Oil prices cratered in the mid-1980s, but the effects of two successive gas crises freaked Americans out enough for them to line up for Ford’s first American Escort all through the decade. That anxiety helped make the Escort the best-selling car in America in 1982, 1987, and again in 1988. In the shadow of that success, however, was the car’s badge-engineered twin, the Mercury Lynx.

The Lynx was the first front-wheel drive car from Ford’s middle-class brand, but only because American Fords had never been front-drive up until that time. The Escort and Lynx followed up the unplanned stateside success of the Fiesta, but in the late 1970s, as late Ford designer Gail Halderman would later relate, Ford’s American engineers were belatedly scrambling to convert most of the lineup to something more European.

There’s a certain irony in that because former Ford Engineer Hal Sperlich had been shown the door by Henry Ford II in 1977 for pushing too hard for smaller front-drive cars. It was the opening salvo of a self-destructive executive purge that ultimately led to Lee Iacocca’s dismissal a year later. HF II retired in 1979, when the U.S. operations were losing money hand over fist, and the international side was generating all the black ink.

Front Drive Fords, Finally

One of those small front-drive projects had actually happened, the Mk1 Ford Fiesta. The little car had been a risky ground up project designed to respond to the Renault 5 and Fiat 127, which undercut the circa-1968 European Escort Mk1 and were therefore siphoning off potential customers.

Sperlich and future Ford boss Alex Trotman were prime movers on the Fiesta project. Even late in the game, Ford was not really sure it would get built (or come to the U.S.), but OPEC 1 sealed the deal. Even before the Fiesta went into production, however, work began on scaling it up into something that could compete with Volkswagen’s new Golf.

This new car was “Project Erika,” and it would not be ready until 1980. When it debuted, the idea was to replace both the aging (and troubled) Pinto in North America and the Mk2 European Escort with one single “World car” design, mostly executed by Ford’s German design teams in Cologne.

The Fiesta had been adapted for American sale to great success, but it was a little too small for most Americans. This next car would be much more important and would be built, not just sold, in North America. It was at this point that a schism developed in the Erika plan.

Lost in Translation

In Europe, design teams led by Uwe Bahnsen and Klaus Kapiza created a sharp-suited, angular hatchback family on a totally new chassis. It featured the familiar front MacPherson struts and a new independent rear suspension, a whole new engine family, and plenty of quality touches. The European Mk3 Escort was a gem to drive and nice to look at. It would also eventually spawn some truly fantastic hot hatches.

Because the car would be built entirely separately in North America, with some different supply chains and in very different pants, Dearborn’s teams could tailor their version more to American tastes, and that’s exactly what they did. The American version would be cheaper to build, cheaper materials, have softer suspensions, and many other changes.

The differences were so extensive that the American Escort Mk1 was essentially a different car – bigger, heavier, and less precise. Somehow, the American car gained 10 inches of length despite having no more room, though its impact bumpers did help protect it a bit better.

At the heart of the two Escorts was the “CVH” engine, the name standing for “Compound Valve angle Hemispherical.” Having driven many of these Escorts, the CVH was fairly powerful for an early eighties small car, but it was often dubbed “Considerable Vibration and Harshness,” and not unfairly. European cars always had more power size for size, possibly thanks to more lax environmental regulations at that time.

The Mercury Lynx

Mercury was originally Edsel Ford’s clever way of filling the chasm between workaday Fords and high-flying Lincolns, but both Edsel and the various periods of design independence Mercury went through were long gone by 1980. It was that fall that the Escort, and the Lynx, were launched for Americans and Canadians.

As the (U.S. Mk1) Escort replaced the Pinto, so too did the Lynx replace that car’s badge-engineered twin, the Bobcat.

In keeping with Mercury’s then-lengthy tradition of fancified Fords, the Lynx had slightly nicer interior trimmings and a different grille but not too much else to distinguish itself from the Escort. It typically cost $100 to 150 more than its Ford equivalent but was sold through fewer dealers. It shared all of the Escort’s engines, 1.6- and later 1.9-liter versions of the CVH, plus a rarely seen Mazda-built Diesel that came too late to help with the fuel crises but which would be an extreme rarity today.

The Escort quickly became a sales juggernaut, and it remains one of the most popular small cars ever sold exclusively in North America. It’s the only car of its size to have ever topped the U.S. sales charts. The Lynx was not a bad seller by today’s standards, but the Escort sometimes outsold it by 6:1.

In a nod to the car’s European cousins, the sportier versions of the Lynx were dubbed RS and then XR3, just as there were XR3i and RS versions of the “Erika” across the pond. These two cars roughly corresponded to the initial U.S. Escort SS (a name dropped after one year due to complaints from Chevrolet) and Escort GT. They were decently quick by U.S. hot hatch standards in the mid-1980s, but nowhere near as light and lithe as the European versions.

In mid-1985, both the U.S. Escort and the Mercury Lynx got a facelift with “aero look” front ends and flush headlamps, but that was the last update for the Mercury. In 1987, it was dropped to make way for an entirely different type of international badge-engineering job, the Mercury Tracer. Where that car came from depended on the body style buyers chose, but all were rebadged Mazda BF Familias, primarily built in Ford’s new factory in Hermosillo, Mexico.

The car at the top of the post is a very late Lynx from 1986.