Ford Escort

The Ford Escort was a compact car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. The North American Escort adopted both the badge and the general design of a redesigned European model, and the name has been applied to several different designs in North America since its introduction as Ford’s first successful world car. It replaced the dated Ford Pinto subcompact car with a modern front-wheel drive design popularized by the successful introduction of the Volkswagen Rabbit. It also effectively replaced the smaller Ford Fiesta, which though mechanically sophisticated, was too small for a Pinto replacement. It was also Ford’s first front-wheel-drive car built in North America. The Escort was one of Ford’s most successful models in the 1980s, earning a much better reputation than the Pinto which faced widely publicized safety issues. In fact, the car was the single best-selling car in its second year in the United States and during most of that decade. The 1998 Escort ZX2 featured the 2.0 L, 130 hp (97 kW) Zetec DOHC four-cylinder engine as standard equipment, an option unavailable on the sedan or wagon. Intended for use as the base engine in the larger European Ford Mondeo and their American cousins, the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique, the Zetec gave the ZX2 more-than-respectable performance. The 1999 and 2000 model years offered a limited performance edition ZX2 S/R which further enhanced the cars performance in every aspect. Subtle differences can be noticed in the Escort sedan from 1997 to 2002. The trim lines of 1997 were base and the LX, 1998 to 2002 offered the LX and SE. In 1999, the reverse lights were moved into the same piece as the tail lamps; they were previously below the tail lamp on the body.