1981 Ford Escort XR3 Test: The Grass Is Definitely Greener

Car and Driver

21-06-2025

From the November 1981 issue of Car and Driver.
If one needed any reassurance that a new day has dawned at the Ford Motor Company, the fact that Ford president Don Petersen has been seen tooling around in this lovely little red street rac­er ought to provide it. This is a type of car that is unthinkable in most of De­troit's board rooms today. It is exciting, aggressive, compromised entirely in the direction of driving fun, and—within the Procrustean confine of Detroit's automotive orthodoxy—frivolous ... "We can't wast our time on stuff like that," goes the litany. "People will think we're not serious about fuel economy. Tell the guys in Research and Development that we need a full status update on the new decal package!"
There are two Ford Motor Companies, one in North America and one ev­erywhere else. The one in the United States is and has been taking gas lately, and it has been decided by the people who preside over Ford's fortunes to bring the two closer together, to make the North American one more like the Everywhere Else one. The Fiesta was an early step in that direction. The Escort/Lynx was another. The Escort has been a resounding success in the market ­place, but less so among the critics. It won the coveted European Car of the Year Award in spite of the fact that au­tomotive writers (the people who vote this particular prize) both here and abroad had serious reservations about its ride and handling. But there is a truth in the automobile business, truer than other truths: it says that the good cars are the ones that sell. The Escort sells. Now we have driven one that also goes.
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Aaron Kiley
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Car and Driver
The XR3 (shown here) that we man­aged to borrow from Mr. Petersen is the sportiest Escort Europeans can buy. It weighs 2000 pounds, while our own long-term-test (American) Escort weighs 2140 pounds, and its 1598-cu­bic-centimeter engine produces 96 horsepower at 6000 rpm, 98 pound feel of torque at 4000 rpm. This ratio of weight to power results in zero-to- 60 times on the order of 10 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 17.2 at 79 mph, considerably faster than any­thing an American could buy in the same size and price class. It's wonder­ful. You'll find the hood release on the underside of the steering column. Pop the hood and look inside. What you see is a neat little overhead-cam four with a two-throat Weber carburetor, a smooth cast-iron exhaust manifold feeding twin downtubes, the necessary cooling and electrical gizmos, and that's all, folks. Hardly, any of the stuff that the EPA has forced us to cram under the hood of our cars so that we may breathe from our exhaust pipe in relative safety; just the important bits.
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Aaron Kiley
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Car and Driver
But the engine compartment is only about the third thing you admire on the XR3. First there's the exterior. Ford­-Europe opted for a much cleaner, more discreet overall look for its Escort, and the XR3 benefits from that, especially at the front. Then there's a nice deep air dam under the narrow European bump­er, and a rubbery black "What'll it be, fellas" serving-tray spoiler on the rear deck. Fat Pirelli P6 tires on wide-rim 928-ish alloy wheels complete the pic­ture. As a visual experience, the XR3 attracts a lot of attention. Overtaking, waiting at crosswalks, stopped at traffic lights, it never failed to capture the hearts and minds of the overtaken and/or bystanders. And it isn't just a matter of zoomy looks, either. The aerodynam­ic aids bring the drag coefficient down to 0.38; a stock U.S. Escort's is 0.40, which was already an excellent aerody­namic performance. (Though how this is possible, with the enormous outside mirrors that jut out from the XR3's doors, will forever remain a mystery of modern science.)
One's next impression is of the interi­or, which would look good in a Porsche and would be a quantum leap upward for most American cars. Gray cloth with red stripes covers the seats; the rear be­ing a folding bench for extra load space, and the fronts being Recaro look-alikes for extra creature comfort and security. The steering wheel is very small in di­ameter, padded, and almost as fat as the Pirelli outside. Everything about these furnishings exhorts one to sit down, start the engine, and bury the loud ped­al in the floorpan—which one invariably does, at least the first couple of times. But there's more. The windows go up and down electrically, and the Whit­man's Sampler-sized outside mirrors are adjusted the same way. The sunroof is as nearly perfect as one of those can be. It features tinted glass, it is manually operated, and it both slides fore-and-aft and pops up at the rear, depending upon whether you want sunshine or ventilation. There is also a sliding lou­vered screen to blank it off completely, if that is your pleasure. There is an AM/FM-radio/cassette system as well, but it plays through two raspy speakers and doesn't really measure up to the other interior appointments.
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Aaron Kiley
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Car and Driver
On the road, the XR3 is a mixed blessing. It is quick, but not really fast. Ten-second zero-to-60 times and a 108-mph top speed aren't go­ing to separate anybody's retinas, but they're certainly brisk in a car of this type. The handling is sort of standard front-wheel-drive-with-fat-sticky-tires understeer—which is a vast improve­ment over the soft-riding American Es­corts—and the roadholding, on smooth surfaces, is excellent. We generated a lateral acceleration of 0.75 g on the Chrysler Proving Ground's 282-foot skidpad, and the car felt stable and reas­suring. Lift-throttle or brake-induced oversteer was still there, but to a useful degree: a good driver can correct his line by steering the rear wheels with his right foot.
Only on bumpy roads does the XR3 behave like an American-made Escort—but even then there is a differ­ence. The same vigorous pitching and uncontrolled vertical body movements tried to upset the car, as they would on a regular Escort, but the XR3's Bilstein shocks are just as vigorous in their con­trol of those movements. The result is that the XR3 stays on course, but the rear wheels patter over the rough stuff, occasionally lose contact with the pavement, and are snubbed rather viciously whenever they threaten to leave the ground entirely, as on the far side of a frost heave taken at, say, 50 or 60 mph. As unpleasant as this occasionally is, it is a vast improvement over the bump-induced instability and gener­al rough-road raggedness that we've found so troublesome in U.S. Escorts. That this he-man version of our Escort should share its bad habits at all was apparently unavoidable, given the basic similarity of chassis and suspensions.
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Aaron Kiley
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Car and Driver
The combination of unassisted steer­ing, small steering-wheel diameter, for­ward weight bias, and fat, sticky tires makes for very heavy steering in the XR3. A few minutes on our slalom course or a lot of parallel-parking prac­tice every day would be a real upper­-body builder. The car goes where it's pointed without a moment's hesitation, but it makes you work for every degree of steering deflection. In this sense it is decidedly sporty. The brakes are good, but not great. The disc-drum combina­tion suffers from premature rear lock­up, which lengthens stopping distance appreciably. The car's personality and general level of performance certainly cry out for discs at all four corners. The clutch, unlike the one on the XR3's American cousin, is a good one. It's smooth, it takes up predictably and gradually, and it accepts heavy-footed driving and quick shifts without protest. As in most front-wheel-drive cars, the shift linkage is less than perfect, but as front-wheel-drive cars go it is accept­able. The engine is strong and smooth, but noisy, starting off at a reasonable noise level and becoming increasingly tiresome as one approaches the 6300-rpm redline. This, however, is a small price to pay in a country where we are afflicted with so many little engines making lots of noise and not much horsepower.
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Aaron Kiley
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Car and Driver
The bad news about this little XR3 that Mr. Petersen lent us is that you and I will never be able to buy one, unless we sell the farm and move to Europe. The good news is that our friends at Ford are going to build an American version that we can probably buy in 1984. It will have the U.S. car's clunky grille, headlamps, and bumpers, unfor­tunately, and it will suffer to some de­gree from the horsepower drain that drags down the performance of all American engines these days, but we'd expect much of the character of the XR3 to survive. Equally good news—as reported in the other parts of this Es­cort/Lynx extravaganza—is that much of the lamentable ride and handling be­havior we've complained about in these cars is being set right in 1982. Perhaps the best news of all is that cars like the XR3 are beginning to show up in De­troit's corporate parking garage at last, and just in time.
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Aaron Kiley
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Car and Driver
Specifications
Specifications
1981 Ford Escort XR3
Vehicle Type: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 4-passenger, 2-door hatchback
PRICE
Base: $10,900 (Great Britain)
ENGINE
inline-4, iron block and aluminum head
Displacement: 98 in3, 1598 cm3
Power: 96 bhp @ 6000 rpm
TRANSMISSION
4-speed manual
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 94.4 in
Length: 159.8 in
Curb Weight: 2000 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 10.0 sec
90 mph: 28.2 sec
1/4-Mile: 17.2 sec @ 79 mph
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 8.9 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 8.9 sec
Top Speed: 108 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 195 ft
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 27 mpg
EURO CYCLE FUEL ECONOMY
City: 33 mpg
C/D TESTING EXPLAINED