This is the Ford Escort Monte Carlo, it’s the Ford Escort as you may never have seen it before, with a bespoke one-off body built by Pietro Frua and his team of craftsmen in Turin, Italy.
The Ford Escort was one of the most successful cars in its class from the late 1960s through to the 1980s (and beyond) across multiple generations. It would prove unstoppable in tarmac and rally racing, and it remains a popular choice for vintage racers today.
Fast Facts: The Ford Escort Monte Carlo
- The Ford Escort Monte Carlo is a one-off design created by Pietro Frua in the early 1970s, based on a Mark 1 Ford Escort 1300. Built in Turin, it features a custom modern body with styling cues reminiscent of the Ferrari 330 GTC and Frua’s earlier Glas GT. It debuted at the 1971 Paris Motor Show.
- The Mark 1 Escort launched in 1967 and was the second vehicle from Ford of Europe. It used a unibody shell, independent front suspension, and a live rear axle. Though simple in its design, the car dominated its class in motorsport through the 1970s with major victories across rallies and touring car series.
- Frua’s Monte Carlo version retained the original 1.3 liter Kent crossflow engine and a 4-speed manual gearbox. It was the only one built and it was privately owned until the 1980s, later undergoing a color change during a 2003 restoration. It remains a rare and rather unique take on the Escort.
- The car is scheduled for auction through Bonhams on June the 29th with an estimated price of $61,000 to $73,000 USD. It stands as a rare blend of mass-market engineering and high-end Italian coachbuilding, and it will have strong appeal to collectors of unusual classics.
The Mark 1 Ford Escort
The Ford Escort had debuted in 1967 in Britain before being shown to the Europeans at the Brussels Motor Show in 1968. The Escort was the second vehicle developed by the merged Ford of Europe, after the Ford Transit van, and it would prove to be one of the company’s most enduring success stories.
The styling of the first-generation, or the Mark 1, Escort was kept simple – it was characterized by the front grille, with the headlight on either side the main grille opening making that signature “dog bone” shape. Image courtesy of Ford.
The first-generation Escort was more than just the sum of its parts, it was built around a unibody shell with independent front suspension, a live axle rear, and a front-mounted inline-four sending power to the back wheels.
It all sounds simple enough, but the humble Escort would quickly become a giant killer on the race tracks and rally stages of Britain and Europe.
A specially prepared Escort won the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally, it took eight consecutive RAC Rally wins starting in 1972, it won the 1968 and 1969 British Saloon Car Championship, won the 1978 Australian Rally Championship, and it took a slew of other race and championship wins.
The styling of the first-generation, or the Mark 1, Escort was kept simple, with a three-box layout and either two or four-doors, with optional station wagon and panel van versions. The design was characterized by the front grille, with the headlight on either side the main grille opening making that signature “dog bone” shape.
The second-generation, or Mark 2, Ford Escort would appear in 1974. It had much more modern styling, but under the outer layer of sheet metal much of the car’s underpinnings were the same (or much the same) as the model it was replacing.
Pietro Frua developed a much more modern design, with some influence from the Ferrari 330 GTC and his own earlier work on the Glas GT (which would evolve into the BMW 1600 GT).
The Ford Escort Monte Carlo
In the early 1970s it was clear that a new Ford Escort design was going to be needed to modernize the Mark 1 version. Exactly how legendary Italian automotive designer Pietro Frua came to develop his own version isn’t known, whether he chose to do it in the hopes of potentially winning Ford over with his design, or if Ford actually commissioned him for the job.
However it came to pass, Pietro Frua ended up with a Ford Escort 1300 Mark 1, the two-door version, in his facility in Turin Italy. He developed a new much more modern design, with some influence from the Ferrari 330 GTC and his own earlier work on the Glas GT (which would evolve into the BMW 1600 GT).
Frua’s design was undeniably more modern, it was shown to the world at the Paris Salon de l’Automobile in 1971 alongside the Maserati Quattroporte “Aga Khan” based on the Maserati Indy platform.
This would be the only example of the elegant Ford Escort Monte Carlo ever made, and just a year after the show it would be bought by the wife of a Swiss architect who would keep it until the dawn of the 1980s.
The car is powered by Ford’s almost bulletproof crossflow Kent engine with a displacement of 1,300cc mated to a 4-speed manual transmission.
It’s believed that the car was restored in 2003, this was also when the color was changed from brown metallic to the current red metallic. It’s still powered by Ford’s almost bulletproof crossflow Kent engine with a displacement of 1,300cc mated to a 4-speed manual transmission.
The car is now scheduled to roll across the auction block with Bonhams on the 29th of June with a price guide of $61,000 – $ 73,000 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bonhams
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.