Ford Escort (Mk1) Twin Cam | PH Fleet

After a season of development, Pete's now preparing it for a proper rally. What could possibly go wrong?

By RacingPete / Thursday, 15 October 2026 / Loading comments

In the last update I had a mission, a date to aim for and an event that would finally force me to get the full Ford Escort Mk1 experience. I could, in a slightly strange way, recreate a little bit of my Dad’s life in the ’70s. Rewind Tour Britain is the target, and it is now just over six months away.

In my head, the 1970s are still only about 30 years ago, which is probably just a subconscious way of convincing myself I’m not getting old. In reality, my Escort has now been around the sun 56 times. The strange thing is that while I happily bumbled around at university in an MG Midget from the exact same year, without really questioning whether it would make it to wherever I was going, I seem to have lost some of that confidence with the Escort. I’m perfectly happy to attack a hillclimb flat out, surrounded by banks, trees and Armco, yet the thought of sitting at 65mph on the M4 for a few hours has me listening intently to every new rattle and wondering whether the temperature gauge has moved half a millimetre.

The sprint and hillclimb season should at least be curing me of that. It takes you deep into Devon, up to the far reaches of North Wales, to dams somewhere off the northern M6 and, occasionally, over the border into Scotland. It is, technically, a truly international pastime. For the latest round it was Pembrey, a heavily underrated circuit, famously loved by Ayrton Senna and home to BARC Wales. When I entered, Pembrey was located in my head somewhere just over the bridge into Wales. When I eventually looked at a map, it appeared someone had moved it quite a lot further west. It was another decent schlep and, once again, driving the Escort there, competing all weekend and driving it home filled me with rather less confidence than actually competing in it.

Which brings us neatly back to a recurring theme of this season: tow cars. The usual steed, my very capable Volvo XC90 T8, was in the garage after a disagreement with a barrier, so with Pembrey looking in danger of being cancelled we reached out to another brand with fairly decent rallying heritage for help. Step forward Skoda, in the shape of the latest Kodiaq iV. So forgive me for a very brief diversion into tow-car reviewing, because it did rather save the weekend.

The gripes were a smaller boot than the XC90 for the frankly ridiculous amount of kit I seem to take racing, and the steering wheel still wouldn’t rake quite far enough towards me to let me sit with my wrist comfortably on top of it, which is clearly an important consideration when buying a family SUV. But the electric range was up around 65 miles, it was noticeably more fuel efficient than the Volvo once the trailer was attached, it pulled the Escort effortlessly and the cabin noise was, surprisingly, better than my car. Skoda really has upped its premium game and, at less than £50k new, I certainly wouldn’t say no to running one full time.

But, frankly, you didn’t come here to read about tow cars. So what about the Escort’s season?

This is where confidence has taken a bit of a knock, because we’re still being plagued by lots of small problems rather than one obvious big one. The season started at Shelsley Walsh, where the starter motor decided to loosen itself. “They all did that” came the cry from various rally boys in the paddock, which is both reassuring and not reassuring at all. That was followed by a high-rev misfire which had me chasing through the fuel system for weeks before discovering the ignition leads weren’t properly screwed into the distributor cap. A frustratingly simple fix, but also another useful lesson in just how sensitive an old competition car can be to something being slightly less than perfect.

Next up was Wiscombe Park, a beautiful hill tucked away in the South Devon countryside, where we discovered that the breather pipe running from the rocker cover back to the dry-sump tank had developed a kink. Not optimal for something whose main purpose in life is to breathe. The follow-up investigation also showed that the routing dropped the pipe right down towards the floor before taking it back up again at the other end, creating a lovely place for oil to collect. That could well explain why the half-moon seal exited the chat last season, with excess pressure building in the rocker cover rather than escaping where Ford intended. For now, I’m continuing to clean the breather pipe out to keep everything flowing, but a proper solution is on the way in the form of a custom-built breather tank mounted on the unused Twin Cam windscreen-washer points. It’ll shorten the routing dramatically and, hopefully, move another recurring issue onto the solved pile.

Loton Park, scene of glorious victory last year, had me arriving with hopes of a first win of this season. Inevitably, there were more challenges. The lovely guys at Yokohama had supplied a fresh set of A052s and I’d assumed that putting them on 8J wheels all round would be the answer. In reality I’d been struggling to get the setup to work. The cheat-code tyre of the sprint and hillclimb world wasn’t quite being accepted by the tarmac. Traction at the rear was limited, although limited traction at the back of an Escort is hardly breaking news; it was the front where I was lacking confidence and feel. Twice I struggled to get the car slowed properly for the top left-hander at Cedar and ended up practising the off-road element of rallying slightly earlier than planned.

For Prescott I decided to attack the wheel problem from the other direction and go back to the 7Js. They worked nicely on the front, but around the tight Pardon Hairpin I started hearing a rather unpleasant rubbing noise from the rear. The ET-0 wheels simply don’t give quite enough clearance to the inside chassis rail, so it was back to the 8Js at the rear. Not optimal, but workable. I’ve tried 5mm spacers and they still just touch, so realistically I need around 13mm offset to get proper clearance. Yes, I know the easy answer is simply to buy a set of ET-13 wheels, but I have acquired rather a lot of very shiny 7J ET-0s and it would be useful to make them work, not least because it would allow me to rotate wheels front to rear. More importantly, once the car moves fully onto its FIA HTP setup I’m limited to 7Js anyway, so it’s one of those small problems that actually needs solving rather than working around.

Then, just before Pembrey, came Curborough. Its little sprint circuit should be absolutely perfect for the Escort, except the high-rpm misfire returned. Spare distributor caps went on, ignition leads were swapped and yet the problem remained. Eventually the investigation moved to the spark plugs, where several of the little threaded terminal nuts on the top had started unwinding themselves. Another tiny fault, another weak connection at high revs and another problem that made the whole car feel considerably more broken than it actually was. Tightened back up and suddenly it was cleanly pulling through the rev range again. This car really is doing a very effective job of making sure I understand every part of it before trusting me with a rally stage.

So, Pembrey. After a season of small tweaks, fixes, investigations and improvements, have we finally got there? I think we might have. More importantly, we now understand the key issues, there’s a plan of action for the things that aren’t quite right yet, and for once I could go back to actually learning the car on a wide race circuit rather than spending most of the weekend wondering what was about to fall off.

And boy, does the Escort deliver when you can just drive it. There is a level of trust building between us now that is difficult to explain without sounding slightly odd, but it has the sort of unquestioning enthusiasm a dog gives its owner. You point it somewhere, commit and it seems delighted to come along. I’m now four-wheel drifting through apexes like a budget reincarnation of Roger Clark. It may not always be the quickest way around, but judging from the footage at the side of the circuit it certainly looks impressive. More importantly, my confidence in driving the car at the limit is properly there now. On a race track I have utter faith that it will do what I ask of it, even if what I’m asking occasionally involves all four tyres pointing in slightly different directions.

What remains on the daunting list is everything around that: driving it to and from events, doing a much longer stage, getting the final rally details sorted and ultimately trusting a 56-year-old Escort to deal with three days of solid rallying and racing. And ‘getting the final rally details sorted’ turns out to be doing quite a lot of work in that sentence.

The car is currently beautifully suited to sprints and hillclimbs, but preparing it properly for a multi-day rally is another little project in itself. First on the list are mudflaps, which sounds wonderfully simple until you realise fitting them properly means drilling mounting points into 56-year-old Escort bodywork that has somehow survived this long looking as good as it does. Taking a drill to those arches feels somewhere between necessary preparation and automotive sacrilege. I know rally Escorts are supposed to be covered in mud, stone chips and evidence of enthusiasm, but deliberately making the first holes yourself feels like crossing a psychological Rubicon.

Then there is everything underneath it. A fast circuit lap is one thing, but proper stages introduce rocks, ruts, compressions and all the other things that would very much like to meet the Escort’s sump before I do. So I need to make sure the skid protection is right, with proper pans underneath the vulnerable bits rather than simply assuming the dry sump and gearbox will somehow avoid everything being fired at them. There is also the less glamorous but considerably more important job of going through all of the safety equipment and making sure everything is up to the required specification. My belts will need replacing for next year to remain compliant, and once you start checking dates and standards on one item you inevitably find yourself staring at the rest of the car wondering what else quietly expires while sitting in the garage.

Navigation introduces another shopping list. I don’t currently have proper radio comms, which seems fairly fundamental if the person sitting next to me is going to tell me where the road goes. I also need a proper modern trip meter. The Escort still has its wonderful original 1970s Halda, which is an object I absolutely love and will remain in the car, but there is probably a point where period charm should give way to actually knowing where you are. Turning up to Rewind insisting we can navigate perfectly well using something that looks like it escaped from a works Escort in 1973 may be authentic, but possibly not sensible.

And once you start writing all of this down the list becomes alarmingly long. Mudflaps and mounts. Skid pans. Belts. Safety checks. Intercom. Radios. Trip meter. Brackets, wiring, switches and no doubt another dozen things I haven’t even thought of yet. I suspect this is where the collective PH rallying brain is considerably more useful than me disappearing down another internet rabbit hole, so recommendations are very welcome, particularly from anyone who has prepared a historic Escort, or something similarly old and precious, for multi-day events. What works, what is worth spending money on and, most importantly, what am I going to discover I desperately need about three days before scrutineering?

Which, of course, is the whole point of Rewind. At some stage I need to pull the trigger on the entry form and stop worrying about what might go wrong. The car is now telling me that the big bits are fundamentally right and, frankly, if I wait until every nut, hose and 1970s electrical connection fills me with complete confidence, we’ll both be considerably older before it happens.

Three days of rallying and racing is what I’ve dreamt of doing with this car, and ultimately it is what the car was built for...

Time to trust it.

FACT SHEET

Car: 1971 Ford Escort Mk1 Twin Cam
Run by: RacingPete
On fleet since: April 2024
Mileage: 340 (though probably 50,000 if dials weren’t replaced)
Modifications: FIA Historic Group 2 Specification
Last month at a glance: Pembrey podiums

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Photo credits: Nic Forbes Photography (lead image); Steve Shelley; John Dignan; Les Leese; Paul Holmes