I'm not surprised, although note your comments about the engine and rust. The MK1 escort does have some rally heritage and wins behind it. From Wikipedia "The Mark I Escorts became successful as a rally car, and they eventually went on to become one of the most successful rally cars of all time.[15] The Ford works team was practically unbeatable in the late 1960s / early 1970s, and arguably the Escort's greatest victory was in the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally, driven by Finnish legend Hannu Mikkola and Swedish co-driver Gunnar Palm." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_.../File:1970_World_Cup_Rally_Ford_Escort_01.jpg Of course in lower performance guise it was the car you learnt to drive in (a MK2 in my case) and your first car. My second car was a Ford Capri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Capri marketed by Ford as "The Car you always promised yourself" and often described as the European equivalent to the Mustang, About six years ago I went to meet my wife's colleagues at a country pub. On of the other girls boyfriend had a Ford Capri which you rarely see these days and which I was admiring. What surprised me was when he said that the car he had really wanted was a MK1 Escort, but there was no way he could afford one so he had got the Capri instead. Back in the 1980s every Escort drivers ambition was to move up to a Capri. I guess it is down to supply and demand. I expect the Greek climate is far kinder to cars than the UKs. I have linked to this site before which shows that in the last 25 years the number of Escorts 1600 Sports has plummeted https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/ford_escort_1600_sport#!tax The recent variations shows most are summer cars, taken off the road in winter. Go back to the 1980s and there were tens of thousands being used as Daily Drivers. If you were to take the Bring a Trailer Escort to a Classic Car show in Europe I'm sure it would generate more interest than an E Type Jaguar, which to 99.9% of the population was the car they never had any chance of affording or even driving.
Thanks for the clarification. I just looked and at $17750 the Escort didn't meet its reserve. As fot my 1100L I paid £900 from a garage in 1981 and sold it privately for £400 in 1984 having spent more than that on repairs over the three years of ownership.
I always liked the 2nd gen Escort, it had Opel-like lines. The rubber lip spoiler on this RS2000 was a nice touch. I actually prefer those types of spoilers over wings.
Big money, I'm not sure why those VWs have exploded in price, that's more than BMW E30's from that 80's. My buddy bought a high-mile stick diesel Rabbit for half that last year. Personally I think there's a ton of cool unique cars in that price range that I couldn't justify spending that much on a mass-produced VW. Check this out, we have thousands of almost new VWs parked from the emission scandal, too bad they don't sell them.
A Mark 2 Escort was the very first car I drove. Needless to say the driving school one didn't havc a 2 litre again or a spoiler on the back, Continuing the Escort theme, I remember in 1981 the entire department going out to see a colleagues MK3 Escort as none of us had seen one. On the Fuel injection theme when Ford brought out the "sporty" XR3 they thought they didn't need fuel injection. About a year later they corrected their mistake with the XR3i https://classics.honestjohn.co.uk/reviews/ford/escort-xr3xr3i/ From Reli's comment about spoilers I don't think he would like the XR4i although I did. A project manager at work had a white one like this https://classics.honestjohn.co.uk/reviews/ford/sierra-xr4ixr4x4/ Regarding VW Diesels I was going to post a doctored meme, but found this one which I believe is a real photo. Only last week I saw a Diesel van doing exactly the same. Quite often the vehicles aren't that old, although whether they have the particulate filters fitted is a different question. No wonder many European cities are talking of banning them.
