Thanks a lot for the welcome to the club. I’ve had many Fords, mainly in my early years of motoring such as  Capri,Cortina,Escort, Granada Scorpio. 
I’ve recently become the owner of an absolutely immaculate 1997 (P)Ford Escort 1.6 Ghia. The back history to this car is an elderly gentleman bought it in February 1998 when it was 8 months old. He never put many miles on it and was always garaged. He became I’ll around 2007 and died two years later in 2009. Last MOT in 2007 showed only 20,508 miles. His son was bequeathed the car in his fathers will but couldn’t do anything with it so left it in the garage until a few months ago where it was bought by a Classic Car Company from where I got it. It has been totally recommissioned and runs beautifully. For its first shakedown after recommissioning I drove it 323 miles from Peterborough back home to Scotland !  I’ve already entered and been accepted for some Car Shows. I’ve even been up my loft and dusted down my collection of old cassette tapes !😜. I love it. 😊

Hi welcome

Welcome!

Reminds me to a degree of my first decent car (after my sierra which I loved but it was 12 years old) an S reg escort estate 1.8 tdci and they're great cars. I was a fleet mechanic and we had around 40 various versions of escort from vans to estate cars (which meant my Escort was always superbly maintained whether it needed it or not!)

I'm surprised as a Ghia it has a cassette deck mine had a 6000 CD just not the changer variant which I think I'd be swapping for even though whilst being OE it wouldn't perhaps be original although CD's are almost as ancient now aren't they !

Enjoy

Thanks Dave. This one has a Ford 5000 RDB Radio/Cassette with CD Changer compatible, but no CD changer.

it’s in amazing condition.😊

I’d forgot about the little oval clock. Mine didn’t have the wood look dash but great memories if it just the same.

I had to some of the extras myself - fog lights weren’t fitted but I found the looms taped up so only had to add the switch a fuse and the lamps.

Im surprised yours doesn’t have Air Con seem to remember you had to pull the switch nob toward you to turn it on but almost 20 years ago