Escort Mk1 van

Classic Fords restored: Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you see it, and when Ian Jefferies stumbled across a van in need of restoration, his and the Ford commercial’s fates were sealed.

- Marc Stretton

When Ian Jefferies decided to do a bit of time travelling by restoring a classic car, his wife, Rachel, had ideas of cruising the Norfolk countryside in a mint Jaguar. Her reality has come crashing down, however, as summer Sundays this year will mostly be spent sliding around on the vinyl coverings of the passenger seat of this Mk1 Escort 8cwt van. To be fair to Ian, he has gone for the Deluxe model…

Another point to take in here, is that as Ian’s Mk1 van is just about the cleanest and most original example we’ve seen in many a year. It probably isn’t too far behind many Jags in the financial stakes anyway… and far more rare and desirable in our (slightly biased) opinion, too.

Back at the yard

Ian’s story starts many years ago, having his uncle’s scrap yard as a childhood playground. His Dad worked there too, so from the time he could walk he would be scrabbling around and pulling bits off junk cars. A YTS scheme slavery session in mechanics convinced a 17-year-old Ian that he could make much more money for himself and from that time forward his main income has been from buying and repairing motor salvage.

“My first project was pulling the crumpled front out of a Capri,” Ian says, “and through the years I must have dealt in hundreds of classic Fords.”

For this reason, Ian’s thoughts when he decided to look for a classic car project were to go for an Escort, but the van wasn’t the first example of the Mk1 he went for. Plan number one was to restore another rare and unusual car, namely a base model, 940cc Crossflow’d Italian import four-door.