1990 Ford Escort 1.6i review from Sweden

The gearbox started to leak oil just after I bought it. It was such a small leak that it took plenty of time to notice it, but when we finally did, the gearbox was in such a bad condition that it needed replacement. You couldn't change gears at all, and it made a terrible noise too.

The engine couldn't do more than approx. 130 km/h (that's about 90 mph), it just kinda died after that marking, and refused to go on any further. I wasn't aware of this when I bought it.

The engine sometimes just died for me when not hitting the gas pedal at low speeds.

A lot of rust on it.

The original red color of the car was more white than red when I got it thanks to the sun. However, I partly fixed this problem myself with the help of a lot of cleaning fluids and a couple of hours of spare time.

This was the first car I bought after taking my drivers license. I needed a cheap car with OK looks, and bought it very cheap from a car dealer. Of course I knew that there should be some problems with the car for such a price, but I couldn't imagine they where this serious.

The most serious problem I had, a part from breaking down the gearbox, it was my engine. The engine felt kinda slow on all gears and speeds, but after 110 km/h it became super-slow. It took weeks until it reached 130 km/h, (or 140 km/h when going down a hill). These made overtaking both scary and dangerous. Of course the engine wasn't supposed to behave this way, but after getting tired of all the faults with this car, I sold it, so I never know what caused this rather serious error. Needless to say, my car wasn't a performance car in any meaning of the word performance. It barely performed at all.

As if this wasn't enough, when doing city streets at 20-50 km/h the engine often died if I wasn't given it any gas with the gas pedal.

I think all the other problems I had with the car speaks for themselves, but these engine problems really was something special that I wasn't quite prepared to fix myself at the time.

However, to be fair to the car, there were a couple of strong points as well.

The interior was pretty solid, even if it felt a bit plastic and a bit too simple. The seats were quite comfy, and it had plenty of room in it, No problems doing 4 hour trips in this one.

The handling was OK, but nothing spectacular. After fitting lowering springs, things got a bit better, but it still didn't communicate to the driver in the right way.

Steering was also OK, nothing special there.

I kinda liked my ford when it worked properly, it took me from point A to B most of the times, looked kinda good, and had cheap spare parts, but however, it was very unreliable, and have put me of from buying other fords from the same era.