'Turn in, floor it, now take my £300k!' Driving the reborn Alan Mann Racing Ford Escort Mk1

Name a famous Ford Escort? Ari Vatanen’s ‘Rothmans’ Mk2, perhaps, or Francois Delecour’s Monte-winning Cosworth maybe. Or, if you’re circuit-minded, what about the glorious red and gold of Alan Mann Racing, and its Mk1 that scooped the 1968 British Saloon Car title with Australian Frank Gardner at the wheel, and continued racing into 1969? The new AM-68 is that car, reborn.

The name Boreham Motorworks may already be on your radar, as this is the startup — part of the DRVN automotive group —  that has entered into an official licence agreement with the Ford Motor Company to produce a whole series of retro-inspired cars. The first vehicle to be shown is the Escort Mk1 RS (a ‘spiritual successor’ RS200 is to follow next), and this AM-68 model came out of that first project. Essentially, the AM-68 shares in all of the engineering work that DRVN did to disassemble, measure, 3D scan and engineer an ‘official’ continuation ‘new’ Mk1 Escort bodyshell, but where the ‘Collector Series’ Mk1 RS veers off in one direction, the AM-68 stays rigorously true to Alan Mann Racing’s work. You can choose to have your AM-68 in ‘Period Correct’ spec, or ‘Modern Race’, the latter gaining a roll cage and modern safety gear along with an FIA historic technical passport for competition use.

To be really precise, this car is a genetic ‘clone’ of ‘XOO349F’, otherwise known as ‘AMR4’, or simply, Gardner’s title-winning mount. It uses a 201bhp Twin Cam of the type used in ‘69, and combined with a four-speed ‘bullet’ gearbox offers the kind of instantaneous rort only a race-tuned Twin Cam could hope to attain. With a dry weight of just 795kg it’s fast, too, in a frenzied, short-geared kind of way.

It’s also a complete hoot to drive. Running to Group 5 regulations, the Alan Mann Escorts were heavily developed from the standard road car, with knowledge and components from Ford’s endurance programme with the GT40 – hardly surprising with designer Len Bailey involved in the project. The first time you feel the car turn into a corner so keenly, and then sit down on its outer rear tyre as if to say, ‘go on, more throttle, let’s drift!’ will make the projected price of ‘around £300,000’ seem entirely worth it…

Read more from our drive of the AM-68 in a forthcoming issue of Motor Sport