FORD ESCORT XR3I

The one and only Ford Escort XR3i “Tolman Edition” has been a long time coming. From the time of it’s first inception there have been so many twists in the tale of this build that it is impossible to count them!

Conceived as a restoration of an existing car but with added driveability, this was was one very committed build.

The vehicle arrived as a rolling but incomplete car with a lot of spurious parts. Extensive cataloguing during the strip down revealed a big list of missing and damaged parts and left us with a bodyshell which looked very much worse for wear after suffering many British winters. A lot of repairs were carried out to the body to eliminate corrosion. This included the fitting of a new roof skin. With no perfect correct spec roof skins available, a non sunroof one had to be fitted and adapted to fit the sunroof cassette and a matching, perfectly formed aperture created using a custom made laser-cut jig and forming tool to recreate the factory edges. A big job for something that - if we’ve done the job correctly - will never be noticed.

On the engine front, conscious that this should still feel like an XR3i, the original 1600cc CVH unit was completely rebuilt (lightened, balanced, strengthened) to include a 16 valve Zetec cylinder head in order to address criticisms of the models performance in period. Just to add some period “icing on the cake”, an RS1600i cam cover was modified to dress the noughties head in eighties clothing. This is only intended to add a little visual interest, just for the fun of it!

Modern fuel injection with bang up to date management ensures smooth and easy driveability, delivering over 150bhp at the wheels with a generous torque curve and excellent real world fuel economy as a bonus. Thanks to a Zircotec coated 4-2-1 collector and custom stainles exhaust system this car also sounds like the proper hot hatch that it now is, yet is not “boomy” in the cabin.

Handling has been improved with a bespoke set up at the front offering better location and greater adjustability. Starting with the changes made to create Fords RS1600i homologation special and building on them to overcome the handling shortcomings which were the Mk IV Escorts achiles heal in the twisty bits. As a by product, the changes to the suspension, allied to quality damping also brought improvement to the unassisted steering.

A “Tolman Edition” style upgrade to the braking brought larger discs with AP 4 piston calipers up front, and a change from drums to discs at the rear. The larger brakes necessitated a change from 14” rims to 15” alternatives and in keeping with the Tolman philosophy, they had to look like the original Ford dogleg items. The custom made wheels feature the centre section cut from the original wheels, machined down to create a cap that retains the factory casting marks. The larger wheels are a very subtle change to the aesthetic, filling the arches and giving a greater tyre choice. Unsurprisingly we opted for a new set of Pilot Sports from Michelin to further enhance the driving experience.

There are too many other non -invasive upgrades to mention them all but they include LED lighting, a new immobiliser and tracker to keep it safe, unlike in the bad old days! A heated screen will be familiar to Ford owners and the stereo head unit looks to fit the period but allows bluetooth streaming and DAB radio among other features not normally associated with the very eighties Daytona velour trim.

“The XR3i was hugely popular at the time, which means that many people have an affinity with them,” in the words of Chris Tolman. “But revisiting one today would be underwhelming. So just as with the 205 GTi, we’ve applied our knowledge to make it drive the way you think you remember the original driving, while looking essentially like the one that you yearned for. Balancing a desire to preserve the DNA of the original while meaningfully improving it made this a particularly challenging project. It would have been easier to slot in modern running gear in a restored shell but the experience and emotional connection the customer came to us to replicate , would have been lost.”