August 7, 2021
#431
Gentle reader,
Ford Motor Company, while mostly thought of as an American car and truck maker, is and has been for a VERY long time, the maker of vehicles large and small in MANY countries around the world.
Ford, USA, has tried and succeeded in making "World Cars" sold under various model names, depending upon the country, several times with great success.
But, where the "ROW"* often gets models not marketed in North America, sometimes they share the same model name. However, the NA* market's cars, such as the Focus is a generation or two older than the ROW gets. *Rest Of World *North America
In this photo, notice the difference between street and rally racing rear wings.The four driving lights are removable on the real cars and only fitted when night rallying.These three photos, above, are true-1:64th scale diecast models from Greenlight's Hot Hatch series 1.An example is the Ford Escort which was sold in ROW long before reaching NA shores.
This is a photo of the 1993 Ford Escort sales brochure from which I chose the five-door station wagon to buy.
Above is a sorry looking U.S. 1993 Escort two-door that someone is trying to sell. It has a 1.9 liter single-overhead cam, Ford four cylinder engine mounted transverse (side-to-side) driving the front wheels.
The two-doors did not sell well, and this one has the five-speed manual transmission, so, someone might get it.
And here is my 1:24th scale European 1993 Ford Escort RS Cosworth. The real cars were homologation specials that Ford had to build and sell a certain number of, for the cars to be eligible to race in the World Rally Car championship.
It has a Ford/Cosworth two-liter four cylinder, turbocharged dual-overhead cam engine mounted longitudinally (front-to-rear) driving ALL four wheels. In fact, the front drive axle passes through the engine's oil pan!
The rear 3/4 shot of the U.S. Escort, it is a hatchback, my wife owned one. Note the completely different rear styling compared to the "Cossie" below.
In fact, the car's designer actually made three wings! Below, are links to two videos about that:
In the second video, "Ant" the Wheeler Dealer's newest mechanic, after meeting with the man in the first video, recreates the third wing. The results are below:
There is a line in a U.S. film about a cross-country race, in which one competitor breaks off his rear-view mirror and throws it out of the car, stating, "What's behind, does not matter!" Trying to see anything in that Escort's mirror would be difficult. I was fortunate to find this particular model on eBay. ALL the other cars were in Europe, and of course, they wanted more money for theirs.
This model (and the race version from Greenlight) is a street car with printed stickers applied to make it look like a rally car.
Here, you can see that the engine sits longitudinally, or front-to-rear, as God intended.
What Ford did was take the ultra-successful, race-winning, Sierra Cosworth's entire driveline (it is a larger car) and shoehorned it into the Escort's sub-compact body. They had to lengthen the front end to fit it. This is a later-model Sierra Cosworth RS500. It is all-wheel-drive. The first two model years were rear-wheel-drive only. For fans of 3DBotmaker's YouTube channel's DRC Diecast Rally Championship, you recognize "Superman" Steven King's championship winning Hot Wheels car on the left.
This series of photos shows it compared to the true-1:64th scale model.
The Greenlight rear wing is an attempt to mimic WRC later model Escort's racing rear wing. Kind of hard to see, but it is two pieces.
The Hot Wheels chassis is nothing like the accurate Greenlight's metal chassis.
The OCD part of my brain, when I saw the Greenlight's hood slightly ajar, thought, "Crap! Shoot it again!" I ignored it.Even though it is the same engine in both cars, Greenlight attempted to make each look similar to the real car's engine.
Note that both are right-side driver cars, thus for the UK, and Japan and other countries which drive in the left lane.
Lastly, photos of the stock Escort RS Cosworth made by Greenlight.The Ford Escort RS Cosworth is my absolute favorite to race in Forza. I currently have one is each class: C, B, A and S. It is not modifiable enough to race in R classes. Rarely is it beaten when I race it.
I remembered that American, Ken Block, he calls himself: Hoonigan, bought a couple of Escorts to make into rally cars.
I believe that this is the latest iteration of one of them.
So, I hope you enjoyed reading my humble blog. When I began all those years ago, it was simply something to do. I had NO idea that it would become popular. And I have you to thank for that.
Scott
August 7, 2021
#431
And here is my 1:24th scale European 1993 Ford Escort RS Cosworth. The real cars were homologation specials that Ford had to build and sell a certain number of, for the cars to be eligible to race in the World Rally Car championship.
