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Scotland is not yet known as the country where competition Fiestas are shot as vermin, but we're coming pretty ciose. The place is swimming with them. Visit a Scottish sprint, hillclimb, autotest, maybe a rally, definitely a race, and you will hardly be able to avoid tripping over one of Ford's little hatchbacks with a number on each door.
Edgar Donaldon's Fiesta, though, is different. Observe that it is not, like most of the others, a road car. Consider its in-line 2litre engine. Bear in mind that it is rear wheel drive. And I think you'll agree we're talking about a fairly special Fiesta here.
What makes the EDSpeed (pronounced 'eedspeed') Fiesta a very difterent machine is that it is the result of a radical reshell Job on a Mk1 Escort. So, of course we're going to have to go back a few years.
Although he had shared an autotest car with his father in the late 1960s, Edgar's main involvement with motorsport began in 1982 when he put together a road-going Escort estįte for sprinting. It wasn't the only competition Escort estįte in Scotland at the time, but it was definitely the only one painted red with a bright yellow flash along each side. It also gol Edgar into the way of speed events, and when a friend offered him first refusal on a Mk1 Escort (Edgar had helped to build it), he decided that this was the time to move on a step from the road car classes.
The Escort was tidied up a little, painted in the same . . . er, distinctive colour scheme as the estįte (which had by now assumed tow-car duties) and headed for Edgar's home track of Kames, 10 miles down the road from his Ayrshire home. That was, however, just the start of a series of engine problems:
"The car started life as a Twin Cam. First meeting out, it blew up. Then I put in a tuned 1600 OHC. Second meeting, it blew up. I took that out and put in a 2litre OHC. Third meeting, it blew up. This was me just starting in the special saloons class and I was getting fed up already. I carne to the conclusion that we were getting oil surge, so I modified the sump and since then we've never looked back".
The repaired 2litre lasted for the rest of the Escort's career and is still operating in the Fiesta. It clearly works well, but exactly how it works is not something Edgar ”s prepared to talk about. When told that it revs to 8000, which is not bad going for a 2litre OHC without a steel crank, you find yourself saying, "Well, does it have a balanced bottom end?" Faced with questions like that, Edgar laughs sheepishly and changes the subject.
Even Maureen Milroy, EDSpeed's number two driver since the middle of last year, has not been let into any of the secrets: "An awful lot of spectators are interested in the car. They come to me and ask what's in the engine, but l'm lost".
Edgar is prepared to go as far as saying that the engine has a big-valve head, a Piper HR230 ("hot rod to rally") cam and twin 45 Dellortos, and that it is all, bar some precision engineering by local mechanic Gavin Nimmo, his own work:
"I've not gone to any of the books about engine tuning. l've just listened to boys saying they've done this or done that to their engine, and l've wondered how this would go with that. So far l've hit it lucky!"
The result is an engine which pushes the Fiesta along quite quickly enough to be going on with: "Coming out of the hairpin at Kames it sometimes coughs and splutters, but once it's on the cam you get a real kick in the back".
It certainly doesn't feel slow to Maureen: "When it picks up, you're flung back in the seat, and you think, 'Oh, my God ....'"
The idea for changing the engine's sur-roundings carne towards the end of last season, at a time when Edgar was struggling against illness to carry on competing:
"I had a non-malignant growth on my lymph gland, and I had to have chemother-apy treatment. Motor racing basically kept me going through that. I would get the chemotherapy on a Friday, and the Friday night and Saturday would be hopeless - I was sick every hour. Saturday night would be not too bad, and after one of the Kames deathburgers on Sunday morning I would be OK for racing.
"I was off work because of that, and while I was off I thought I was getting to the stage where I couldn't go any further with the Mk1. Right - l'd try something different. l'd seen a Mk3 Escort converted to front engine, rear wheel drive, and I thought l'd have a go at that or a Fiesta; a 1600 Fiesta shell carne up first.
"Two or three people said, 'You're con-verting it to real wheel drive? Oh, it'll take you about a year'. It actually took us (myself, Maureen and Maureen's son Keith) about six months, working nights, weekends - just when we felt like it".
After the shell had been stripped, a fair bit of metal had to be hacked out of the bulkhead to take the inline engine. Most of.....
Captions -
Bottom-Right - Together in Fiesta: Maureen Milroy and Edgar Donaldson - windswept and winning with their rear drive Fiesta
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