The other morning I was driving along the motorway with my son on the way to the beach. It was the first light of a Sunday morning and we were listening to tunes, the pair of us mesmerised by the music, the steady roll of the Volvo’s tires and the scrolling white lines approaching us from vanishing point. Up in the distance I noticed the shape of a boxy little aggressor in blue and white – and it wasn’t long before I realised it was a Ford Escort Mexico Mk1. I was buzzing. My son was wondering what the fuss was all about.
See, when I was 11 years old the Ford Escort Mexico was an icon of our boy racer aspirations. Not that many kids could afford a real RS Ford, of course. There was a legion of pretenders amongst the eighteen-to-twenty year old drivers around our way: hundreds of Escort L models jazzed up to within an inch of their lives – looking as if they had ram-raided Halfords for RS – style accessories.
The beauty of the real thing, however, was that though it was beyond the reach of your average teen – a proper blue collar worker – a Dagenham plant production line man for example – could realistically aspire to owning and running something that was unadulteratedly cool and competitive.
Later that day, on the way home from the beach. A bright yellow Audi A8 streaked by a full revs. My boy was frothing. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head wistfully.
