Marina and the Escort October 24, 2009
Posted by richard in : History , trackbackCARS famous for being bad are not hard to find, worryingly.
Take the might of British Leyland, back in the 1970s. It foisted the Morris Marina upon us. Then had the cheek to call this one-time-intended Ford Escort competitor a Ford Cortina rival.
Ford itself wasn’t immune, mind. 20 years later, the blue oval imposed the MkIV Escort onto an unsuspecting public, who… well, bought it in sufficiently-reduced droves to get Richard Parry-Jones’ revolution signed off.
(In this respect, it’s actually one of the biggest hero cars of the past century, but that’s faint praise indeed.)
Ther similarities between these two bad cars are uncanny. Both were anonymous design-by-committee jobs. Both treated the public’s demands in a lowest-common-denominator kinda way. Both were launched with major handling flaws that demanded fast action.
In the Marina’s case, it’s part of folklore. Big Jeff Daniels attended the European launch, and nearly wiped himself out in a terminally-understeering 1800. His colleague at Autocar, separately, almost did the same.
They thus did the unthinkable, and paired up to put their case to Longbridge. Ah, dear boys, was the response. We know. They’re pre-pros. Rest assured, it’ll be fixed. And, fair play, it was. Albeit using subterfuge I’ll detail later.
History repeated itself with the Escort. Lo, came the press launch reports. How it rolls! And leans! And…well, I’ll let the picture I took of Autocar’s road test do the talking. That’s a terrifying level of roll for a car said to be for the ‘90s.
Ford’s solution? Take a leaf out of BL’s book. Blame the fact pre-pro cars were used. And rush through the standard-fitment of a front anti-roll bar for production 1.4-litre models.
As with the Marina, it didn’t make a bad car into a good one. But it did turn a liability into a mere chronic underperformer.
For Ford, there was even a bright side. The Escort’s hideousness led directly to the MkI Focus: very good CAN come from very very bad.
This car, coincidentally, has another BL link. One chassis bigwig I spoke to recently called it the ‘best handling front-driver since the Mini.’ Funny how things turn out…
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