1972 Ford Escort Twin Cam

• Twin Cam rally car built and supplied new by Ford's Boreham Motorsport factory
• Specified by first owner to road rally specification incorporating genuine Ford Works Motorsport equipment
• Significant items in the specification, engine, suspension, seats, rollover hoop, dashboard and instruments appear to be authentic 'works' components
• Retained by first owner for initial ten years, subsequently off the road since 1984
• Superb bare shell restoration in 2012 by Kerry Sealey, the registrar of the Mk1 RS Owners Club
• Fitted with a works-style Siamese 1,800cc block Twin Cam, converted to 'big wing' wet sump. Steel crankshaft, steel con rods, forged pistons, lightweight flywheel, steel cam followers, cam sprockets. Twin 45DCOEs
• Brand new Quaife-supplied 2000E box. Long first, straight-cut gears and a competition paddle clutch

The Twin Cam owed much of its ancestry to the Mk1 and Mk2 Lotus Cortinas sharing many mechanical components and, although its creation appears a logical step, the road to full production was quite tortuous. Near the end of 1966, some very early, hand-built standard Escorts were being track tested at Boreham when they were spotted by Henry Taylor (Ford's Competitions Manager) and his Chief Mechanic Bill Meade who, apparently concluded that the light and nimble Escort, if fitted with a Twin Cam, could well turn out to be a winning rally car. What happened next was essentially a race against time and Ford's higher authority. Henry Taylor knew he wanted a car that was faster and lighter than the Lotus Cortina but that it would be a nightmare to follow all the company procedures to introduce a performance Escort in the time frame they had available. So in early 1967, after some hasty planning, Taylor and Ford's Public Relations Officer, Walter Hayes managed to convince the Board of Directors that their concept would work and they, reluctantly, agreed that a few prototypes could be built.All the tooling for production of the new Escort had already been 'frozen' and there was no time to develop any more, so a standard production Escort shell was all the Twin Cam developers could use. This led to a number of problems not least of which was getting the engine to fit in the first place. The wide Lotus DOHC cylinder head with its twin side-draught Weber carburettors fouled the offside inner wing, so offset engine mountings were used to push the nose of the engine towards the nearside of the car. The rear carburettor also fouled the brake master cylinder, so this was relocated inside the front bulkhead along with the clutch master cylinder. There was also insufficient space to locate both the battery and the brake servo in the engine bay so the battery was relegated to the nearside of the boot well (as per the Mk1 Lotus Cortina) and the remote brake servo was then mounted where any standard Escort's battery would be. Moving the battery to the boot meant that the spare wheel was bolted flat to the boot floor instead of being housed in the standard Escort's upright position. The