Unstaged

Davie Wood’s finally built the Group 4-style Escort he always wanted. Just don’t ask him if he’s going to rally it...

- Marc Stretton

For some people rallying is a passion. It’s in their blood, and thousands of Pounds are spent each year building, preparing and racing historic cars around the world. Davie Wood from Midlothian isn’t one of them. Others have such an appetite for the sport they spend hundreds each season and countless hours in cold forests and lanes waiting for those few seconds of adrenaline as their heroes flash past. Davie isn’t one of them either. And past watching “a bit of rallying on the TV,” he admits he’s never been an ardent follower. So how come Davie owns this excellent and eye-catching Mk2 Escort rally car? A car he’s spent hundreds of man-hours and thousands of Pounds creating…

“I’ve always loved the look of rally cars though,” he states, “so when the rolling shell of an RS2000 came my way back in 2008, it was time to build the car I’d always dreamt of.”

In a reversal of tradition, Davie’s RS passed from son to father, when his lad, Derek, gave up on a project to restore the Escort. “At the time he bought the car, aged 16, Derek was an apprentice mechanic and was going to rebuild the Mk2 as he learnt his trade,” Davie explains. “Approaching the legal age to drive, and on a low wage, time and money are short though so the project soon stalled in favour of something that could be on the road quicker. And that’s how I took on what was a stripped-down rolling shell and a load of parts in boxes.”

On course