1993 Ford Escort LX wagon review from North America

Clutch was chattering (warped pressure plate) when I bought it and finally had to be replaced at 183,000. It was the original in the car and had done years of city driving around Dallas/Fort Worth, TX so I really can't begrudge it.

Brakes and C/V boots serviced at that time. Ignition switch broke internally recently. Rear springs and struts were recently replaced -- the OE springs in the wagons are known to sag over time, especially if you haul stuff, and the design of the replacement ones has been upgraded.

Preventive maintenance includes timing belt and idler -- a fairly simple job since it's a SOHC engine.

For the heck of it, I did a compression test recently and all cylinders were at 175 psi., near perfect.

Performance is on the weak side with a/c on, but fuel economy is excellent (I get 36 highway driving like I stole it) and the vehicle will haul quite a bit of stuff in the wagon configuration. The 1.9 engine "the little engine that could" is kind of gruff and noisy, but I hear of them lasting over 250,000 miles with decent maintenance. And since it doesn't have a tachometer, I guess the engine noise has one benefit...

The manual transmission is quite impressive -- easy to shift and precise. I've taught several people how to drive stick with it (since the clutch was replaced).

I'm not enamored with the handling; the sway bars in the LX are puny and there's too much roll in turns. Fortunately, you can swap in GT sway bars (which I haven't bothered to do yet) and these should improve things a lot.

Body tends to pick up little dents in parking lots, but still feels tight structurally. The window trim paint tends to deteriorate in the sun, but is fortunately not hard to touch up. Seats are kind of flat; I use a rolled-up towel for a lumbar support and then I'm fine.

For that matter, this is a very easy car to work on, with plenty of room around the engine and for a FWD car, a very simple, logical design under the hood. $30 worth of metric tools and a Haynes book and you could probably fix just about anything on the car (there's also lots of good information in online forums for Escorts). Parts are dirt cheap, too.