1997 Ford Escort Reviews, Pricing & Specs

This was my first car. I think these cars are lovely to look at, even before I 'improved' it's looks with some extra body work. They are very cheap to purchase, but the fuel costs, and other expenses are quite high, apart from the insurance which wasn't so bad. Very spacious, plenty of boot room. Nice little motor under the bonnet, and fun to drive. I loved this car while I had it.

loved everything about my escort! great to drive, great to look at, easy to mess with. loved it! black 2.0 si gti kitted with rs7's ashley full exhaust system 2.0 running gear uprated springs and shocks handled amazing. awesome

At 105k miles, this car is still running pretty darn strong. This is my mom's car that I also drive, but my brother AND my sister both learned to drive in this car, so its been through A LOT. Performance: Its a late 90's 4 banger. Nothing special. Ok power, its an automatic :-( so I know it'd be peppier with a stick. This isn't going to be my car, or else I probably would've added a good intake maybe an exhaust to help out in the power department, probably some pulgs & wires too. That'd probably wake this car up, since it feels restricted. Build Quality: Pretty good, no major defects. Its not an expensive car, its just your average sedan. Only a small vibration noise in the dash, but thats because the bulb on the left side of the gauge cluster burned out, so the dash had to be taken apart to replace the bulb. For being a high-mileage Ford, its doing pretty well. I know if it was a Honda I wouldn't have to worry, but this car is doing really well. Its not burning oil or anything, and it still runs strong. Appearance: Could do with some factory allow wheels. Steelies & hubcaps are so lame... also foglights would be nice, for appearance and safety. Its not a turn-your-head-and-watch-it-go-by car, but the cool thing is that its purple :-D one of like the ONLY purple cars in Kansas City.

love this car...summer comes, down goes the roof...blast some sounds and away we go....cheap to repair and really good on petrol,the roof has never leaked on me and also was worried i would be able to hear the road noise due to it being a soft top but no really quite.....excellent all round car,would def buy another one....LOVE IT

Performance - Acceleration since the upgrade is more than perfect. For braking it havent needed any upgrade it is perfect but there is room for improvement. Handling from factory was relatively good but it has been upgraded with racing bushings. Build Quality - Perfect some minor details. For gas milage it is the best for 12 years old it runs like a new car and wastes no fuel, better now that I made some improvements on air intake and exhaust. Love driving this car handles good, feels good and have the fun factor.

jay has modified the engine for performance and it is currently running at 178 bhp, at the flywheel, proven on a rolling road. more gee gee's to come soon, when he gets his remapping software, ;)build quality is pretty good as it is now double seam welded, so its pretty strong no twisting of the chassis round tight fast corners etc. the wishbones wear pretty quickly as you shouldn't go above 15" wheels on the escorts but polyeurethane bushes are being posted out on monday along with an e-tech strut brace to stiffen up the tracking and handling, which is excellent already due to the offset of the rims. the appearance is that of the world rally car cosworth escorts, due to the bodykit, we are spraying the car diamond white soon,(when the WRC spoiler is fitted properly)and adding the series one turbo graphics, for originallity, although we may stick with the repsol graphics, nothing definate there yet. the milage is reasonable depending on driving style speed and distance, at worst probably around 20 mpg, and at best (motorway miles) around 35 mpg. maintained weekly by jay who is a motorsport mechanic with a hell of a lot of experience with fast fords. the car is one big bag of fun, and is known as the scooby slayer, its also beaten cars such as celica vvti's and an audi s3. it kept up with a mazda 350z upto around 135 ;) but i didnt say that :P . its fun because jay was also a motorsport driving instructor while working as a pit mechanic in formula ford and vauxhall, so he has taught me a thing or two about fast driving, handling a car at high speed etc etc... i love it but dont love kerbs:( jay tells me off, lol.

Went like a bat out of hell. Bought it second hand and the person had it tuned, did the suspension and wheels and stuff. It was a real 'chick magnet'.

cheap to run cheap to fix average looks

Strong as a little european muscle car! If you accelerate after 2000rpm, it goes like a rocket! So it's fun to drive. It has good handling, better than Focus Sportvan. And it's enconomical... Downsides? It's not very beautiful, in and out. Not comfortable either. People says this engine is not reliable but I've been 2 years with this car, run a lot with it and it was all right...

My first ever car and like most people, I loved it! Even though this was only a 1.3 and it only cost me £1,000, I thought that the performance was great! A mate of mine had a MG ZR which had the same top speed as this Escort! It was also very frugal, and used to do about 400 miles on about £40 (from what I can remember). Another of my cars which I wish I hadn't got rid of, but it had brake failure due to age of the car and would have cost more to repair it than it would have been worth. Overall a great car and definately one that I would recommend to anyone as a first car.

I've had this car sence i was 15. and the only complaint i've had was that its not fast enough.but owell it was free and have had some great times in this old beast.love this car could never get rid of it...

Basic performance, decent build, shabby apperance, cheap to run, no fun factor!! It was a handy vehcile for driving between airdrie and dundee, plus with it being an estate, it had plenty of room. On the gud side it was cheap to run and maintain, and the fact i didnt care what happened to it meant i cud do anything with it!!

poor looks, poor handleing, poor brakes (made me crash)

AI had a few of these, these are two of them, they work great but they will drop their intake valve seat in the number 4 cylinder after a while and the engine will be severely damaged, but once it is fixed they work well, they get about 35mpg highway, I would make some money, the red one cost 500 and I sold it for 1800 so that was good

its a ok car but always something goes wronge with it

It was a nice compact car, that was great on gas. It was very easy to take care and never had any huge problems with it. Handled very well and was not hard to get use to. Had some fun adventures with this car!

It provides a good service for those years and now it's my sister's car and she love it!!!