The current generation Ford Escort is a compact car sold on the Chinese, Taiwanese and Middle Eastern market by the Ford Motor Company. Following its announcement in mid-2013 that they intended reviving the "Escort" name for a car based on an older version of the Ford Focus, Ford launched the new Escort in January 2015.[1]
History and lineage
Ford had used the Escort name on three earlier car lines; firstly on a variant of the Ford Squire sold in the UK 1955 to 1961, then on the better-known European Ford Escort sold from 1968 to 2002, and the North American Ford Escort sold between 1980 and 2003.
In 2013, Ford announced its intention to resurrect the "Escort" nameplate on the Chinese market in 2014, with a compact car based on the then-current Ford Focus Classic, itself a version of the second generation of Ford Focus. The Chinese Escort was designed in Australia[2] and was intended to be the technical successor of the Focus Classic and positioned under the current third generation Ford Focus.[3]