This is a Ford Escort Mk 2 RS1800 display based on the car driven by Roger Clark in 1975. It contains a Minilite-style wheels with tires, lightweight composite trunk and hood panels, all fitted to a powder-coated steel frame.
Clark and the Ford Escort Mk 2 RS1800 were a match made in heaven, and in 1976 he became the first British driver to win a World Rally Championship (WRC) event after his victory in the 1976 RAC Rally.
Above Video: This is a classic clip from the 1990s showing Roger Clark and a young Colin McRae.
Roger Clark was born in 1939 into an automotive family – his father was a car dealer also named Roger Clark. Clark the younger would immediately begin working for the family business after leaving school, but he didn’t receive any special treatment – he started out as a trainee mechanic just as anyone else would have.
After passing his driving test in 1956 at the age of 16, Clark immediately joined the Leicester Car Club. It would be at the LCC that he would meet another young man named Jim Porter who would become his rally co-driver – the two men would spend 20 years racing together all over the world and enjoyed no shortage of success.
Clark would show early signs of brilliance in his rallying career, winning the East Midlands Rally Championship in both 1961 and 1962, taking a class win in the International Circuit of Ireland in 1963, and a 3rd place in his first Scottish Rally later that same year.
It wasn’t long before the manufacturers came knocking to get Clark driving for their factory teams. The first was Triumph which had him and Porter driving a Triumph TR4 in the 1963 Spa-Sofia-Liege. He would also race for Reliant and Rover, but his long-term home would be Ford of Britain.
Clark initially drove a Ford Cortina GT for the Ford works team, he would later switch to the Ford Escort which would become one of the most feared and successful rally cars of its era.
This is the original Castrol Marlboro Ford Escort Mk 2 RS1800 that this display is based on. Image courtesy of Iconic Auctioneers.
This display piece is certainly on the large side, it measures 220cm x 220cm or approximately 7’3″ x 7’3″ with a depth of 150cm or 4’11”. It’s now due to roll across the auction block with Iconic Auctioneers as part of their Race Retro Automobilia Sale on the 24th of February.
If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Iconic Auctioneers
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
