There's a specific kind of automotive restraint that's harder to pull off than most shops admit. It's the restraint that says: we know what this car is, we know what made it iconic, and we're not going to cover that up with carbon fiber aero kits and a widebody kit nobody asked for.
Boreham Motorworks just did it right with the Ford Escort Mk1 RS. And if you're not already deep in the British classic car world, let me tell you why this particular build is worth your attention.
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What Boreham Actually Built — and Why It Matters
The Escort Mk1 RS is already the right starting point. Ford's Boreham competition arm campaigned these cars through the early '70s rally circuit — Roger Clark, Ove Andersson, Timo Mäkinen — before the Mk2 and eventually the RS1800 took over the program. The original RS1600 with its BDA twin-cam engine is one of those rare homologation specials where Ford actually built something genuinely fast, not just fast enough to qualify.
Boreham Motorworks (the modern shop, no official affiliation with the original Ford competition department) has taken that foundation and done something that takes real discipline: they've made it better without making it different.
The body is steel. Not a fiberglass replica, not a tube-frame recreation. The shell is correct. The proportions are right. The flares are subtle enough that if you didn't know what you were looking at, you'd just think: 'that's a very clean Escort.' Which is exactly the point.
Underneath, you're getting a fully rebuilt suspension — geometry dialed for the road, not a stage rally map — with modern geometry that'll actually track straight on a motorway instead of fighting you. Disc brakes all around, which the original RS1600 didn't have at all four corners. And a 2.0-liter Pinto-derived unit producing numbers that are period-appropriate in feel if not exactly in spec.
This is the move: keep the soul, remove the penalties.
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The Market for Cars Like This (and Who Actually Buys Them)
Here's what I find interesting about the restomod segment right now, specifically in the sub-100K bracket where the Boreham Escort lives: the buyers aren't kids. They're 40-60 year old men who grew up watching their fathers — or their fathers' magazines — celebrate exactly these cars. They're not buying a Ferrari to park it. They're buying a thing they can drive to the farmer's market on a Saturday morning and actually feel something.
The Escort Mk1 RS sits in an interesting value band. You're not paying Porsche 911 Singer money. You're not paying ICON 4x4 money. You're in a range where a serious professional can write a check and not lose sleep, and the car you get back is — functionally — more usable than a period-correct restored example.
That's the restomod thesis in one sentence: pay a premium over a driver-quality original, get something you'll actually drive.
The comparable conversation in Atlanta's collector market would be watching someone properly sort a first-gen Ford Bronco or a clean K5 Blazer — those same buyers, same sensibility, same tolerance for paying for craft rather than just provenance. The people who make that purchase have stopped needing to explain it.
Boreham's work on the Escort occupies that same emotional register. This isn't a museum piece. It's a driver.
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Three Things Boreham Got Especially Right
The color work. Period-correct rallying livery is a dangerous choice — it can tip a restomod into costume territory instantly. Boreham walked that line by keeping the graphics minimal and the base color authoritative. It reads as a reference, not a replica.
The wheel selection. Getting wheels wrong on a Mk1 Escort is catastrophically easy. The temptation to go too wide, too deep-dish, too modern is real. They chose correctly. The fitment looks like something Ford's own Boreham competition department would have specced in 1972 with access to 2024 manufacturing tolerances.
Leaving the driving position alone. The seat is supportive without being a racing bucket that makes a 45-minute drive an ordeal. The wheel is correct diameter. The pedal box isn't so tight that a grown man feels like he's folded into a go-kart. They built a car you can actually spend an afternoon in — which is the entire point of this category of vehicle.
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The One Thing Worth Noting
Boreham hasn't published a full drivetrain spec sheet. The '2.0-liter' references float around the coverage without a complete accounting of what exactly is in the engine bay and at what state of tune. For a car in this price tier, that matters. Before any serious conversation about buying, you'd want a complete mechanical history and a third-party inspection by someone who actually knows what a BDA-lineage engine should look like versus what it sometimes becomes after decades of 'improvements.'
That's not a knock on Boreham — it's just the homework that any buyer in this category should run. British classics, even beautifully sorted ones, have a history of carrying deferred problems forward under pretty paint. The build quality here looks right. Verify it anyway.
If the mechanical story holds up, this is one of the more complete expressions of what a Mk1 Escort restomod should be. The discipline is real. The execution reads as genuine. And the car that comes out the other end is exactly what it should be: a thing that makes you want to drive it.
DM Metro Luxe for where to find the full Boreham build spec — and the right questions to ask before you call them.
