PERSONAL ESCORTS

I spent from early 80s to around 1994 breaking, building and rallying Ford Escorts. I used other cars as well, Manta, Sunbeam, Lada, Renault 5, Vauxhall Magnum, Minis etc but mostly Escorts a few of which you can see here. Some of the photos have been pinned up in my workshop for over 25 years so are in a poor state. I could never afford to have a proper go but would build up a car and do maybe two or three events then strip it or sell it on. I had the blue MK1 (25) three times and still have the log book but the car was finally written off (not by me) against a plough parked next to a stage.
There were lots of events to chose from, you could probably do 12 rallies a year without travelling more than 30 miles from our town. Over the last 20 years most disused airfields have been dug up or built on, farm tracks are no longer available and the few forests we are still allowed to hire are very expensive. There are about 4 rallies a year now in our area.
Through my business Yorkshire Rally Spares, the name i still trade under, i stripped well over 100 Escorts and even sent perfectly good bodyshells for scrap because i had no room for them; also had a few quite famous cars with competition history which now are worth a fortune but then were just old rally cars.
By the end of the 90s cars were getting difficult to find and the resulting bidding wars to get them were making life difficult so i gradually moved my business to selling bike parts.
The final photo was after a very snowy rally using Cropton forest and was a result of being told we were doing very well !











Apologies to anyone who read the title and was looking forward to a post on "Sabrina of Leeds"