Junkyard Find: 1988 Ford Escort GT
Most of the Escort GTs you see these days are the Mazda-based cars that came out starting in the 1991 model year. The first-gen North American Escort, loosely based on its European counterpart, was built from 1981 through 1990, and examples are becoming very rare in wrecking yards. We saw this first-half-of-1988 Escort GT last month, and now I’ve found this “1988.5” model in a Southern California yard.
You could get a 5.0 “HO” V8 in the Mustang and Continental Mark VII, and so Ford just had to label the 1.9 CVH engine as an HO as well. 110 horsepower out of this engine, which was two more than the ’88 Honda Civic Si had.
I am experiencing an 80s flashback, looking at these tape graphics. Makes me want to loot an S&L.
Not much left of the interior. This might have been an interior-parts donor for a nicer GT.
The rear wing, which did a fine job of trapping a couple of decades’ worth of dirt, won’t be going to The Crusher with the rest of the car.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Sometime in '92 or '93 - junior year of high school - I picked up a black on gray 1989 GT. I was acutely aware of the superiority of the Civic but by this time the Ford had experienced profound depreciation and the Honda was still out of my price range. I also liked the look of the GT. It was a handsome car at the the time. The interior design was clean and practical. The rear seats folded down and a bike could be fit through the hatch. A short time later, my best friend bought a red on gray '90. We had the only two GTs in the high school parking lot. 115 hp fuck yeah. We drove the absolute crap out of them with our ultimate goal to get the speedo needle to go well beyond that 85 mph mark while careering down deserted Ohio back roads. While my friend's car inexplicably remained free of issues, mine experienced every possible component failure including the motorized shoulder belt getting stuck in the open position. I eventually bought a '94 Ranger 4-cylinder (HA!) and sent the GT on its way to the scrap heap. My friend sold his not long after and bought a Nissan Stanza which was a far superior car. That car experienced some catastrophic failure the origins of which I can no longer remember and my friend bought a '95 Ranger which he still owns and drives to this day.
I don't know why people thought these were junkie cars (NON-GT) I always considered them the TIMEX of Cars. I had one as a Winter Rat when I put my Mustang away for the harsh weather and it went on to serve me well for 5+ years just needing brake pads and oil changes. I passed it on to a College age kid for the same amount I paid for it and I kind of miss it.