Article by:
Aaron Kiley
From the November 1981 issue of Car and Driver.
If one needed any reassurance that a new day has dawned at the Ford Motor Company, the fact that Ford president Don Petersen has been seen tooling around in this lovely little red street racer ought to provide it. This is a type of car that is unthinkable in most of Detroit's board rooms today. It is exciting, aggressive, compromised entirely in the direction of driving fun, and—within the Procrustean confine of Detroit's automotive orthodoxy—frivolous ... "We can't wast our time on stuff like that," goes the litany. "People will think we're not serious about fuel economy. Tell the guys in Research and Development that we need a full status update on the new decal package!"
There are two Ford Motor Companies, one in North America and one everywhere else. The one in the United States is and has been taking gas lately, and it has been decided by the people who preside over Ford's fortunes to bring the two closer together, to make the North American one more like the Everywhere Else one. The Fiesta was an early step in that direction. The Escort/Lynx was another. The Escort has been a resounding success in the market place, but less so among the critics. It won the coveted European Car of the Year Award in spite of the fact that automotive writers (the people who vote this particular prize) both here and abroad had serious reservations about its ride and handling. But there is a truth in the automobile business, truer than other truths: it says that the good cars are the ones that sell. The Escort sells. Now we have driven one that also goes.
The XR3 (shown here) that we managed to borrow from Mr. Petersen is the sportiest Escort Europeans can buy. It weighs 2000 pounds, while our own long-term-test (American) Escort weighs 2140 pounds, and its 1598-cubic-centimeter engine produces 96 horsepower at 6000 rpm, 98 pound feel of torque at 4000 rpm. This ratio of weight to power results in zero-to- 60 times on the order of 10 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 17.2 at 79 mph, considerably faster than anything an American could buy in the same size and price class. It's wonderful. You'll find the hood release on the underside of the steering column. Pop the hood and look inside. What you see is a neat little overhead-cam four with a two-throat Weber carburetor, a smooth cast-iron exhaust manifold feeding twin downtubes, the necessary cooling and electrical gizmos, and that's all, folks. Hardly, any of the stuff that the EPA has forced us to cram under the hood of our cars so that we may breathe from our exhaust pipe in relative safety; just the important bits. Read more...
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