Members Classic Cars

[JPB]

I remember having had to send one to Henleys back in the late eighties or maybe early nineties, a customer had brought it in to us for test and a service having bought the car from them but we were his chosen service venue after the warranty was up and it had come in for its first ever MOT, which it failed on a hole the size of a Jubilee Crown, but not as round, in its n/s/f leg, just below the bulkhead. Henleys didn't want it to be seen on its "walk of shame" from our workshops to their city centre place, so they pulled it onto their beavertail then buried it in a storage cover so that anyone seeing the wagon on the way would just have assumed that the load was a Montego or similar.
There were several hundred similar cars, all Sapphires rather than hatches, found from the same run, all bar a few were spirited away by Ford to have the section properly drilled out and replaced at [Ford's] expense, rather than letting the car get a bad reputation. Watchdog, part of the "That's Life" show on the BBC back then, did run a piece on this issue but nobody could have taken any notice as Ford went on to sell several more Sapphires.

Well done for saving this, it seems just five minutes ago that the roads were wick with the bloody things and now they've suddenly become harder to find than Cortinas. The Sierra was a decent car but that didn't matter to rust, which ate most of them. That DOHC engine was a good one, although the advantage of timing chains over belts was negated in its case because Ford's monkey metal chains tended to break at far shorter intervals than belts would have required attention. Now though, with a modern chain and a set of the upgraded guides & tensioner, they're quite possibly one of Ford's finest heroic failures.