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Ford
Escort Mexico
The
Ford Escort Mexico was introduced to the world in November
1970 and was so named because of Ford Motor Company's victory
in the World Cup Rally.
This rally started in London on 19th April 1970 and finished
some 16,000 miles later in Mexico. Originally Ford intended
to use Escorts with the Twin
Cam or BDA
engine, but after reconnaissance work it was decided that
high speeds and high power were less important than reliability
and ease of servicing; therefore the Kent pushrod engine
was used in the escort shell - and engine that was once
praised by Stuart Turner for "Bombproof Reliability !"
The specification of these cars was a big wing version of
the heavy duty "Type 49" bodshell with an extensive roll
cage built in. The engine was the familiar 1600cc Kent crossflow
unit but bored out to 1834cc to give about 140 bHP. This
was then transferred to the road via a ZF five speed gearbox
and a 4.4:1 Atlas axle. In all Ford entered a team of 7
cars and finished this gruelling event in 1st, 3rd, 5th,
6th and 8th place with Hannu Mikkola and Gunnar Palm taking
the overall honours. Currently only two of these cars are
still known to exist, FEV 1H (Mikkola's car) is on display
in the Ford Heritage Centre at Dagenham and FTW 48H (the
car that finished 8th driven by Sobieslaw Zasada) is currently
undergoing restoration in private hands.
It seems likely that Ford already had plans to produce a
high performance Escort to fit in the range between the
1300GT and the Twin
Cam and RS1600,
but their victory in Mexico provided an ideal platform to
launch such a model. The engineers at the newly formed A.V.O
(Advanced Vehicles Operations) quickly developed the Mexico,
its specification being the Type 49 bodyshell as used in
the Twin Cam and RS1600 with the 1600cc Kent crossflow engine
and 2000E gearbox. Hence the Mexico was basically as re-engined
Twin Cam/RS1600.
Production of the Mexico lasted until the closure of the
AVO factory at Avely, Essex in January 1975. Significant
changes occurred to the model during those years, firstly
in 1972 the battery was relocated from the boot to the engine
bay location as seen in all o the mainstream Escorts. Later,
in 1973 the entire Escort range had a revised rear suspension
layout to prepare the model for the transition to the Mk2
which was to be introduced in 1975.
The mexico rapidly became the ideal competition car for
the clubman in the race and rally fields. A one make series
for Race and rally drivers became very popular (and highly
competitive) when introduced in 1971. The Escort Mexico
Challenge provided many of the champions of today with the
opportunity to develop their driving skills while having
cars of similar performance to their competitors. Notable
ex-Mexico Challenge racers being Gerry Marshall and Andy
Rouse and in the Rally cars Russell Brookes and Tony Pond.
The Mexico was AVO's most successful and numerous of the
Rally Sport Escorts, it provided the motorist with many
advantages in that it had good performance, was easy to
maintain, relatively easy to insure and above all it was
FUN TO DRIVE, something which is still very true today.
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