I remember researching this subject before I bought my 85' Escort. I
wanted to be sure it didn't have an interference fit engine. I was
familiar with this problem because my mother had an 81' Lynx. That was
the first model year for the Escort/Lynx. There was talk at the time in
the car industry and also in some publications for the general public
about what could happen to the 1.6 engines if the timing belt broke. I
encouraged my mother to trade her 81' Lynx for an 85' Escort like mine.
A year or two later, strange as it seems, I was actually driving her 85'
when the timing belt broke with only about 35K on the engine. The car
was towed home and I changed the belt. There was no damage to the
engine. I was driving at highway speed when it happened, so the engine
must have had enough inertia to turn over a few times before it stopped.
I also knew someone with an 82' Escort. That car and the 81' Lynx both
had blue valve covers. I just did a some Googling and found a website
(see below) that identifies the early 1.6 (81-82) with the blue valve
cover as the interference type. The 85's had black covers. However, I
also found some other sites which list *all* the 1.6 engines as
interference designs. Some of those sites even list the 2.0 as an
interference engine. Could they all be wrong? Many of those sites use
the same graphics chart, so it could be a repetition of error.
I don't recall what source I used for researching my 85' before
purchasing it. That was long before the Internet but I'm quite sure I
must have found out it was not an interference engine or I wouldn't have
bought the car or told my mother to do the same. Having seen and worked
on quite a few Escorts of that era, I do know that the head design was
changed near the mid' 80's. They may also have changed to a thicker head
gasket to eliminate the interference. I think the turbo 1.6 engine
retained the interference design longer than the base 1.6 because Ford
wanted the extra performance from the former. I'll look into this
subject some more.

Here's the link to the 'blue valve cover' reference. It can be found
under the picture with the text: "These cars that almost always bend
valves when the belt breaks".

http://www.econofix.com/tbelt.html