When you say “Ford Escort”, two images come to mind: the front-wheel-drive bucket of unhappiness that North America got for twenty-three years, and the other one…the forbidden fruit from Europe, the everyman’s Ford with two letters we are only just now starting to figure out. The Ford Escort RS series are not the staid little penalty boxes the U.S. got. They are instead light rear-drivers, nimble and in RS guise, potent. Weighing in at under 2,000 pounds, it doesn’t take much to turn a run-of-the-mill Escort into a powerhouse.

Enter Ken Block. Block has experience rallying and gymkhana…or, rather, what he dubs “gymkhana”, which is basically him figuring out where the limits are for whatever car he has ready for filming in the most artful way possible. Block and his company, Hooligan, have made a serious living with YouTube videos, and after his seventh episode’s star, a completely over-the-top full race all-wheel-drive Ford Mustang dubbed “The Hoonicorn”, we wondered where he could possibly go to next. Apparently into a rear-drive Escort…this 1978 example is actually Block’s first rally car, which he purchased in 2008 for tarmac running. Unfortunately, tarmac rallies aren’t that popular here in North America, so the car was stored for a bit. Once he gave up on the idea of using the Escort as a rally car, the focus shifted into making it a Gymkhana star.

The Escort sports a 333-horsepower Millington four-cylinder that is naturally aspirated. That’s right, no more turbo…this puppy screams to a 9,000 RPM redline the good old fashioned way! The transmission is a six-speed sequential, and the body kit, replete with the huge flares and spoilers, was designed custom by Rocket Bunny specifically for the car, with inspiration taken from Block’s racing Fiestas, the Hoonicorn Mustang, and Rocket Bunny’s own catalog of kits.

This is the first look at the completed Escort in all of it’s glory during a tire torture session at the Hoonigan Donut Garage. It is slated to be the star in the next Gymkhana video, but before that Block will invite some friends and athletes to have a shot behind the wheel of the car. (Can we be friends, Ken? Please?) The first public appearance for the Gymkhana Escort will be at the Monster Energy’s Gymkhana GRID Finale this weekend at Santa Pod in the U.K.