► Mark Walton on cars
► The best thing about them isn’t refinement
► It’s the lack thereof
It’s taken me decades but I’ve finally realised what I love most about cars. It’s the NVH – the noise, vibration and harshness. I’m a fully paid-up member of the NVH Society.
This is an uncomfortable epiphany however, because I know that NVH is not a popular guest at the launch party of any new car. It’s the uncooked sausage at the automotive barbecue, the chafing at the elasticated waist of progress. Car manufacturers have whole departments dedicated to NVH, and not in a good way. They spend billions eradicating it, ironing it out, numbing the fizz and sterilising the sound until driving a new car is like floating in a sensory deprivation chamber. These days, the feel of a car is in jeopardy.
This all came to me when I drove the MST Mk1 recently, a brand new Escort rally-car-for-the-road – though I’m not allowed to say ‘Escort’ or ‘Ford’ because these cars are built in a cow shed in North Wales. Okay, a bit of background first and then I’ll get onto THE NOISE…
The Ellis family have been farming in North Wales for 300 years, but when Carwyn Ellis reached 17 all he cared about was rallying. So he bought an old Escort and took part in local club events. Soon he realised there was a gap in the market for specialist tools, so he started buying and selling them to rally teams and he formed a company called Motor Sport Tools (or MST). Then MST began trading in rally parts for Escorts. Over time – with the interest in classic Escorts rising – more and more parts were becoming available until Carwyn wasn’t just stocking spanners and a few race seats, he had everything needed to build a entire Escort from the ground up. So one day he did.
So that’s how a company called Motor Sport Tools ended up building a brand new Mk2 Escort. Then came the MST Mk1, based on the original, curvier Escort, launched in 1968. Though when I said ‘based on’, this is a new car remember, not a restoration – new shell, new panels, new everything.
And what a shape the Mk1 still is, all these years later – tiny by modern standards but perfectly proportioned. The car I’m driving looks psychotic, with its angry-glare headlights and flared arches, stuffed with 13-inch gold Minilites.
When I drive it, I almost weep. MST isn’t jumping onto the recent ‘restomod’ bandwagon here, suddenly re-engineering a classic for the 21st century – it’s building on 50 years of continual development in the club rally scene. So the steering, for example, with its modern electric power assistance, shames many modern supercar manufacturers with its directness and feel. And the rally spec suspension, which softens the bumps but communicates everything, gives the car incredible poise.
And the NOISE! Oh my god, the noise – a raucous, head-banging induction gargle that hits you like an air horn in the face. The whole car resonates with coarse vibrations that phase and coalesce and focus as the 2.0-litre BDG engine rises through the revs to its screaming, 9000rpm crescendo. From 4000rpm onwards it pulls hard – not like a supercar, but with so much drama it’s a sensory assault. It’s so loud you’d struggle to hold a conversation and you definitely couldn’t listen to Classic FM or a nice history podcast. You have to jettison every distraction and focus intensely on the driving, feeling the gearchanges with your fingertips and toes, carefully judging the timings and pressures of the clutch and five-speed manual as like you’re modelling clay on a potter’s wheel.
In other words, this car is an NVH nightmare – the kind of rowdy, uncivilised street-riot that would give a modern NVH engineer an anxiety attack.
But you know what, I thrashed the MST MkI round the roads of North Wales – heart racing, adrenaline pumping, brain fixed on this pinpoint – and I barely got over 58mph. While modern supercars are designed for outrageous speed, the MST Mk1 is all about that brash assault, not the top speed. When I drove the Ferrari 296 GTB, I got out feeling like I’d slipped down the road like water propelled down a hosepipe – just smooth, unlimited, outrageous velocity. The MST offers half the speed, but in a turbulent, boisterous rampage.
And I know which I’d rather take for a Sunday blast. It’s all about the NVH.
Editor-at-large Mark Walton loves F1, loves old circuits, but also loves flushing toilets