Somebody finally built the Mk1 Ford Escort that the original deserved, and it does not whisper. It screams to 10,000 rpm, weighs less than a thousand kilos, and carries an official Ford chassis number stamped into a car that did not exist until now. The price tag is the catch. You will need supercar money to park one in your garage, and only a small handful of people ever will.
Not A Restomod, And They Mean It
Boreham Motorworks is behind this thing, and the company is touchy about one word in particular. Do not call it a restomod. The reason is simple. A restomod starts with an old car and modernizes it. This Escort RS does not start with an old anything. Every single example rolls out as a completely new vehicle, built fresh, carrying an officially sanctioned Ford chassis number. Boreham calls it a continumod, which sounds like marketing until you understand what it actually means.
Here is the part that matters. Ford signed off on this. That blessing is what separates the Escort RS from the endless parade of backyard tribute builds and shop restomods. It is a factory-legitimate continuation of a car that earned its name on roads, race tracks, and rally stages through the 1960s and 1970s. Back then the Mk1 Escort was a genuine performance hero. Boreham is betting it can be one again in the 2020s, just with five decades of engineering knowledge layered on top.
The Engine Is The Whole Show
You can dress up the bubble arches and tuck LED headlights into the bodywork all you want, but the real reason to care lives under the hood. The optional Ten-K engine is a naturally aspirated 2.1-liter four-cylinder that makes 326 hp and spins all the way to 10,000 rpm. No turbo. No supercharger. Just a small four-pot that revs like a motorcycle engine and refuses to quit.
What makes it work is the obsessive weight savings. The whole engine tips the scales at just 85 kilograms, which is barely more than a couple of bags of cement. It runs individual throttle bodies, forged internals, and belt-driven camshafts that nod to the original. A lightweight flywheel sharpens every throttle input so the thing snaps to attention. This is race hardware wearing a road car badge.
Power goes to the rear wheels through a five-speed dog-leg manual gearbox, the kind of shifter pattern that tells you exactly what this car is for. With a target curb weight of just 895 kilograms, the power-to-weight math gets ugly for a lot of modern machinery. Boreham has not released acceleration numbers yet, but you do not need a spec sheet to know a 326 hp car that weighs under two thousand pounds is going to move.
A Tamer Option For The Purists
Not everyone wants a 10,000 rpm screamer, and Boreham left a door open for them. Buyers can choose an updated Twin Cam engine instead, enlarged to 1.8 liters and fitted with fuel injection. It makes 182 hp and sends it through a straight-cut four-speed manual. It is the closer-to-original recipe for people who want the look and the feel without chasing five-figure redlines. Less power, sure, but still a hand-built engine in a featherweight car.
No ABS, No Traction Control, No Apologies
Boreham went the opposite direction. Boreham could have buried this car in modern driver aids and nobody would have blamed them. Instead they stripped all of it out. There is no power steering. There is no ABS. There is no traction control. What you get is a limited-slip differential and the kind of raw, unfiltered involvement that most new performance cars engineer away before they ever reach a showroom.
The chassis underneath is anything but primitive, though. There is a bespoke front subframe, a lightweight floating rear axle made from aluminum and titanium, revised suspension geometry, and a six-link rear setup. Boreham says rear unsprung mass has been cut dramatically compared to the period race cars. So the experience is analog, but the bones are thoroughly modern.
Inside, it is not the stripped-out cave you might expect from a car with no driver aids. The interior is sympathetically updated with bespoke gauges, carbon and leather trim, and a three-spoke steering wheel. It looks finished enough to live with every day or take on a long trip, not just hammer around a track. There are even two dedicated helmet stores in the rear where the back seats would normally sit. That detail tells you exactly who this car is built for.
The Numbers That Sting
Only 150 of these will be made for the entire world, so exclusivity is baked in. The money is the wall most people will hit. Prices start at £295,000, which works out to around $393,000 before taxes. Add those in and you are looking at roughly £354,000, or about $474,000 in the UK. That is not an affordable Escort in the spirit of the original RS, not even close.
So this is what the dream costs now. A brand new old Ford, blessed by the factory, built without the digital filters that strangle so many modern sports cars, priced like a supercar and limited to a number most enthusiasts will never crack. The Mk1 Escort was once a hero the working driver could actually own. Its reborn version revs higher, weighs less, and prices nearly everyone out. The car is glorious. The barrier to entry is the part worth thinking about.
Source: Boreham Motorworks (build details and pricing as announced by the manufacturer).
Images Via: Boreham Motorworks
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