You won’t be seeing a reboot of Cop Rock or The Chevy Chase Show anytime soon; television failures do not inspire sequels. In that same way, cars that don’t live up to expectations rarely get a second shot at life. That’s why the story of the 1985 ½ Ford EXP is so rare in the automotive world.
If you can believe the numerous sources that I’ve found, the way this next-gen EXP actually came into being is an even more unlikely and inspiring tale of how almost anything is possible.
The EXPeriment Fails
With the death of the muscle car, during the early seventies the “fun” car market became increasingly dominated by imports, in particular small coupes like the Toyota Celica and Volkswagen Scirocco. After Ford stopped selling the European Capri after the 1978 model year, their legitimate presence in this hotly contested segment was a bit limited. Their main initial competitor honestly was supposed to be a “pony” car: the Mustang II.
As I’ve written before:
The 1974 Mustang II was actually downsized so drastically that it fit into the small coupe market and left the niche of larger Pony cars wide open for the Camaro to make inroads. The larger (and much better) 1979 Fox-bodied Mustang helped solve some of those problems, yet now the market for a smaller coupe needed to be addressed. Ford did just that in 1982 when they sort of gave us the “little” Mustang that I’ve been suggesting. The issue was that the car that they gave us to fill that space wasn’t particularly good.
The Ford EXP (and Mercury twin LN7) were coupes based on the Escort that had just been released the year before, and they had a bunch of strikes against them from the start. First, despite having a decent amount of room in back, the cars were sold as two-seaters only; after the 1955-57 T-Bird Ford of all people should know is marketing death for a mainstream car. Second, the performance of the Escort on which the EXP was based on was less than stellar, with a whopping 70 horsepower and a zero to sixty time of over 14 seconds. Worse than that, the EXP didn’t weigh any less than the five-passenger Escort so you were gaining absolutely nothing in performance and handling over the more practical car.
The styling wasn’t bad overall, but the front end proved to be extremely polarizing. The vast majority of viewers felt the frog-eyed face was not particularly appealing or just flat out ugly. Talk about a car introduced in an era where adding pop-up headlamps could have turned it into something potential buyers would have instantly associated with “sporty.” Of course, they didn’t do that.
I forgot to mention that the EXP shared the early Escort’s horribly boxy and cheap-looking instrument panel with a stuck-on extra set of gauges behind the gear shift, best read by lying down in the cargo area, if you could fit. Yes, somehow Ford ignored the fact that things like the Celica and 200SX had back seats.
Reportedly, Ford had hoped to sell upwards of 200,000 EXPs and LN7s each year, but combined sales were only 133,403 for 1982. This number dropped off a cliff to a mere 24,225 cars in 1983 with the Mercury version selling only a mere 4,528 units before getting the axe. Sales didn’t recover, and Ford pulled the plug midway through the 1985 model year.
Oddly enough, that wasn’t the end of the EXP.
Factory EXPloration
As the eighties wore on, the Escort finally received more powerful engines plus styling and chassis tweaks that didn’t exactly create a world beater but certainly made it more competitive with the Japanese onslaught. Despite this, the EXP variant never matched the critical and public acclaim of subcompact-based sports coupes such as the Honda Civic CRX. To many, the failure of the EXP was as plain as the nose on its ugly duckling face. If the front end was the most objectionable part of this little sports coupe, then that’s the first thing that needed to be fixed, but was it worth the investment in developing an all-new front clip? Probably not, but reportedly, a group of Ford factory workers who built the poor EXP didn’t want to see it die and had an idea for how to save it (more on that next).
You see, for mid-way through the 1985 model year, Ford introduced a revised Escort that featured a much more aerodynamic nose with flush composite headlamps and, on GT versions, a nearly blanked-off body-colored radiator grille. Cool new wheels and rocker treatments were also a welcome improvement, and it drove pretty well, too.
In a 1986 comparison test, the Escort GT came in fourth behind the GTI, the Acura Integra, and Toyota FX16, but five years earlier, it would have been unthinkable for any Escort to be competitive at all.
Beyond the GT’s revisions that I mentioned, the rest of the bodyshell remained essentially the same, with the new body parts bolting right onto the old car. When I say “old car,” I mean any pre-1985 Ford Escort or Mercury Lynx, including the EXP.
The two-seater coupe was not without fans, and a number of them were apparently personnel on the line that built the EXP alongside the other hatchbacks and wagons. As the possibly apocryphal story shared by Hemmings and Paul Niedermeyer at Curbside Classic (among others) goes, a group of Ford factory workers saw the new Escort body and mechanical components, heard that the EXP was heading for an early grave, and decided to literally put two and two together.
As a kid, listening to the silly Johnny Cash song “One Piece At A Time” about a Cadillac assembly line worker who sneaks parts out of the factory in his lunchbox, I always assumed that these individuals had some mad skills. The individuals employed on the Ford Escort line apparently did possess such abilities to some degree. Supposedly, an EXP was taken from the line and a same-color new 1985 ½ nose grafted over the front.
Also, the EXP by then had the “bubble window” hatchback taken from the short-lived and now-dead Mercury LN7 version of the EXP. Unlike the notchback of the early Ford car, this hatch formed more of a fastback roofline that suited the car far better.
The formerly sleepy-eyed EXP took on a new, awake-and-ready-for-action appearance that reportedly caught the attention of upper management. This sort-of-prototype was eventually viewed by none other than Ford President Donald Peterson, who went ahead and approved the new EXP for production. Why not? Compared with the release of the upcoming Taurus at the time, this revived car likely cost next to nothing in tooling and development and could get more years out of the EXP body shell that was only three years old at that point.
I have no trouble believing this often-told story. Truth be told, when I first saw the 1985 ½ EXP, it looked less like something the Ford designers came up with and more like a front-end swap that a body shop might have accomplished. Or, you know, crafty factory workers – so I feel the story is highly plausible. If so, it’s a great anybody-can-make-a-difference tale about beating corporate bureaucracy.
The new EXP received its own symmetrical grille with a single slot at the bottom to differentiate it from the asymmetric Escort GT. The rest of the body shell remained essentially the same, suffering from the same visual issues as before. You see, the firewall and lower door height of the EXP had to be shared with the more upright Escort, making the body below the beltline seem especially thick. Ford tried to alleviate that with flat black trims below the side windows to fool the eye into thinking the glass was bigger; it works, but only sort of.
Naturally, the modification shared with the new Escorts made for a much better driving car. This white one shown is the “Luxury” version that had a 1.9-liter four making 90 horsepower, or 20 up from the original car.
Still, the EXP to have had was the “Sport Coupe” model that was adjacent to the Escort GT with the upgraded suspension and brakes. The engine received multi-port fuel injection for a bump to 106 horsepower; this would raise to 115 by 1987, which was still admittedly five short of output of the short-lived ’84-85 EXP Turbo (but without the dreaded lag). Here’s the EXP Sport Coupe right next to the Escort GT to give you a good idea of the similarities and differences:
With the 15-inch wheels and ground effects, the EXP still wasn’t exactly something that would have wowed them in Turin but it was a much more palatable mix of ingredients than this little sport coupe had ever been before. The interior of the Sport Coupe had Recaro-like sport seats with the donut-hole headrests:
The 1984-on U.S. Escort dashboard was way, way better than the 1981-83 version with more rounded shapes and better detailing:
Personally, I never really hated the original EXP’s funky “eyelid” nose; remember, we’re the Autopian where funky is good. I always accepted that the “new” front end was more conventional and easier to accept at first glance but lacked character. Still, how did the public feel about it?
EXPired Again
Despite getting a warmer reception than the “toad eyed” original, the revived EXP still didn’t become the success that Ford wanted. Sales went up slightly in 1986 to nearly 31,000 cars compared to previous year’s 26,462, but they dropped again in ’87 before Ford once again pulled the plug on the EXP, this time for good, in 1988.
Still, Ford moved over 60,000 examples of the updated coupe that never would have sold had the EXP been left for dead in ’85. The revived EXP kept their seat warm in the compact front drive sports coupe sector; a market that they would fully capitalize on right after the EXP’s demise with the underappreciated 1988 Probe: essentially an American-made Japanese Mazda sport coupe.
The second generation EXP was a better mock-import coupe than the first one, but sometimes the only way to beat them is to join them.
Top graphic image: Ford
My dad had an EXP when I was born in 92. It soon crapped out and never ran again. He said it was the biggest piece of junk he’d ever owned and replaced it with an 88 Integra that he drove until it rusted out from underneath him
My aunt had a ln7, or lemon number 7 as they called it, had a funny habit of catching fire. Cursed my grandfather would say, a lemon and an omen born a ford my father would say, but she loved that shiny black lil frog, til it roasted all the wires one last time.
I kinda dig the nose of these goobers, pity theyre about as rare as haleys comet anymore.
Can we talk about the even more questionable successor, the ZX2?
Here’s my 2 cents that would have netted a few thousand more sales: They should have kept the SAME asymmetrical Escort GT grille and put their stylized EXP lettering in there where the GT logo is. I have no proof this would have done anything for sales, but I think it helps with the continuity/lineage/whatever.
In 1988 my brother, who had pined for a Mustang GT until the insurance estimates for a 25-year-old male mowed him over, bought a 1988.5 EXP for its sporty looks. The 115 hp was good enough to keep him out of trouble, and the car served him well for 6-7 years. He finally got his Mustang GT when he turned 60….
First-gen for me, but I am glad that the second one happened. Love those hooded eyes.
A kid I went to high school with had one of the facelifted EXP’s in red as his 1st car. He called it the Muscort due to it being an unholy amalgamation of the 1987-93 Mustang GT and the Escort with zero performance capabilities.
Honestly, it’s a better name than the EXP and also sounds like the name of some sort of strange, hybrid marsupial. Muscort it is!
I spent a summer with the family LN7. My oldest brother got one as his college car and beyond some tie rod work after initial purchase, it ran like a top for his four years of college. He then passed it down to my older brother who got it half way through his college career. The summer before I went, my Subaru GL koo-pay blew a head gasket, then I crashed it, so I was carless. My brother generously let me drive the Mercury to work most days. It was absolutely devoid of any option. It was not fast, but it NEVER left any of us stranded. For an 80s Ford, that’s pretty impressive to me. We drove that thing everywhere, back and forth constantly to college, a 2.5 hour trip each way. It never got stuck in the snow, it started every single time. Before I could drive, I rode from central Ohio to Chicago in the rear hatch sitting on the cargo bar for six hours while my brother and his friend drove. No seatbelt, no seatback, no nothing, I brought a pillow to sit on. This was the early 90s and yes, we were morons.
For a cheap little thing, it was extremely reliable and served all of us very well. Sadly, it was well over 120k miles when it was unceremoniously hit by some girl who’s boyfriend was teaching her to drive as it sat quietly in a parking lot. Their insurance deemed it a total loss and that was the end of it. Shame, I would have liked to see how far it would have gone. It was replaced with a Tempo that would suffer the same fate.
A very wealthy friend of the family, from whom we got two Volvo P1800s, replaced the Volvos with an EXP. A strange choice for someone that could have driven anything that still doesn’t make sense. And definitely less of a car than the P1800s.
I used to like the look of the EXP, but now their proportions look all off to me. The angles and lengths don’t look like they were designed together.
Two-seat econo sporty cars were a thing in the 1980s. At my small high school it was the cool girls who had new-ish Fieros and EXPs and such. Speaking from with the hindsight of forty years and fatherhood of a daughter, I wonder if the parents were intentionally pushing cars without back seats?
Creativity and athletic agility can overcome the lack of a back seat in an EXP…
I’m guessing you figured this out long before you became “Old Fart Parts Guy.”