Another of my Dads' many company cars, Ford Escort 1.3 GL Mark 3 B574 YMJ. I remember this as a great car, it was well built (unlike it's replacement D186 OKP) and looked great in Rosso Red. My Dad picked the car up from Trimoco in Dunstable and we had it for around 2 years.

My Dad had a habit of keeping a small part of each car as a little keepsake. His current car has the rubber 'GM' branded mats in it from his Old 1983 Cavalier, SAN 734Y. I found the key fob from this car when I was poking about the other day (see picture).

The Picture below is from June 1987. This must have been the last holiday we ever had in it as it was replaced soon after. If you look closely, you can see the Coventry City Football Club FA Cup winning sticker in the rear window. We delayed this holiday to France by 2 days to see the victory parade.

To the left is the DVLA enquiry for the car. As you can see the last date of liability (i.e. the date the last tax disc ran out) was July 1999 and the car is not currently taxed. That means scrapped i'm afraid, or laid up somewhere but I doubt that. My dad could do upwards of 1000 miles a week in his company cars, and 60,000 plus miles was not uncommon when the cars went back after a year and a half or so. That was big mileage for a car that was less than 2 years old.

This car lasted longer than the one it was replaced by though, which says a lot about the Mark 4 Escort. Just goes to prove my theory that you are better off buying the last-of-the-line model instead of the new version. The Old model will have had all of the problems sorted out during it's production run, so the last few are always well sorted. Plus, the dealers and the manufacturers want to get rid of the outgoing style, so great bargains can be had. They are also usually well specced too, to encourage you to buy.