Right then, back to the car thingy. (There you go Anne, neither football or whatever might be happening in our backyard … I am in denial over both matters!)
Car number 6 was the 1976 Ford Escort Ghia above. Mine was bought brand new just as soon as possible after they were released early in June of that year and from memory was either the second or third Ghia in town. (My recollection is that my cousin Brian bought the first, dark green with a black roof, the two below were 2 and 3 in town, although my sister Lynne had the first Escort in the range in town, a red 1300 with the sports pack.)
This was the first of the “European Formula” Escorts and represented a real attempt by Ford Australia to understand the words “build quality”. When released it was without a doubt the best quality vehicle ever assembled by Ford Oz, with the possible exception of the Falcon GTs. The 1600cc engine performed adequately without being startling and once again the car was blessed with a wonderful 4 speed manual gearbox.
Numbers 2 and 3 in town both wound up being “one-offs”, nothing to match them anywhere. I was to buy one and another salesman, Tony, the other. The colour range on these was extremely limited and I chose the silver while Tony picked the red. My silver (with black vinyl roof) car was built with tan cloth upholstery while Tony’s red (with tan vinyl roof) car came with grey cloth. Even blind Freddy could see that whichever dope at the factory had declared that the colour combinations should have gone this way had got it really wrong.
So the two cars went into the workshop and were gutted, my insides went into the red car and the grey insides came into mine! Both cars were much more attractive after that.
I think the manual version was almost spot on $5000.
A copy of mine found its way onto my 21st birthday cake which came along a month or so after the car, and mum still has that bit of icing tucked away in a cupboard at home. (Mind you, mum has all sorts of shit tucked away in cupboards at home, so I don’t suppose this item is that unusual!)
So, car number 6 was a 1976 Ford Escort Ghia 1.6L manual, also my fourth Ford.
(No Ford next time though I promise).