Classic Ford – August 2019

August 2019 31

THE QUICK

and the

SHED

Less barn-fi nd, more shed-

exhumation, Jeremy Hookway’s

RS2000 came into his

possession as a rather sorry-

looking project. Today, it’s a

fast-road sparkler built for shows

and high-octane roadtrips.

Words Daniel Bevis Photos Andy Saunders / ASDesign

e all dream of fi nding the perfect
project car, hidden away in the
shadows by a seller who doesn’t really
know what they’ve got. It’s perhaps not the
ideal scenario when said car is riddled with
terrible attempts at welding and you can pull
bits of steel out by hand, but for Jeremy
Hookway, the perceived horrors were simply
masking a whole load of potential.
“It was a Mk2 Escort, so in my head I’d
already bought it,” he laughs.
Jeremy’s had an astonishing number of Fords
over the years and, having sold his RS1600i and
with a slot to fi ll, the yearning for a Mk2 Escort
was strong.
“This car was offered to a friend at a show,
although he’d just acquired a project so I

decided to take a look,” Jeremy recalls. “All I

knew was that it was a Mk2 that had been off

the road a while; sat in a derelict shed, I was

confronted with a bare rolling shell propped on

its side with two-by-fours — some bits had been

sand-blasted, some rubbed down, patches of red

lead, primer, lots of black Hammerite, and some

really bad welding. Structurally it didn’t seem

too bad though, and I was trying not to look

too keen...” The seller explained that the Pinto,

Type-9, glass, doors and so on would be thrown

in for the right price, and chucked out a fi gure

of £1500. This didn’t seem unreasonable to

Jeremy, and poking through the spares, he asked

what model it was, expecting to hear ‘L’ or

‘GL’, but the owner seemed to think it was an

XR3i (perhaps because of the registration

W

number) which is, of course, impossible. But a

synapse fi red in Jeremy’s brain, and he started

checking the car for telltale signs of greatness.

Sure enough, he found anti-tramp bar brackets,

spare wheel strap brackets, dash cutout for the

clock pod — it was an RS! So he immediately

shook the man’s hand, trying hard not to pull it

off at the elbow, and carted his bounty home.

The logbook proved that it was indeed a bona

fi de RS2000.

Plan B

“I was going to keep it original, until I saw the

prices of RS interiors,” says Jeremy. “So I went

with plan B, which was to fl atfront it, fi t a couple

of bucket seats and a rollcage — which I’d

wanted to do to my last RS2000 but didn’t