Faults:

I had to replace the rear sway bar bushings, tire leaks a bit (not relevant), clutch needs to be replaced.

General Comments:

This is a really good car considering I bought it for 300 dollars.

I installed a kick ass stereo in it with sub and amp, so it pounds.

This car really rides nice and it's got surprising torque, and a fast, good reliable engine.

It never starts bad, the A/C works great, but it bogs the engine down really bad when you're driving though.

Overall a nice car, with a spacious interior. A good buy if you get it; a cheap, good starter car!

Faults:

Throttle position sensor; caused the car to run like a bag of slugs, refuse to idle and cut out.

Anti-roll bar link arms.

General Comments:

Cheap summer thrills; I paid £300 for the car, it's in fairly tidy condition for its year, has lots of history. Has been resprayed (professionally) a few years back, so "two tone" Dash edition doors have been swapped for far less tacky looking solid Melina Blue.

Engine is a shocker, a relic of 70's technology, bought kicking and screaming into the 1990's and EEC compliant CFi setup, coupled with a catalytic convertor throttles all the tiny bit of power the engine has.

Has serious drinking problems, with both oil and petrol. Was struggling past 10MPG with throttle position sensor acting up, manages around 20MPG on a run now, however the engine is seriously shot, serious smoke and knocking. This has been due to neglect by previous owners, and NOT a fault of the engine. Burns around 1 pint of oil every 500 miles.

Performance is poor, 0-60 in around 20 seconds, however this again is due to the poorly engine! I've driven many of these with "good" engines, and the performance is just adequate, but ultimately it's a crude old 1400cc engine pulling an Escort.

The brakes feel sloppy, but are effective, the handling to be honest is poor, but no cabriolet from this time has good handling to be honest. Only a fool would buy a standard Escort for pin-sharp handling!

Bar the engine, (good engines can be sourced for £50, and half a day to swap,) which I will overlook, as this is not an inherent problem with the car itself, it's good cheap summer fun. Cheap to insure being a 1.4, and with favourable roadtax banding, makes it a winner.

She can still turn heads with the roof down, and for crawling around in, on hot summer days, she can't be beat!

Faults:

Clutch was chattering (warped pressure plate) when I bought it and finally had to be replaced at 183,000. It was the original in the car and had done years of city driving around Dallas/Fort Worth, TX so I really can't begrudge it.

Brakes and C/V boots serviced at that time. Ignition switch broke internally recently. Rear springs and struts were recently replaced -- the OE springs in the wagons are known to sag over time, especially if you haul stuff, and the design of the replacement ones has been upgraded.

Preventive maintenance includes timing belt and idler -- a fairly simple job since it's a SOHC engine.

For the heck of it, I did a compression test recently and all cylinders were at 175 psi., near perfect.

General Comments:

Performance is on the weak side with a/c on, but fuel economy is excellent (I get 36 highway driving like I stole it) and the vehicle will haul quite a bit of stuff in the wagon configuration. The 1.9 engine "the little engine that could" is kind of gruff and noisy, but I hear of them lasting over 250,000 miles with decent maintenance. And since it doesn't have a tachometer, I guess the engine noise has one benefit...

The manual transmission is quite impressive -- easy to shift and precise. I've taught several people how to drive stick with it (since the clutch was replaced).

I'm not enamored with the handling; the sway bars in the LX are puny and there's too much roll in turns. Fortunately, you can swap in GT sway bars (which I haven't bothered to do yet) and these should improve things a lot.

Body tends to pick up little dents in parking lots, but still feels tight structurally. The window trim paint tends to deteriorate in the sun, but is fortunately not hard to touch up. Seats are kind of flat; I use a rolled-up towel for a lumbar support and then I'm fine.

For that matter, this is a very easy car to work on, with plenty of room around the engine and for a FWD car, a very simple, logical design under the hood. $30 worth of metric tools and a Haynes book and you could probably fix just about anything on the car (there's also lots of good information in online forums for Escorts). Parts are dirt cheap, too.