Looks way too clean to be for sale in 2016, doesn’t it? This 1984 Ford Escort L is currently up on Craigslist (CLICK HERE for the link), but seeing the car doesn’t induce thoughts of a LeMons racer or one of my many questionable “Pro Commuter” choices. If that were the case, I’d go hunting for a late-80s Escort GT. No, instead, this little silver throwback to the early Eighties reminds me of a day in 1987 that I really, really wish I could forget. It might be my only truly clear memory from when I was four years old, but it’s there, one way or another, for good.

If you painted this particular car red, swapped out the automatic for a five-speed manual, and added the “Pony” badges on the front fenders, and you would have the perfect replica of the car the woman who would become my stepmother drove back during that time period. Compared to my father’s late 1960’s Ford, it was slimmed down and sporty. Compared to my grandmother’s 1983 Trans Am, it was a bit of a dog, but much roomier in the backseat for a pair of brats like myself and my brother, and compared to my grandfather’s 1983 Chrysler E-class, it felt low-rent. But I was young back then and only two cars mattered to me: the Hot Wheels Corvette that somewhere, I still own, and a plastic 1965 Mustang that I bought a duplicate of a couple of years back. I hadn’t been “awakened” as a car person just yet.

At some point in the spring of 1987, my dad got rid of the old Ford for a Jeep CJ-7 Renegade, and we packed up everything we owned and moved to somewhere in Pennsylvania. My father was house-hunting and we’d go along with him because my grandfather didn’t take too well to having two rambunctious kids blasting around his house all day long. We may have been going to or coming from one of these house-hunting trips when we all became unwitting participants in the effects of physics. Along a road near Grove City on a clear and sunny day, the four of us were traveling when the driver of a Dodge Tradesman slammed into the little Escort hard. He hit the car twice before the Escort turned towards a ditch and rolled two and a half times, coming to rest on it’s roof.

I don’t remember much of the accident, and I’ve been told about the moments immediately after: My father, who had been in the front passenger seat, got an L-shaped scar on his forehead from making contact with the A-pillar, and my stepmother was rushed off by ambulance to a hospital. My younger brother was upside down, hanging from his seatbelt, loudly stating matter-of-factly: “This is NOT fun, I want DOWN and I want OUT” over and over again. I remember being pulled from the car, and thrown into somebody’s Shelby Charger where we were hauled to the hospital.

Even if I was never into cars, I would remember the shape of that Escort for the rest of my life. Most of these little tin-cans are long gone, making this silver car that much rarer. Maybe not desirable, but rarer. I’m just glad that it’s silver and not bright red…I would possibly consider looking at it, if only for the morbid curiosity. It’s been nearly thirty years since that accident, yet I can still remember that final tilting feeling before the world went barrel rolling.