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Remember when you where young watching 'The Professionals' or 'Minder' and lusting after the RS2000s featured on these programmes. Well, Mark Irvine the owner was too young to remember these programmes but has always liked the rear wheel drive Ford RS2000 Mk2.
Choosing the perfect car
After owning several very clean examples of this category he decided that a show car was on the cards. Six months passed of extensive searching, a Venetian red 30,000 miler became available. Looking at it very closely showed it to have the necessary tidy rot free body required for the base of a show car. That was four years and only 1000 miles ago.
Finding a classic car restorer
The car has been sat in his parent's garage whilst awaiting the time and money to turn it into the show winner wanted. The time, money and enthusiasm came and the car was stripped back to the bare shell.
A lot of time and effort went into phoning around to find the right garage to do all important painting; it was decided to talk to Moorland Classic Cars about the job.
Moorland Classic Cars
Tony at Moorland invited Mark down to look round the facilities, after looking round Tony showed Mark his own X-packed RS2000, the standard of paintwork was superb. It was decided that this was the place for the re-spray. The car was delivered for it's re-spray in the September but was not picked up again until the following January. Inside the nose cone there was a chalked '79', this was photographed and reapplied once the nose cone was finished, such was the attention to detail that Moorland's show.
During the time the shell was away was not a time for relaxation, all the other parts had to be cleaned and painted.
The extent to which Mark has gone to get this car back as it left the factory, or should have left the factory, is shown when three screws that were not up to the required standard were taken to be re-zinc plated.
The nuts and bolts
It has not just been the nuts and bolts that have had the treatment, anything that could be replaced with new parts have been so. A new centre console still in its original box was sourced at a Ford show, whilst some of the parts replaced were sold on. Mny of the parts that have been sold on were like new but not quite good enough for Mark.
Mark has visited many shows to check on the quality of the concours cars on display to assess his own. He believes his car is in with a good chance but will only find out next year when he gets to the events. Lisa his long suffering girlfriend has helped out when she could and will be glad when the car is a winner after all the hard work and effort that has gone into it.
The RS2000 classic car owners club
The Registrar for the RS Owner's Club is due to visit soon to look over the car and to ensure that the little details of the car are correct, when he visits he should be giving a valuation, Mark hopes this valuation to be in the £15,000 area as this is probably about the total so far invested in it. Is it a wise investment putting this amount of money in a car? Probably, the popularity of the little blue oval has never diminished and has increased in the last few years; not that selling is on the cards.
Will the car be a show winner? We hope so, it deserves to be. When the new season begins we will update this article to plot its progress through its first concours show season.
An article about the Ford Escort RS2000
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