Only thing I see is a VA inspection sticker in the windshield, it may
mean the owner moved here from VA and just never took the sticker off,
or it may mean it's a trade in that was bought at auction...

nate

That thing is frighteningly ugly!
Tim K.

I could even say that it is the wrong car at the wrong time in the wrong
color. <G>
Tim K.

No, I don't think that is Mazda based, it's just an Escort coupe.

Not a bad little car, cheap with decent gas mileage, but if it was me
I'd rather have the Crown Vic, it would be a LOT more comfortable.

Jeff DeWitt

The "3" in the VIN means it's a Mexican assembled car.  It is not a Mazda
based product.  It's the two door sibling to the Escort Sedan.  Both the
Escort Coupe and Sedan were replaced by the Focus, in 2000 I believe

All that I know, not being a Ford fan, is that the Escort got better with
age.  The final years of production were much better than the 1980's vintage
Escorts famous for imploding an engine when the timing belt let loose.  When
I was in the car business, we bought two mid 80's three or four year old
Escorts at an auction to have something cheap to sell.  Neither of them made
the 90 mile trip home.  One of them lost it's timing belt and ruined the
engine about 20 miles into the trip home.

But as I said, the later model cars got much better.

I have been running the Escort/Lynx cars for daily beaters for about
10 years.  The are great little "Go to Hell cars".  I called them that
because every morning I would get in it and go to Hell for my 10-hour
stint that I used to trade for a paycheck.

They were good driving, very dependable and economical cars.  The
downside was/is the ride quality suffers a bit, road noise is present
and handling is not stellar.  

That said, I love the damned little things and Debbie is running an
Escort wagon right now with close to 90k miles on it and she loves the
thing.  4-cyl, 5-speed, A/C and 30 MPG in town.  It does everything
she wants/needs a car to do and it keeps the miles and parking lot
dings away from the Cop Car and the Wagonaire.

Lee DeLaBarre
Daytona62

John: I was finally able to click onto the link and actually see this
specific auction.

1991 and up Escorts are unusually good little cars, but I'd sure shy
away from the DOHC engine with which this one is equipped. It is more
tempermental than the SOHC engine and costs a fortune to fix by
comparison. I've had dozens of 1991-up Escorts as a used car dealer
and have found them to be exactly as Lee described in a previous reply
to your post, here. Timing belt wasn't an issue after mid-1983; when
it breaks on a base engine 1991-up car, it just quits running until
you replace it.

Even so, the timing belts on the newer base engine seem to last
forever; I once had a 135,000-mile '94 Escort to sell that I knew was
still on its original belt. Head gaskets can be a little weak, too,
but not as common as previously. If the head hasn't been off by
100,000 miles, it will probably go 150,000++. Depends on how hard the
car has been driven...and/or if it has ever been run low on coolant.

Road noise can be high, as Lee suggested. The rear suspension is too
easily knocked out of alignment. That results in cupped rear tires
that make for a lot of drumming noise at speed. BP

John Poulos <avanti@erols.com> wrote in message news: