Ford Escort Twin Cam: the genuine article

By Charlie Calderwood

| 6 Aug 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Ford Escort Twin Cam: the genuine article

“It’s got to be exactly as it was on the startline of the 1971 East African Safari Rally and if anybody can prove I’m wrong, I’m more than happy to listen and correct it,” says Neil Robinson bullishly, looking at his restoration 18 years in the making.

“But there are three things I have deliberately not put back as they were originally.”

This is the Ford Escort Twin Cam that Timo Mäkinen and Henry Liddon drove in the 1971 East African Safari Rally.

The Ford Escort Twin Cam’s spotlamp is positioned for the co-driver to control

They didn’t win – finishing 20th wasn’t even ahead of the other Escorts – as a pair of Datsun 240Zs took a 1-2 in what was the Twin Cam’s last major rally.

Fords were not anything new on the East African rally in 1971.

Zephyrs and Anglias had competed since its early days, a Cortina GT won in ’64, while the German Ford rallying team had taken victory in the 1969 event with a Taunus 20M RS.

But it was new to the Escort, and the Boreham Competition Centre wanted to make a point of winning the rally with a British Ford, piloted by a European team.

This ex-works East African Safari Rally car sports the correct boot springs, sourced from the original manufacturer

All of the previous winning drivers, including those in the Ford entries, had been East Africans.

Boreham had switched over to the 16-valve, Cosworth BDA-powered RS 1600 by the start of the 1971 season, but, faced with the heat, dust and limited maintenance opportunities of the East African Safari Rally, Ford decided to give the familiar Twin Cam one last run.

The BDA didn’t have the miles under its belt to be trusted on an extreme rally of well over 3000 miles in length.

That decision looks a bit over-cautious today, but Ford’s decision had precedent.

The second spare wheel is mounted in the Ford’s cabin

Poor-quality fuel had burnt out valves and otherwise disrupted the running of highly tuned Twin Cams running in the Lotus Cortinas on the 1968 London-Sydney rally.

Boreham switched to more conservative, bored-out Kent engines for the 1970 London-Mexico World Cup Rally Escort entrants, and won.

Having gained more expertise with the Twin Cam by 1971, and needing the speed to keep up with ever-quicker competitors, Boreham created a 1.6-litre Twin Cam making 140bhp for the six Safari entries, which were fitted with much of the same equipment as the World Cup Rally cars – though not the famous ‘buzzard bars’ that braced the front wings to the roof.

The Twin Cam engine makes 140bhp, with exposed air filter part of the Safari Rally specification

The event proved a reversal of fortune, however, as the Fords struggled to keep up with the winning Datsuns, while Mäkinen’s car suffered major suspension damage and a broken propshaft.

With more confidence in the high-tech BDA, Ford returned with the new RS 1600 the following year and took victory.

The 1971 event could most charitably be described as a learning experience.

Switching out the Twin Cam engine for a BDA wasn’t difficult, and Boreham did do this to a few of its cars, but LVX 943J was simply sold on after its East African foray.

Hillman Imp sidelights were peculiar to rally Ford Escorts

It competed in a few smaller events, and Neil has been able to trace some of its previous owners, but he admits that there is a period in the 1980s when he isn’t sure exactly what the car was doing.

Neil’s own Escort story, meanwhile, starts in his uncle’s 1973 1300 Sport.

He was picked up from school in it, then it slowly morphed into a clubman racer and became his second car.

He still owns it, although it hasn’t seen the road for many years. Even faster Fords followed.

The booklet for the 1971 East African Safari Rally

“When I moved to London for my first proper, salaried job, I bought a Mk1 RS 2000,” says Neil, “and when I got a significant bonus, I bought an RS 1600 as well.”

Those two cars introduced Neil to the clubs and events celebrating Ford’s RS products.

That’s where he first met Mk1 Escort guru Dave Watkins, and when he started to hear of ex-works cars hitting the market.

“Every time one was for sale, it was a bit more than I was willing to pay,” Neil explains. “Then, just at the least convenient moment possible, I got a phone call out of the blue.”

The Ford Escort Twin Cam has a collapsible fuel can and dry-sump oil reservoir in the boot

Working in digital effects for the film industry, Neil was living in the USA, but, with a feeling this was his only chance at the opportunity, he pulled out all the stops.

“I had the money because I’d sold my house, and my wife agreed that we should buy what was left of this.

“She has been nothing but supportive of my obsession with these cars since the day we met.”

That was 18 years ago, the first eight years of which Neil spent researching the car and gathering parts, at first remotely from San Francisco.

The Ford Escort Twin Cam’s petrol was kept under lock and key

“It was a wreck. If it wasn’t for its provenance, you wouldn’t have considered it,” says Neil.

Dave started the metalwork on the car 10 years ago, but not before a lengthy conversation about what Neil wanted from the project.

“I had to decide if it was going to be an accurate recreation, or a historic rally car.

“It couldn’t be both and once you start one way, it’s hard to go back.”

This Ford Escort is prepared for anything, with a tall overdrive and plastic rolls for wading

His decision was to build the car as it was in 1971. It was to be a piece of history, not a modern competitor.

Figuring out exactly what that was took years of research and thousands of pounds buying up old photographs.

“It changed from the minute it started the event and every time after that, through all of its private owners,” says Neil.

“We had to do a bit of automotive archaeology to get back to what was original to the event and what was missing.”

The Ford’s binnacle has temperature gauges in the centre

One literal gaping hole was the windscreen, one of many parts for which Neil bought some of the last spares going.

So, too, the harnesses: “It’s extraordinarily difficult to find period competition seatbelts, because they have to be replaced regardless of condition and get thrown away.”

Neil found the remnants of two sets of belts after years of searching, but struggled for the buckles until he approached the maker, Willans, which is still producing them today.

A reminder of the Ford Escort Twin Cam’s dog-leg gearshift

“The MD looked at the photographs I had and said ‘hold on a minute,’” Neil recalls.

“He came back with a shoebox and told me it was the remnants of the company when he bought it in the 1980s. There was a set of brand new buckles in there.”

With a declaration signed that Neil would never use them for competition, Willans made a set of one-off reproduction belts for them.

The hardest part to track down was a pretty small one.

Halda timing gear with twin stopwatches

Boreham only fitted the six East Africa cars with the headlight-wiping system found on this car.

Plenty of other works Ford cars had headlight wipers, but they used a much more common Lucas set-up, also seen on Aston Martins, where the wiper blade is the entire diameter of the headlight rather than half.

“I’ve got a photograph, and even video, of them rotating on one of the cars,” he says, “but nobody could tell me what they were.

“They proved to be, generally speaking, quite useless, so they never used them again.”

This Ford Escort Twin Cam was an 18-year project for owner Neil Robinson

Most restorers would think nothing of fitting a period Lucas system to the car, but not Neil.

He spent years examining every headlamp-wiper system he saw at classic car shows to try and find the same set-up, drawing a blank until he discovered a recent photo of a Volvo P1800 with the same system.

It turned out to be a car from the Volvo museum in Gothenburg.

It was a prototype, and the museum said no other Volvo was fitted with the kit, but it centred Neil’s search on Scandinavia, eventually leading him to a set in a scrapyard in Finland.

This 1971 East African Safari Rally map details the 3125-mile World Championship event

“I just sent him the money. Sight unseen, no photographs,” Neil says.

“They were only just beyond scrap, but enough of a template to try and have the bits remade.”

Neil had them reconditioned and rebuilt, including the operating cables, and struggled to find an appropriate glass-to-metal glue before finally fitting them to the car.

It was the longest single job on the Ford Escort.

This Ford Escort Twin Cam bogged down during the 1971 Safari Rally

And then, just a few months ago, he was contacted by an American with a new-old-stock pair for sale, who also included a scrap set in the sale: “So, after 18 years, I ended up with three of them!”

Some parts simply didn’t exist any more.

The East Africa cars had a standard reclining seat for the co-driver and a fixed racing item for the driver.

“Dave thought it was a Huntmaster, but it didn’t look quite right in the photos,” says Neil. “He met the eponymous Terry Hunter at Goodwood Festival of Speed, and he told Dave it was one of just four seats he’d made for Ford’s Scandinavian drivers.”

‘The bark of the exhaust is thrilling, while the direct steering makes cornering satisfying – even on knobbly tyres’

Mäkinen and his fellow Northmen had insisted on greater bolster support, and Terry illustrated the differences in a diagram.

Sourcing an original 1970s Huntmaster is no mean feat on its own, but, armed with that and Terry’s drawing, Dave recreated the seat.

Neil calls it “the fifth of the four Huntmaster Scandinavians”.

The boot clips posed a similar challenge. You can still buy them, but they are the wrong length, with too-short springs.

The Ford Escort Twin Cam’s matt-black bonnet is secured with pins

Serendipity struck again: calling at the nearest industrial spring maker in Redditch, Neil stumbled upon the company that built the originals.

Now called Middleton Springs, Terry Springs had a successful line of domestic spring clips in the ’70s, primarily used for hanging brooms in cupboards.

“They had all the original drawings,” says Neil. “They were made in that factory, on a machine that’s still there.

“In fact, the woman who’s running the machine today is probably the same one who made them in 1971.”

Heavy-duty springs control the sweet-handling Ford Escort’s extra weight

He placed the minimum order – 50 – and had the original-length springs remade.

Despite Neil’s obsession, there are three things he couldn’t bring himself to recreate exactly.

The most visible one is the paint around the engine bay – today painted white, like virtually every other Ford works rally car.

“It was originally finished in silver Hammerite. It’s horrible stuff, it never fully sets. The tiniest bit of solvent on it, petrol or anything, and it starts to drip,” he explains.

“Peculiarly, as far as I’m aware, it was only the cars on the 1971 rally that had it.”

The Ford’s Willans buckles were found in old stock

Similar logic led to him refusing to add the sheet steel riveted to the magnesium sump-guard for extra protection: “It was unpainted, scrapes on everything and rusts away, so I decided to delete that.”

The safety of both the car and its occupants forced the final change: to the oil lines, which originally ran through multiple metal-to-rubber junctions, and even through the passenger-seat rail.

Neil simply fitted two single-piece rubber lines: one feed, one return.

“If any one of those individual junctions had gone, you would seriously damage your co-driver, write off the interior and write off the engine. It wasn’t worth the risk.”

The Ford Escort Twin Cam’s custom panel includes switches for the spotlamps

After 16 years, Neil drove the car’s first few metres on to and back off a trailer to get to the 2021 Classic Motor Show at the NEC. “I wouldn’t take anybody in it as a passenger for a couple of months until I’d actually figured out how to drive it,” he says. “It was all quite terrifying at first.”

His primary issue was one the 5ft 9in Mäkinen was unlikely to have noticed.

For Boreham to make the special ZF five-speed transmission tunnel fit, the LHD bodyshell required improvisation.

“They literally hit it with a big hammer to bend it out,” says Neil, “and it made the pedalbox really tight. I couldn’t drive it in a pair of ordinary shoes.”

“The arch extensions are handmade aluminium, the bonnet and the boot are glassfibre. It’s even got magnesium wheels, but I think it is 150kg heavier than standard”

Escort guru Dave spaced out the pedals after nine months on the road, while the rally-spec spark plugs and carburettor jets were swapped for more road-friendly alternatives, too.

Today, it is much more drivable.

The clutch is not too heavy or sudden, while the dog-leg gearshift is easy to navigate.

Neil is keen to keep the revs under 7000 while the car is warming up, which is easier said than done thanks to the car’s extremely short gearing in its lower ratios and the Twin Cam’s peaky tuning.

The Ford Escort Twin Cam’s airline livery was discovered on a model

Below 4000rpm the car bogs and struggles, and its redline is up at 8500rpm.

Unlike in most works Escorts, however, fifth is an overdrive designed for the long distances of the Safari Rally.

Now much more confident in the car, Neil regularly takes it to local shows and for drives on his favourite roads.

The bark of the exhaust is thrilling, while the direct steering makes cornering satisfying – though you do need to remember the limited grip those knobbly tyres possess on Tarmac.

The Ford’s rotating headlamp wipers were sourced from a scrapyard in Finland

The biggest surprise is how well the car rides, which Neil puts down to its heavy-duty springs and considerable weight.

“They tried to make it light. The arch extensions are handmade aluminium, the bonnet and the boot are glassfibre. There are even magnesium wheels,” he says.

“But it’s got two spare wheels, an enormous fuel tank and big metal bumpers. I think it is 150kg heavier than standard.”

Finally content with the condition of the Safari Rally Twin Cam, Neil is now restoring his original 1300 Sport to the clubman racer specification that led him to fall in love with the model in the first place.

It’ll be a thorough rebuild, no doubt, but a relief after the exacting task of creating one of the most authentic works Mk1 Ford Escorts remaining.

Images: Max Edleston

Thanks to: Neil Robinson, Dave Watkins, Denis Chick and Owen Henderson-Hamilton

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