & for sure scar from cigarette burns too.
weak sensitive people like you are the real bad stench of society today. The people smoking in the work place is the only thing you could point out in this video says alot about the type of person you are A negative idiot
I miss these 82-90 escorts. Time flies and then we die. Make sure you enjoy each second of the day and don't let anybody rob you of your time..
Pure chocolate for your eyes if you love old school thank you bud for your work
All the little musical scores throughout the video were strait Fire.
Is that good?
A classier time
My parents bought one new in 1982. I still remember going along for the test drive. They gave it to my brother when he turned 16. Out of a sense of fairness, my mom bought me another 1982 escort when I turned 16. Amazing how futuristic this must have seemed at the time but how dated it is now. Funny how that guy couldn't believe that that man's wife understood his work. There were female engineers even in the 70's you know.
Thank you for this. I owned several Ford Escorts and Mercury Lynx in the 1980s and 1990s the last being a 2001 ZX2 that we had purchased new. For the most part they were inexpensive to purchase/operate and were fairly reliable. I got 275K miles out of the ZX2 and only retired (scrapped) it in 2015 because it had extensive underbody rust/rot.
You are welcome! Cannot believe you got 275K out of an 80s Ford! Love our channel? Get the inside scoop on Periscope Film! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm
@@PeriscopeFilm It was the 2001 ZX2 which still used the basic 1980s design but had the somewhat more modern (1990s) Zetec engine and jelly bean body. It was a good car and never let me down.
20:00
"The plant's last Ford engine was the "Dragon" EcoBoost engine, produced from 2018 until February 2020. During its final months, it only made Jaguar AJ-V8 and AJ-V6 engines, themselves discontinued in September 2020.
.
By mid-2019, according to Wells, the Bridgend plant had become clearly uneconomic due to its under-utilisation, in turn arising from lack of demand for the engines made there.
Ford decided against manufacturing batteries at Bridgend due to the plant's distance from their vehicle assembly factories, which are all located outside the United Kingdom, hence beyond a customs frontier from January 2021.
In the first half of 2019, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover had already announced UK job losses, and Nissan had cancelled a planned investment in the UK
Amid a global cost-cutting drive and citing a lack of demand for its manufacturing capacity, Ford closed the plant on 25 September 2020"
After watching this, when I go to junkyards to look at old Ford Escorts, I will see them in a whole new light.
Love all the classic video's Periscope.. Keep up the great work.
videos
What's with the apostrophe???
"It's really quite amazing, how complete this little automobile really is" SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK! 18:25
I've owned three mustangs, three F-150's, two Expeditions and one Explorer, still a Ford guy.
I had an 81 escort wagon paid 300 bucks for it 1999, I loved it got about 22mpg in town My wife hated it she ended up loaning it to her cuz while I was deployed on 2002...Wish any car company would make a simple car again the cash for clunkers really depleated probably alot of good used cars. I currently own a 87 Dodge Raider 98Kmiles, 89 F250 IDI diesel 19mpg w 74K Miles, a 71 DOdge W200 truck, 68K miles and just picked up a 66 Rambler wagon with 37K miles have less then $2000 in all of em.
I moved to Florida from Michigan in 1985 with my dad step mom and 3 brothers in a ford escort 6 of us i was in the hatch back
I had an 85 escort hatchback. In fifth gear that car used so little gas. And it was a great car.
It’s unfortunate they didn’t more faithfully replicate the European car for the US.
Notice that there are no 5-door hatchbacks at that US press launch in 1980, they and the EXP weren't available until the '82 model year. Presumably the 3-door and wagon directly replaced Pinto models so they came first.
The red car is what became the XR4TI for the US market.
At 18:20 ish I think that's Bob Lutz and Donald Peterson
Yes. You are correct. Ford was WAY better under them, than we are today.
Music at 4:23 sounds like Around the World slowed down, but that was close to 20 years later
The sales pitch was “Quality is Job 1” I owned a new 1981 Escort. “Q1” hadn’t reached Job 1 on this vehicle. The quality today far surpasses what rolled off the assembly line in the US in the eighties and before.
Yes you are correct. The quality of the 1981 Ford Escort far surpassed what rolled off the assembly line in 1938 and before.
Must be some reason why I haven’t seen one of these on the road in years... . Still see the occasional Chevette and VW Rabbit, but no Escorts. Loved the clip with the Fiesta wired up with testing instruments - my 1980 Fiesta S was one of my favorites.
The Ford Escort was the best compact
emconomy car of all time. My parents owned 4 of them during their lifetime and
like them very much.
Most of them were basic emoco cars were owed for 10 years and were given
to teenagers for them to drive.
Well, guess what? One Ford Escort has
endure for 30 years and is the of 170 car
show awards including 57 First Place Awards (that's the recipient of those
awards). I'm the original owner of an
1992 Ford Escort GT Cayme Limited
Edition 2Door Hatchback. I'm member
of the USMA, MOCSEM, and now member AACA. Because of my success
over th6 past years with my Ford Escort
, many teenagers developed tuners cars
and various ideas for old Ford Escorts.
If have a article about my car in the AACA January-Feduary,2022 issue of
the magazine. Look it up and enjoy the
story about my car,
Your Ford Escort Man,
Ted Frith.
@@tedfrith8374 LOL when Mazda got involved, probably yes, before then, No.
My Escort lasted 16 years before I so it was inexpensive to take of.😊
These things feel like tanks compared to the cheap made stuff they have today. I got almost 40 mpg in a brand new 86 pony 4speed no overdrive
I had a red one too 😂 same thing pony. 4 spd. Hauled royal ass too for what it was.
"Hey Hey its Adobe.. The little brown car thats made out of clay!"
The 2 door Hatchback and 5 door Wagon came out first as the Escort and Lynx, were replacing the Pinto and Bobcat. The 5 door Hatchback came out a year later in 1982, the Lynx would stay in production til 1987, it would be dropped as the Escort was giving a refreshing in body styles for 1988.
Rather than have the midyear 1988 refresh, the new Tracer replaced the Lynx.
@@kevinwong6588 Lynx sales started to tank
Wife had a US spec 89 escort when we met. The airforce dragged it to germany for us back around 99. It was a tough little car with a 4speed and no factory air and crank windows. The only thing I could ever fault the car for was the typical crappy ford ignition switch. The rest of it was builtproof. I will say, putting a clutch in it was a royal pain in the ass. Too bad the euro spec escorts were better looking. No thanks to US safety BS standards like 5mph bumpers and headlight height restrictions.
I had a 1981 Mercury Lynx in high school. It was a great car until I totaled it in Albuquerque, NM in 1985 while visiting my brother Tim.
Kelly Donahue I hope you will reply to this the lynx that was the mascot of the Mercury Lynx was named Silver
@@sherryhannah9262 Pretty cool. I didn't know that until now. Thank you for the info.
@@kbobdonahue1966 remember the cougars were named Chauncey and Christopher???????!!!
@@sherryhannah9262 That I didn't know either. Thanks again
Kelly - What does that have to do with the price of chocolate?
Yep I've had several Escorts. Great little cars, easy to work on. Now if only I understood the obsession with blaring loud high pitched horn music.
Reasonably reliable, though I had to replace the starter relay every 25,000 or so miles, or so it seemed. Also, the auto transmission control linkage to the engine was weak. However, it did provide very good mileage. As for refinement, the Japanese cars were way better. Nevertheless, it was inexpensive. Verdict: 6/10.
That said, most cars today still don't get much more mileage than the Escort/Lynx unless they're hybrids. What's more, they're significantly heavier. My two door escort (okay three if you count the hatchback opening) weighed in around 2,000 pound empty.
Yes, they are about 50% heavier to meet crash standards. And the content has gone way up, more safety systems, more electronics for safety and for entertainment, etc.
@@davidgold5961 Impressive with the weight gain to still get better mileage than the Escort.
The European version was so much more advanced and better looking. Ours in the U.S. was a hum-drum boring car and the Japanese had already been building better cars and the batch that arrived right about this same time trounced Ford in terms of quality of materials, fuel economy and features for the money.
If only America had received the UK version. America had a compromised one. I had a new 1985 anemic 74 hp Escort L for almost nine years and later a twelve year old 1986 Mercury Lynx (34 more HP, but not enough) XR3 that was a hastily repaired total. Both were transportation and not much else.
I agree, the Euro spec Escorts were much better than the US version- I've driven both.
I remember this music. What is it?
OHV is coming to your town.
So today I find out that the US was also cursed by the cvh engine. We had the early Erica's that still had the Kent engines in them, and they outlasted the cvh by at least double the milage. The cvh was probably the cheapest built engine from Ford in that time. If they spend a bit more money on the quality of the cvh they could have been great.
If the people that owned them would have changed their engine oil!!!! They were not refined engines no, but they were reliable engines. People just need to learn how to take care of their stuff. They're on the same s*** today, destroying perfectly fine engines by not giving them scheduled oil changes. How about an oil change every now and then at least!!!! . Haha😂
I WANT ONE!
The Ford Escort DID become a "world car" to a certain degree beginning with the second generation which was based on the Mazda B platform (Ford owned a 25 percent interest in Mazda at the time) and a version of the Ford Laser, which was sold in South Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The Ford Laser, by the way, first came to North America thanks to the Lincoln-Mercury Division when the Mercury Tracer was introduced in 1988 with US-market models assembled in Hiroshima, Japan (by Mazda) and Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora, while Canadian-market models were built by Ford Lio Ho Motor Company in Taoyuan City, Taiwan until 1990, when the second-generation model was introduced. From that point until the final Escort/Tracer was built in 1999, production was partially moved to Wayne, Michigan and the third-generation model was then built entirely in Wayne. Today the Wayne Stamping & Assembly is part of the Michigan Assembly Plant which builds the Ford Ranger and Ford Bronco.
I beat the tar out of my 1986 Escort. US base model 4 speed and no passenger side mirror from the factory. I jumped it a lot of times and it kept running. This was in 2003 when I owned the little 4 door fast back. It was a dark blue beauty 💙. 💙
@@leetucker9938 Wich part do you think is a lie?
@@leetucker9938 lol
The auto tranny suffered ftom massive torque steer. But the car was unbreakable.
lol from what?
Brought to you by the same engineers that just finished bringing you the "Pinto"
Yes!! The same engineers that brought you the F15O, the #1 selling truck in AMERICA for 46 consecutive years and running!!! That means 46 years straight...
🤫 Make sure to keep that a secret tho! 😜
“That’s how those ribs were done” 7:00
How come the CVH was rough as old boots, then?
An Escort is a pile of junk. From beginning to end it was trash. Its only redeeming feature, on the earlier ones was this -- if you locked the keys in it, simply remove the third brake light (2 philips screws) and toggle the rear hatch latch. Open door, hand customer the keys, put light back in. They did change that. But the car was a heap. Someone mentioned Pinto - Pinto and Vega were not horrible cars. They had potential. They could support a small block 8 giving you a cheap rocket car. No front wheel drive econobox can do that. They are trash and have no hope.
YOU'RE a heap.
Great fun .
Love the 70s porn music😀
Decent cheap rides back in the day.
The outline at 12:02 is a VW Golf, surely?
Not bad for the times...
World car. In reality the US and European Escorts shared very little in common.
some of the first disposible cars... Fiesta, Chevette , Escort, were some of the most poorly engineered cars you could buy... as a mechanic in those years? could not give me one...
If you're gonna buy a disposable car you need to go with Honda and Toyota 100% of the time. That way you can dispose of your civic or corolla at 400k instead of 160k.
This was back when Ford was trying to design something that consumers would actually want (affordable and gas efficient), instead of just doing woke virtual signaling with a “very gay raptor.” With brutally expensive gas prices and overpriced cars, this would be a popular design today.
AMEN to that Brother!
the fake peak oil crisis of the 70s brought us the automotive malaise era.
For American cars, yes
@@zythr9999 - for most European cars as well (Japanese cars were usually better, but not perfect by a long shot). Have you seen the LACK OF QUALITY in most '70s- mid '80s British-made cars?
@@syxepop True. Yes I have but some were still endearing to some owners regardless of any issues.
Fun fact… European and US versions had one part in common… a bolt for the water pump
Every single other part on the car was different… how this was a world car is beyond me
The section on the Arizona desert and the A/C performance is misleading… they show a European Escort which was NEVER offered with A/C even as an option
The European Escort was widely criticised at launch for its bad ride quality, Stewart says it’s comfortable…
The European Escort was wildly successful car but the US version was an awful bloated thing
AGREE! Our US specs screwed over the prettiness when compared to what the germans and brits got.
I had two Ford Escorts in the late 80's. One in Europe, German built, great car, 1600, 5 speed, 5 door. And then a Mercury Lynx, Canadian built, 1600, 4 speed, 5 door, chrome, fake fake everything, the worst and most utterly useless piece of shite I have ever driven. Ever since, I have never ever touched a Ford product ever again and I never will. World car my shiny metal butt.
They were junk just like everything else Ford US built at the time. They show euro stuff in this video but these are different. Other than the name.
Who knew the Escort had a hemi?😅
The hemi was a great marketing ploy by mopar, the ford engines actually had a more hemispherical shape than the mopar engines.
9:18 shocked that a woman could understand how the auto gearbox works.
I had already notice how few women were being filmed but that’s just offensive.
ok @ 14 mins when they do 60 and
shift to neutral, and windnis the only resistence. ?!?!?! ummmm tire compound, mass and other factors are in play also. While the competetors are shown 50 yards back. lol
The test they did isn't exact science. Back in those days if the coefficient drag was near .4 it was considered aerodynamic.
Junk vehicles, with interference engines so when timing belt breaks at 80k, engine usually gone.
The European Escort was OK though.
Ya changed the belt before it broke at 60k. DUH!
16:50
slap of hierarchical oppression
Must be fun spending life being professionally offended.
@@lowerclassbrats77
"idiotic tirades"
Self projection ?
Recreational indignation ?
@@lowerclassbrats77
See Desmond Morris.
See Forensic Psychology.
LOL....smoking @ workplace - insane ! Imagine the stench of nicotine coming out from those puffing design engineers in that meeting room... I bet if those sketch papers are around, smell of nicotine is still alive & for sure scar from cigarette burns too.
weak sensitive people like you are the real bad stench of society today.
The people smoking in the work place is the only thing you could point out in this video says alot about the type of person you are A negative idiot
Junk car
Had one, garbage in garbage out,
LIES.... DECEPTIONS..... DISCO.