1994 Ford Escort LX review from North America

Things that have gone wrong, well the only things that has failed that I wouldn’t consider normal wear and tear was the alternator died at 170 000, the tie rod end completely fail after leaving a stop light and the front wheels toed in after getting toed it was an easy fix to replace (both), also replaced the gas hatchback lifters.

Thing that I have replaced are, all new tires at 210 000, I have replaced the front brakes and rotors twice now, once just after I bout it and the last just a week ago at 282000km, replaced the muffler at 230 000km. I do regular maintenance on the car and for some reason it just keep going. The heater fan stopped working and while sitting in the passenger see getting read to tear the dash apart to get to heater switch I bumped the fan assembly and the fan started up, the connector is on the bottom and I gather someone had kicked some snow up there and it rusted and made a bad contact, cost me $2 to fix, bad spot for a connector plug to live.

I need to replace all the struts as they are shot, I will do that in a week or so.

Let see, my previous 1989 Escort had died at 320 000km (it developed a strange engine problems that I couldn’t get resolved). I was able to purchase this 1994 Escort for $2700cnd. At the time I was driving 168km a day back and forth to work and need a reliable car and basically at the time had no money, found this cheap little car and it has surpassed all my expectations. The car just keeps going, the car always starts and is surprisingly good on gas, the car had 164000km on it and I just passed 282000km the other day. 110000km were done in 2 ½ years I now live closer to work and I have been looking to get another car, but not sure what to get as this 4dr hatchback has the trunk space of a van with all the seats down, the little car will swallow pretty much anything you try to, but in the back, I recently brought home our new clothes dryer in the back of the car, with all the seats folded down you can fit pretty much anything in this car…

I will drive this car till the engine fails, not really sure if that’s possible, the car is very easy to work on and the parts are really cheap (well from Canadian Tire they are). Amazingly the AC is still working, just push the button and it spits out cold air (and you also lose ~15kph, but at least you’re cool).

The manual transmission is great, never had a clutch changed and still feels great, on a drive in to Toronto last night the car was happy coasting along at 150kpm.

We also have a Volvo 850 which a far more comfortable, but this wonderful little beater has been a wonderful car!