AROUND THE WORLD, AROUND THE WORLD [365]

The Ford Escort was the biggest-selling car of the 1980s, a statement that applies both the United Kingdom and the United States.

 

Whether that statement applies to one car is another question. Created as a “world car” between Ford’s American and European divisions, ostensibly to share both expertise and production costs, the Escort on sale in North American showrooms from 1980 shared little more than its engine with its European counterpart, and its design is different enough to call the effort of sharing its development into question.

 

I had not heard of there being a separate Ford Escort until a couple of weeks ago, but looking at pictures of it brings a sort of an “Uncanny Valley” effect – the European version was so prevalent on British roads, seeing something that purports to be the same thing, while looking almost like it, but not quite, produces an unwarranted feeling of unease.

 

Reading the 1982 brochure for the North American Escort reveals the difference in approach with Ford of Europe: placing emphasis on its “world car” status, and on having outsold every imported car in the US in 1981, Ford introduced the Escort to replace both the Pinto, a “subcompact” coupé-looking car with a poor safety record, and the Fiesta, Ford’s first attempt at a “world car” that was too small for the United States (and which I have talked about here: link). Both the targets and the stakes were set high, but this situation was only found in North America, and its half of the plan must have inevitably diverged to meet them.

 

The European Version

Meanwhile, the focus of the European Escort was squarely on aerodynamics, fuel economy and simplicity of design, having launched in the UK with the slogan “Simple is Efficient”. Unlike Ford of America, which attached a globe logo to every Escort sold there in its first year, Ford of Europe make no mention of having developed the car with anyone else. The European Escort’s straight line design was by Uwe Bahlsen and Patrick Le Quément, following it with the futuristic, for the time, Ford Sierra (also discussed previously: link).

 

The North American Escort could serve to indicate the main differences between American and European cars in general. It has the same wheelbase as the European model, but is nine inches longer, two inches wider, and one inch shorter in height, with a more sloped nose, and chrome trimmings on even the base L model. Only a 1.6 litre engine was offered initially in America, the largest of the engines offered in Europe, and the interior was entirely redesigned, with black, fawn and blue colour combinations joined by an all-interior blood-like colour known as “Medium Red”. The “Squire Option” of faux wood panelling was available on the estate car.

 

Contributing to the design changes to the North American Escort may have been differing safety standards. Many European manufacturers in the 1970s seen their sleek designs essentially ruined through the process of “federalisation” to meet US safety regulations, often through the addition of thick black shock-absorbing bumpers to protect the headlights and engine in a 5 mph collission – Ford would do this with the Capri coupé when it was sold as the Mercury Capri in the US. This led British Leyland to redesign the MGB and MG Midget to suit, but because the US was their main market, it had to be done.

 

The Escort would become more of a “world car” through the 1980s, adding production at Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela to the factories in the UK, West Germany, Spain and the United States. However, the Escort produced in South America was the European version – the North American version was only sold in North America, and was only made there too. When Ford of America updated their Escort in 1990, it opted to rebrand the Ford Laser, a car sold mostly in Asia and Australasia, and based on the Mazda 323. Meanwhile, successive updates of the European Escort continued until the Focus began replacing it 1998, the Escort name disappearing in 2002... until it reappeared in 2015, on a redesigned Focus saloon car sold in China and the Middle East. Perhaps the name travels further than the car.

"Medium Red"

EU-A-GO-GO [3]

Thirteen days from now, we will have discovered our destiny, as the referendum on whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union has taken on more meaning than was ever intended. While the original 1975 referendum on the UK’s membership of the “Common Market” was more centred on the price of food, with its talk of butter mountains and wine lakes, this vote has blown past concern over the economy, and even over migration, becoming a moment when we are expected to decide what sort of country we want to live in... at least, that is how it seems to me.

Last Monday, I took delivery of my postal vote, which was completed and sent away the following day. While I am in the seemingly enviable position of no longer having to listen to the slanging match being played out in our 24-hour news cycle, having heard enough to decide which way to vote, I am experiencing as much anxiety over the result as I did when Scotland voted on independence in 2014.

I didn’t have a vote for that one but, if Scotland had voted to leave the UK, I would surely have had a migraine, as I consider myself more to be British than English, and taking Scotland out of the equation would be like putting your hand through a spider’s web of cultural identity built up over centuries. Cultural identity is why I also consider myself to be European, but this is more a way of saying “not American,” in that we just don’t think or do things in the same way.

However, Britain is often seen as “in Europe, but not run by Europe,” taking a phrase used by then Conservative Party leader William Hague at the 2001 General Election. While the UK had originally joined the European Economic Community, and had a referendum on that, it has not yet had a referendum over the change into the European Union, created by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The referendum we are having now is the culmination of over twenty years of feeling that we are dealing with more than we have signed up for – it is not a case of whether you agree with laws that the EU has set, it is whether we should be accepting them at all.

This is where the issue of British national identity has been used to colour the debate – that we can only properly exercise that identity if we have full control over our own affairs. The growth of the United Kingdom Independence Party seen in the last ten years has come from turning it from a one-issue group, grown from the original Anti-Federalist League that opposed signing the Maastricht Treaty. However, in becoming a right-wing populist party, in opposition to the main three parties, meant that voting for UKIP to leave the EU means you have to subscribe to their other policies too, and the ideology that formed them, which would be difficult for some. Would this also mean that, if we voted to stay in the EU, would a UKIP win in a general election undo that decision?

The wanting to have a simple non-partisan vote on EU membership can be traced back to the Referendum Party of 1994-97, which shared UKIP’s Euroscepticism, but only existed to put the issue to a democratic vote – if it was, the party would disband. In the 1997 General Election, the Referendum Party did not contest seats where the candidate most likely to win had wanted the same thing as they did, but wound up folding after its leader died. With the Conservative Party back in power by themselves from 2015, voted in on the promise of a referendum before the end of 2017, the argument over having a vote was now decided.

In that case, why are we having the referendum in 2016? Is it because of the ongoing migration issue, or the increased clamour of the public and politicians to have the vote, or is it David Cameron, who had resisted the calls for the vote, but changed his mind in 2013, simply wants the matter dealt with once and for all? The answer is most likely all of these, plus any others you can think of.

Because so many people have wanted this referendum, the debate is almost perfunctory, as the ramifications of leaving or staying in the EU is only informed guesswork. We have no idea of how the rest of the world will really react to the final decision, and there is no option of maintaining the status quo either.

This feels very much like a referendum on the sort of country we see ourselves to be, as how we want to be governed is only a part of that. All I hope is this – that the final decision of the people is respected, and that it is enacted in the interests of everyone.