Car is 2002 escort zx2 5 spd with 226xxx miles. Car drove decent, motor felt good and strong, trans shifted good. Has quite few new parts, radiator, ignition parts, blower motor and some others I don’t remember. The bad, exterior is little rough, interior is meh roughish, and no heat. Anyone know if these are worth it? 226xxx mileage is up there for me. Threw low ball offer of 1200 and they accepted. Taking the night to think about it, curious if anyone has any expierence with these
I have one and like it quite a lot. Its faster than you might think, but not so fast you get yourself in trouble,mid 7s 0-60? Ive gotten 41mpg out of it driven easy and 34mpg when driven hard. It has some oddness to it but nothing unmanagable.
I paid $2000 for an 02 with 177k, very good interior, ok exterior(clear coat is peeling) , a new engine that may have 59k on it (junkyard chalk had 59k written on it, but i got it from a dealer and he has no idea) and with some apparently rare features (ABS and foglights).
It did feel peppy for what it is. My biggest issue with this car that gets me is it looks like it had roughish life, but new parts thrown at it too... front bumper missing several clips, back bumper.. pretty much gone, interior needs some tlc to be decent. And it’s from cheapo lot, so can’t get read on previous owner on ownership
I had a coworker years ago that had one with a factory leather interior. It also had over 200k on it, but you’d never known it.
It’s a Mazda BG platform. I had a 94 Protege that was the same chassis. Really nice handing car and comfortable, i dd mine for a while and rallycrossed. Had a tick under 400k on it when I gave it to my brother. Different driveline so not apples to apples, but chassis and wear items were inexpensive and it was easy to work on. Jegs/summit used to sell the FoMoCo tokico suspension kit that came on the ZX2 s/r for cheap, don’t know if that’s still available.
Performance suspension for Protege/MX3/Escort GT all fits and a lot of Probe/MX6 stuff too with a little modification.
Brother-in-law had one that I drove a few times. I liked it enough that I search CL for them every once in a while. His was super basic, manual everything, and had 230k? miles on it. It ate alternators sort of regularly. When he was ready to buy something different, he couldn't give that thing away. I think he finally sold it for $300.
I believe somebody here sold a nice one not too long ago.
I had a 2000 SR for 10 yrs. Only 80k miles. Track days and ice racing limited the miles.
Seems like rust kills them before anything else.
The biggest reason to not buy one is probably that the Focus ZX3 exists and can be found about as cheap.
In reply to BlueInGreen - Jon :
But the Escort looks so much better than the Focus.
I'm really looking at these right now as well. Possibly for $2020 but still very much in the planning and scheming stages, and FWD is almost sacrilegious to my teammate/dad. Still, they are on the radar.
barefootskater said:In reply to BlueInGreen - Jon :
But the Escort looks so much better than the Focus.
I'm really looking at these right now as well. Possibly for $2020 but still very much in the planning and scheming stages, and FWD is almost sacrilegious to my teammate/dad. Still, they are on the radar.
Agreed on the looks of the zx2 vs zx3
Well my conundrum is cheap cars in my market are hard to come by, especially in manual. Yeah I can drive 2 hours 4 different ways to find something maybe better. But that means a whole day loss and a big maybe. I’m go back tomorrow give her a once moreover and much better test drive since swimnbo(yep) won’t be there and go from there
The main thing that might make me shy away from this purchase is the “no heat”. Like many cars you have to remove the **entire** dash to replace the heater core, assuming that is the problem. Lots of 20 year old plastic clips to break… will make for a frustrating weekend for sure.
As far as the car in general… would reccomend. A bigger rear sway bar really wakes up the handling; the stock rear bar is made from angel hair pasta. The stock rear bar off of a 91-96 Escort GT or 90-94 Protégé LX is a direct fit and a good 50% thicker. Some of the 91-96 escort wagons also got the same rear bar, but I forget which years. There are also aftermarket rear bars out there if you want to make it even more tail-happy.
Also, because of the ZX2 S/R you can still get a poly bushing master kit for these brand new from Energy Suspension. If you can find an S/R ECU it’s a plug and play ~20 horsepower bump, IIRC. Most wheel/tire combos that fit an NA/NB miata will fit the Escort, which means lots of options & take offs available (Hoosier SM7…)
If you’re really going crazy I helped MFactory develop a drop-in helical LSD (like a Quaife) about 10 years ago. They still make/sell them, for around $700 last I checked. Makes a YUGE difference in corner exit traction.
Typical GRM. Now I'm shopping for ZX2's.
Well went and drove car again, only got put couple miles on it first time. Took her on hwy and after couple mins started smelling coolant, stopped pop the hood and coolant was leaking from corner of the head... I don’t mind taking on project but need working 2nd vehicle so wife can get back working. Back to searching again
D'oh! The non-zx2 3rd generation escorts (97+) (4 door, 2.0 SOHC) are a bit less exciting than the ZX2 power wise, but they make excellent reliable commuters, and have the same suspension. Therefore all available upgrades for the ZX2 are still viable options. The only thing is that SOHC motor does NOT like being overheated, so watch out for any signs of that. They will generally survive the initial overheating just fine, but then drop valve seats ???? miles later.
A plus of the base model sedans is that it's generally pretty easy to find low mileage grandpa editions, and they produced a surprising volume with manuals (vs. other similar cars). Manual wagons are tough to find, though.
Whilst taking care of some debt a few years back I daily drove a '99 Escort Wagon for ~3 years. I installed ZX2 S/r struts & springs, Escort GT rear sway bar, and sent it. I've since "replaced" it twice with newer vehicles... but kept the Escort around for "light truck" duty. I'll be damned if that thing didn't start right up & get me to work every time I've had an issue with my newer/"better" vehicles.
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