The Ford Escort is a small family car that was manufactured by Ford of Europe from until In total there were six generations, spread across three basic platforms: the original, rear-wheel-drive Mk. Its successor, the Ford Focus , was released in , but the final generation of Escort was phased out gradually, with the panel van version ending production in in favour of the Ford Transit Connect.
The Escort was frequently the best selling car in Britain during the s and s. A total of more than 4. In , Ford revived the Escort name for a car based on the second-generation Ford Focus , sold on the Chinese market. The first use of the Ford Escort name was for a reduced-specification version of the Ford Squire , a s estate-car version of the British Ford Anglia E. The Escort was also presented in Europe as the first passenger car to be developed by the merged Ford of Europe the Transit van having been the first product of this collaboration.
Escort production commenced at the Halewood plant in England during the closing months of , and for left-hand-drive markets during September at the Ford plant in Genk. Initially the continental Escorts differed slightly under the skin from the UK-built ones. The front suspension and steering gear were configured differently and the brakes were fitted with dual hydraulic circuits; also the wheels fitted on the Genk-built Escorts had wider rims.
In June , six years after the car's UK introduction, Ford announced the completion of the two-millionth Ford Escort, a milestone hitherto unmatched by any Ford model outside the US. The Escort had conventional rear-wheel drive and a four-speed manual gearbox or three-speed automatic transmission. The suspension consisted of MacPherson strut front suspension and a simple live axle mounted on leaf springs.
The Escort was the first small Ford to use rack-and-pinion steering. The Mark I featured contemporary styling cues in tune with its time: a subtle Detroit-inspired "Coke bottle" waistline and the "dogbone" shaped front grille — perhaps the car's main stylistic feature. Initially, the Escort was sold as a two-door saloon with circular front headlights and rubber flooring on the "De Luxe" model.
