The Escort GL is my second Ford Escort. I bought it from an ex-dotcomer who bought himself a Ford Focus.
It is in a pretty good condition cosmetically.
Mechanically, I had to change the coolant sensor and water pump. In the process, I also changed the thermostat and flushed the cooling system. My experience with older cars is that the thermostat should always be changed or it will fail at the wrong moment : both my Colt and Z24 had this problem.
Otherwise, the Escort GL is great. I use it as a daily driver and have no trouble at all merging on the highway even with the aircon running : the engine, couple with the manual transmission is really that good.
One nice thing about this car compared to my other Escort is that the back seats really fold down flat. They use the same mechanism found in the new generation Focus cars : the seat bottom folds forward and then the seat backs can fold down flat. This is much more useful that the other Escort.
This other nice thing is that this is a 4-door, which means that insurance costs are lower. For some strange reason, 2-door cars always cost more in insurance.
BAT Inc sells Escort performance parts. You can download their catalog in pdf format.
Features:
Here's a place to get performance parts for this Escort :