My First Car: Ford Escort XR3i
It was all going well for PHer David Hundley's XR3i until the wheel fell off...
But no. I could have had a Golf GTI, but for some reason decided to purchase a white 1986 Escort XR3i, with 25k miles. Why did I make such a decision? Because it had electric everything, nice seats and cloverleaf alloys, where as the similar priced golf, looked more like a coal cabin inside, and it just didn't seem cool, with its P-slot wheels and tiny spoiler.
Anyway the XR3i had a CD player and no one, expect people with Porsches, has a CD player in a car. The CD player only survived two months, due to me leaving the window open on a dodgy housing estate in Banbury. So the car was driven around my mum's driveway until, a week after my 17th when I passed my test.
£1,100 later for the insurance, which seemed worth the pain at the time, I was ready to hit the road. Within 30 minutes of passing my test off I went to Milton Keynes, with my mate Jonathan, with the inention of impressing women. Oh how we live and learn. An hour after passing my test, I was pulled over by the local police for some over energetic use of my right foot and not looking like I was old enough to own a mountain bike, let alone a car. In the first month, I had a small rainforest worth of producers.
The garage the car was purchased from gave me a 12 month warranty, which in real terms meant nothing and was a good way of getting even more money out of me. Fix 1: The car overheated so the fan was linked to the ignition. Fix 2: The alarm wouldn’t stop going off so was unwired as it was more cost effective than fixing it.
By the end of the first month of driving, I had an incident with a very sturdy brown Vauxhall Chevette, which decided to get in my way after trying to drive around Wellingborough as if it was the Monaco street circuit. The garage quoted me £1200 to repair the car, but I decided to use some entrepreneurial locals, who charged me £350.
Car came back, looking as good as new, although the holes in the front frame were a tad worrying. By month three it was summer and the little XR3i had decided that my passengers needed their feet kept cool by the rainwater that came through a little hole in the floor. Then the alternator went, the starter motor had to be hit if I was on my own, or the car pushed by my friends. The following month the car developed a new metallic ticking sound at high speed.
My friends and I being the amazing car mechanics we were, ignored the noise. Month seven and the manifold fell off while driving down the M1. By the eighth month of owndership the front wheel fell off while driving back from college, and by month nine the pristine white body started to develop brown shades around all the sills and valance and wings.
The MOT arrived and the garage quoted £1500, so again the local entrepreneurs welded in a new floor and it was all done for £400. I then moved to Canada and left the car sat on my driveway , before my Auntie decided to sell it. Various stories in the next six months made their way over the Atlantic to me, including such gems as it was raced around by various people, found in a ditch at one point and finally, still registered in my name, used for a bank job as a getaway car in Northampton.
So what did I learn from this experience. Fords are not always great cars, or at least ropey 80s XR3is certainly aren’t. Girls, did not think an XR3i was cool, no matter how much I though they did, although it did make me a popular taxi at college.
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I still have, amongst others, a mk3 xr3i. I had bought it as a runner about 8 years ago whilt my s2 turbo was undergoing major work. I then decided the 3i was too good to scrap and handed it over to a bodyshop for everyhthing it could possibly need. It passed it's mot needing only a broken spring replaced, (which I had always known was broken due to the 'pung' on full lock) and the back brakes stripped and cleaned.
I ran the car for a year and have had it stored ever since.
I LOVE MK3 ESCORTS !
They have very amusing - but safe and predictable - handling. It was all rock hard springing - not much finesse - but suited the 'typical' XR3i driver perfectly lol. You can get them at ludicrous angles in roundabouts, due to the fact that the huge understeer scrubs off most of the speed like a b'stard (so it all unfolds relatively slowly lol).
When ragging the crap out of it though, that 1.6 CVH engine suffered terribly with oil-draining away from the heads and awful valve-bounce!
I know that the carb'd XR3 was 96bhp/98lb ft (fitted in the Mk.2 XR2 too) and that the XR3i was 105bhp... but was the torque still 98lb ft (can't remember)?
I'd love to own a totally original, near-concours one in the Sunburst...
P.S. Of course, even more desirable at the time, was the rare as hen's teeth RS1600i, with the 'RS1600i' and striped bonnet black vinyl graphics, plus the twin-coil ignition. Anyone know the bhp/lb ft of these?
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