FORD ORION 1.6i Ghia (1986-90) in 1:43

Things are still fairly quiet around here, so to help keep things moving along, and maybe satisfy the cravings of the model choppers amongst us, I thought I would throw in another little piece which (once again) may be familiar to old MAR readers but may be new to others. This is a slightly more “hard core” effort in terms of attempting a more drastic re-working of the donor model.

In 1980 Ford introduced their their third-generation Escort to the UK and Europe. All new with front-wheel drive and a fairly crude independent rear suspension which earned the car a reputation for an unforgiving ride and less than wonderful handling. Needless to say it immediately became Britain’s best-selling car.

Three years later they introduced a 3-box version called the Orion, about 12 inches longer with a boot (trunk) that looked rather awkwardly grafted on from some angles but the extra weight was reported to make the rear suspension behave a bit better.

I owned a fairly rough second-hand 1.6 “Ghia” version for a few years. Pretty lively but with a temperamental engine management system so it could suddenly die at awkward moments, which didn’t inspire driver confidence and we got rid of in the end.

Nevertheless I thought a 1:43 version of our family car would be nice to have. Unfortunately there were no Orion models available and the only models of the basic Escort  (from Norev and Solido) were both 2-doors, with the short tail and a quite different roof pillar treatment. They were also “pre-facelift”, lacking the revised nose and deep wraparound plastic bumpers of our car. I decided to make the best of a bad lot and went with the Norev "Jet-Car" version.

To call this model “basic” would be overly generous. Still, it was perfect for my purpose apart from the minor inconvenience that the nose, tail, roof, bumpers and body proportions were all completely wrong. So a bit of detailed planning and measuring was called for.

You will notice some dimensions marked in fractions of a millimetre, and there is no way the finished product matches up to that kind of accuracy, but having those numbers keeps you honest and (hopefully) stops things going too far adrift.

The initial assault on the donor model was pretty severe, and left me feeling like a surgeon who has just removed all his patient’s internal organs and is wondering whether replacements might be available, and whether he can figure out how to plumb them in. The extended tail was done by making up a plastic box section then covering it with filler and working it to shape. A discreet plastic lip spoiler was added.

The big front and rear bumpers started life as large blobs of 2-part modelling putty, and it was hard to imagine anything recognisable ever emerging from the mess . . .

 . . . but after a lot of sanding and some careful work with an X-Acto saw some plausible detail started to take shape. Brass was used for the new roof pillars, and an opening was cut in the roof to accommodate a sunroof.

As a bit of light relief from the body mods I had a go at constructing what I fondly imagined to be a reasonable representation of an Orion instrument panel, complete with downloaded images of the instrument dials shrunk to size. Almost invisible and therefore fairly pointless, but these things are fun to do just for the hell of it.

The large, curved rear window which was unique to the Orion was carved in balsa and heat-moulded. The rest of the original glazing had a curious greenish-yellow tint, so I ended up replacing it all. New headlights, front indicators and wrap-around tail lights were shaped from clear plastic and later painted with translucent lacquers.

Then in a moment of insane ambition I took four plain disc wheel covers, marked them up and used a mini-drill in a vertical stand to drill 12 holes in each to try and reproduce the distinctive Ghia wheels. And I pretty well got away with it. After that it was just a matter of painting and final assembly. Very fine chart tape provided the red accent stripe on the lower flanks and bumpers. Licence plates and blue oval Ford badges were done on a colour printer.

These pics show the "before and after" front and rear ends.

And here is the finished job.

Modifying part of a model while keeping the rest more or less unchanged is relatively easy, because you can always see the overall picture, but when it goes through a process of being hardly recognisable you just have to keep the self-belief going until you finally come out the other side!

It was quite a while before Ixo finally produced Mark 3 Escort and Orion models for a partwork issue, and they chose to do the early pre-facelift versions, so I think my Mark 2 Orion Ghia remains unique (for whatever that might be worth).