The Taurus Mexico

[Taurus-Mexico]

B678A0D8-6AB7-4735-83DA-509544796C21.jpeg

This is the photo from Rallye Sport Facts #6 that Ford published in Jan 71

Garry Pollard who ran Taurus in Bournemouth is on the left with 555J and Geoff Finney (football pools winner) with his car 777J (which also went to Taurus for rally prep) is on the right.

Unfortunately 777 seems to not exist any more and 999 whilst on the DVLA records was last taxed in 1986 so that’s probably gone too.

[Costafortune]

Whilst there was an interest in AVO stuff in the eighties, most of them were rotten old teabags and they weren't worth enough to restore. Escorts could really rot as well.

There were plenty of tatty ones around for £500 back then and most were broken up for bits to go into later cars. Same with Coopers - I bought a rotten Mark 2 998 for £50 in 1986.

I've had a few Escorts in the recent past as well, one being a white 1970 J Mexico so early it had a BB49 Twin Cam chassis number (but Mexico/1601cc on the original green logbook), and an H registered RS1600. Both bought and sold again as projects. Iirc, the first 50 Mexicos were Sunset red with hand painted stripes.

[Costafortune]

Good to see this car, It probably came out of the Branksome dealer site as this was the Rallye sport area and the car caries a Dorset reg number as opposed to a Bournemouth one, the site is now a Tesco.

My Dad's had an NEL Bournemouth number, registered August 1973.
The photo of the dealer looks vaguely familiar but the nearest Rallye Sport dealer to us was Whites in Taunton.

[davidnutland]

The Branksome site was on the Dorset side of the county boarder where as the Boscombe site was in Hampshire, all hell broke out when Hampshire lost Bournemouth to Dorset in the 70's.

[Taurus-Mexico]

I've had a few Escorts in the recent past as well, one being a white 1970 J Mexico so early it had a BB49 Twin Cam chassis number (but Mexico/1601cc on the original green logbook), and an H registered RS1600. Both bought and sold again as projects. Iirc, the first 50 Mexicos were Sunset red with hand painted stripes.

There were indeed a handful of pre-production Mexicos. They were either twin cams or RS1600’s that were built at Halewood and so would have the BB49 chassis number. Funnily enough the place that’s restored NTK had one of those cars recently and they’re quite different to the production version that was built at Aveley from Nov 70 onwards.

You’re also right about the painted stripes on the very early ones. There’s a strong possibility NTK should have had painted stripes as it’s from the first month of production. We went with decals though.

[Costafortune]

A friend's Dad built a Mexico in late 1970 from a new white trimmed TC shell. It was supplied by Carl Withers who had bought a load from Halewood. A new 1600GT engine was added and the car registered as a Mexico albeit with a chassis number from then local (pre DVLC) registration office. I think he used Capri 2000 struts and brakes, a 1600E box and an early 1300GT rear axle with the radius arms.
The TC was a sales disaster and you just couldn't sell them hence why Ford were selling off complete trimmed shells with lights, glass, bumpers and wiring. I expect they were pre facelift and couldn't be used to build anything else. It's bizarre why Ford didn't build the last 18 months of TC production at Aveley as they were regarded as a pain in the bum at Halewood. I believe production continued into mid 1971 to fulfil a contract with Lotus.

I had an indeterminate Mark 1 bodyshell and an RS1600 V5 last year but sold it - it would have cost too much to build it. £15,000 for a BDA starting from scratch.

[mk1]

I believe it was Gary Polled, not Pollard.

https://mk1-performance-conversions.co. ... review.jpg

[Costafortune]

He moved to the US in the mid eighties and passed on a couple of years ago. I don't think Taurus made it much past 1975 tbh.

[davidnutland]

I think the Taurus name was sold to Paul Hadley, he and his Son were well into Ford and later Opel, competing in some of the major European rallies, a friend and I bought a couple of old stock 11 stud Mini heads and a 649 cam from them and probably that was the end of their A series involvement that would have been possibly as late as 1981!

[davidnutland]

Forgot to say that was the Winton/Northbourne site.