Ford Buyer's Guide
Ford is the most-traded marque in our records: 81 sold results and dozens of live lots at any given time. It is also the clearest illustration of how a single badge can span two entirely different markets. An ordinary Fiesta is a £1,000 car; a Fiesta XR2 in the right condition made £23,625 through our tracked auctions, and another XR2 brought £18,900 this August. The gap between a car and the fast version of the same car is wider at Ford than anywhere else, and it is where all the money lives.
The story, briefly
Dagenham from 1931, Halewood from 1963, and a postwar Britain in which the Anglia, Cortina and Escort were simply what people drove. The competition departments turned those ordinary saloons into rally winners, and the RS and Cosworth badges that resulted are now the most reliable appreciating assets in the mainstream classic market. Production of the performance models was always a fraction of the whole, which is why the survivors carry the prices they do.
Which Ford, for what money
The blue-chip tier. Escorts lead our records: 27 sold between £500 and £56,250, median £15,290, with the Mexicos, RSs and Twin Cams doing the heavy lifting. Eight of those Escort results landed in the last three weeks of August alone, topped by a £42,500 RS Turbo Series 2 and a £28,000 Mk1 Mexico; the market for the fast ones is not cooling. Five Sierra Cosworths made £19,000 to £76,500, median £27,270. Eleven Focus sales run from £300 to £82,125; the £82,125 is the limited-run RS500, which has joined the collector market properly, while the ordinary diesels that make up the rest drag the median down to £8,800. Six Mustangs (median £28,725) trade on Americana rather than rarity.
The usable tier. The Capri had a striking August: four sold inside two days, including a single-family 280 Brooklands at £27,358, a 3.0S at £23,063 and a 2.8 Injection Special at £22,500, taking our Capri record to eight sales between £4,000 and £30,375, median £16,142. The ordinary Lasers at the bottom of that range remain among the cheapest ways into seventies coupé ownership, with good club support and simple mechanicals, but the days of calling the whole range cheap are ending. Fifteen Fiestas carry a median of £4,100: XR2s at the top, honest shopping cars below. A £13,000 Puma 1.7 this August suggests the nineties coupés are next in line for re-rating.
The entry tier. Standard Focuses, Fiestas and Escort saloons hammer from a few hundred pounds. Parts are plentiful and cheap; the risk is not the purchase but the corrosion, because ordinary Fords were never rustproofed with posterity in mind.
What goes wrong
Rust decides everything on classic Fords: inner wings, strut tops, sills, chassis legs. Panels and repair sections are remanufactured for Escorts and Capris, so restoration is straightforward; the labour is the cost. Mechanically these are simple, robust cars, and the Kent, Pinto and Cosworth YB engines are all fully supported. On Cosworths specifically, verify provenance carefully: values have long since made re-shelling and badge engineering worthwhile for the dishonest.
Our view
For keeping and driving, the unglamorous fast Fords are the sweet spot: an XR2, XR3i or non-RS Capri buys the same ownership experience as the blue-chip cars at a fraction of the money, with the same parts counter behind it, though August's Capri results say that window is narrowing. If the budget runs to an RS Escort or a Sierra Cosworth, buy on documented history and body condition; the mechanical side is the easy part.