Classic Ford – September 2019

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BUILD THREAD

It’s taken a decade to finish, but Chris now has the Mk1

Escort he always dreamed of owning.

Bought from friend, Phill back in 2009, the GT looked

rough but was a great base for Chris’ new project.

Chris chose Phoenix Orange for the Escort — a shade

that’s guaranteed to get the car noticed on the road.

Sandblasting revealed a surprisingly good shell,

with repairs to the floor limited to the chassis rails.

The final six-week push saw Chris reassembling the

Mk1 at work, with only the best parts fitted up.

The Zetec came together late on in the build, with the

ex-Focus engine converted to rear-drive fitment.

Interior is mostly new, with the Cobra buckets (left)

retrimmed to match the original GT rear seat.

September 2019 37

Making plans
So why a Mk1 Escort, what was the thinking
behind that? Well, over the course of his
motoring endeavours, Chris had contracted the
classics bug from his friend, Phill Jones, who had
painstakingly restored a two-door Mk1 Escort
with a Sapphire floorpan and 4x4 Cosworth
running gear. This flicked a switch in Chris’s
brain, and the fellas started to attend a lot of
shows together; in 2009, at Ford Fair, they
spotted a four-door Mk1 running a 200SX
motor, and there and then Chris knew what he
wanted. Sure, two-doors are cool, but he
wanted to do things a little differently.
“On the drive home we were throwing ideas
around, and Phill came out with ‘Oh, I’ve got
an early 1970 four-door GT rolling shell in the
garage if you fancy it’! He’d owned the car for
around 10 years, a local car, and his business
partner owned it before him.”
Needless to say, Chris was keen to take a peek.
And what he found, while in a sorry state after
sitting immobile for a decade, was positively
brimming with potential; it was as straight and
honest as could be hoped for, and had been
strengthened to Type 49 spec as a bonus. A deal
was done, and the car ended up on Chris’s
mum’s drive, where it was put on a spit and the
arduous task of blasting and scraping 40 years of
underseal could begin.

Blast first
“After a few weeks, Phill popped round to check
on progress, and I explained how keen I was for
it to receive the resto it deserved,” Chris recalls.
“He’s old-school, a self-taught mechanic,

fabricator and painter, and he was

unquestionably the man to help me on this

journey. And with a plan drawn up, the first step

was to send the shell off for sandblasting...”

What returned was thankfully free from nasty

surprises, with just a bit of rot in the chassis rails,

boot floor, rear panel, inner wings and heater

bowl to rectify. While the car was in the raw,

Chris decided to swap the front panel to a

round-headlight version, and what followed was

a massive learning curve: the lads’ weekends

were filled, as Phill’s skills and experience fused

with Chris’s military discipline until the shell

emerged pristine and perfect.

“We went for Phoenix Orange, because I

wanted the Escort to own its place on the

road,” says Chris, clearly far from the

shy-and-retiring type. “We had to source a

pair of rear doors from a Maltese car, and Phill

had two new-old-stock front doors from his

Ford dealer days; I also decided to have the

bonnet and boot dipped for extra protection.”

The build was galloping on apace, although

progress necessarily slowed as, by 2013, Chris

went on his first operational tour, and his

army career developed into tour after tour

which meant the Escort had to sit on the back

burner. The shell was painted and ready for

the next step, but life and work do have a

habit of shuffling hobbies around, and the

project lay dormant until April of this year.

With his first child, Bonnie, arriving, Chris

decided to leave the army and pursue a

different career. He found himself with a

six-week window before starting his new job,

at which point a close family friend, John

After six weeks of solid work, Chris

finally gets to enjoy the fruits of his labour.