It's rusty, it’s old and it's mine! It's not every day we find our dream cars, but when we do, it's well worth the effort to polish the diamond and see what it's truly worth the effort. As car enthusiasts, we can all relate to the idea of not having one specific dream car. Usually, it's a case of having ideal cars in ideal situations or being like Jay Leno and owning them all. The worth of a car can be deeply rooted in its culture.

Who did it influence? Why was it important to car culture? These questions usually cannot be answered immediately, it takes time for the answers to be answered. Fortunately for me, this car is around 31 years old, so I'm sure any questions it has to answer, it has answered them, dropped the mic and walked out the room already.

What car did I find? I found a Ford Escort Mk4 Ghia. If you are an avid reader of this blog, you would've noticed my tendency to hold a special place for Euro Cars, especially old ones. I actually really like regular cars. This car is about as average as they get, the car originally came with a 1.6 carbureted engine, probably didn't even make 100 hp, it was a mass mover.

Taking families to vacations, taking parents to their jobs and dropping children off at school. Why then do we then, associate Escorts with hype, and speed, and racing?

“This the front wheel drive one? Right? I remember they were cool, then they went front wheel drive.”

— Confused Parts dealer

This is where the Escort becomes special, due to the quantity of them, they were likely canidates for modification. Suddenly they were blasting through rally stages, nosing around circuits and burning up the streets at night Escorts were the car to have here in Barbados back in its heyday. In fact, most sleeper platforms were Escorts. It was quite common for an Escort to be sporting a larger engine either from a Sierra or Granada.

I’ll be honest, when I started hunting for a project car, I really did not expect this car to cross my path. I remember growing up, I saw a few of them on the road, zipping around. They always caught my eye but when I was older they were no longer around. I did always want to own one, but I thought it would have been highly unlikely.

I found this car, being parted out at a yard, and I was fortunate as well, as it just arrived there and not much interest was shown in it. Perhaps the lack of Escorts on the island also accounted for this, but it was really nice to find a running car for really cheap.

Is this Car my dream car? It may be one them. Many persons have fallen in love with the Mk 1 or Mk 2 Escorts. When persons speak about Escorts, they refer to those 2 models specifically. The Mk 4 Escort was a little more thrown to the side, because of its front wheel drive nature. People believe it’s lost its charm because of this but I’d disagree.

This new project car is actually the perfect platform to build a really fun sleeper. With the introduction of the Mk 3 and Mk 4 Escort came the RS Turbo, although the car it was front wheel drive, its 1.6 CVH engine, spat out a decent 133 hp with the T3 Garrett slapped on it. These engines were capable of a lot more though, and have been modified to produce around 600 + hp in recent times, that's a lot for a 4 cylinder 8 valve engine!

I won’t be making crazy numbers like that though, but it should be pretty quick off the line. I’ll be going more in depth in the near future with this car, keeping you guys aware of the ongoing project. I’ve got plenty of work to do getting it ready to drive, but I’m looking forward to stepping into this “project car” life.