Mark Keeble shelled out £47,000 for his stunner
There are fanatics, and then there are fanatics..... Mark Keeble has spent an eye-popping £47,000 on his Ford Escort Cabriolet show car, which has been pulling the looks in front of Clarion's show rig this year.
An Escort?.. £47,000?.Apparantly, the same money would have paid off half of Mark's and his wife Elaine's mortgage on their Essex home, but such practical thoughts simple dont get a look-in with Mark, and anyway, Elaine is right there beside him in the thought process.
To go through the entire spec of Mark's astonishing Escort Cabriolet would take longer than Ford took to build the car in the first place, but its fair to say that there's virtualy no aspect that hasn't had the Keeble treatment in way or another...
Like the unique front end styling for example, the result of cloning three different manufacturers' steel body panels, integrated with a set of Peugeot headlamp assemblies and a one-off grille.
And how about the full, cream leather interior, complete with Clarion embroidered backrests. It contrasts nicely with the concours-standard paintwork in Azzuro blue, matching Clarion's corporate colour.
The less obvious mods include a thumping engine conversion with nitrous, and one-off features all the way down to the tailpipe, plus an expertly crafted air suspension system that does its impression of a bucking bronco in an instant, controlled cleverly via a Sony Playstation controller. Subtle.
But heavy on the eyeball is a belting ICE install with more product in it than the average High Street specialist. Stem to stern Clarion product, ICE kit appears to ooze out of virtually every interior space. making a custom install the like of which an Escort has never ever seen.
There's a flip-screen Clarion VRX868RVD DVD/CD/tuner and a MAX668RVD double DIN multimedia centre upfront, no less than 29 of Clarion's finest subs, 6x9s, 2-way component systems and an army of super tweeters, plus a further six LCD screens, and a salvo of eight Clarion APA 2160 power amps rated at a combined 2,560 watts.
With the end end of the 2007 show season looming, Mark's pride and joy will be out of the spotlight for a bit, but Mark's eyes are already on further possible mods... "Well, a show car is never really finished is it," he quipped.
