1984 Ford Escort Gold Medal Edition Is Junkyard Treasure

Murilee Martin

May 30, 2024 at 10:57 AM·5 min read

1984 ford escort gold medal edition from phil long ford in colorado junkyard — 1984 Olympics Ford Escort Is Junkyard TreasureMurilee Martin

It costs plenty to be an official Olympic Games sponsor and get the right to use trademarked Olympics words and symbols. For 1980, GM sponsored American TV coverage of the Winter Olympics, and Subaru became the official car of the U.S. Ski Team.

For the 1984 Games, Buick nailed down Olympics sponsorship in serious fashion, with the five-rings symbol slathered all over the Buick Century Olympia.

But what if you were a Ford dealer in 1984 and wanted to get in on that Olympian prestige, despite Dearborn's refusal to pay Buick-grade cash for the privilege?

That motivation appears to be behind the "Gold Medal Edition" 1984 Fords. I found the Escort version in a Colorado Springs self-service car graveyard recently, though I didn't realize what it was at first glance.

There wasn't much to see online about the Gold Medal Edition 1984 Fords. Then I posted about it on the Facebook Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™ and some of my readers were able to track down a bit of Gold Medal Edition Ford history.

It appears that some Ford dealers, including Roy Raymond Ford in Twin Falls, Idaho, offered '84 Escorts, Rangers and Bronco IIs with two-tone Polar White/Medalist Gold paint and plastic dealer-emblem-style fender medals.

Phil Long Ford in Colorado Springs (then located about five miles from the parking spot of today's Junkyard Treasure) was another outfit selling Gold Medal Edition vehicles that year.

1984 gold medal edition ford bronco ii — Josh Bantam

It turns out that there's at least one Gold Medal Edition 1984 Bronco II (also sold new at Phil Long Ford) on the road today. This one currently lives in Kansas and is undergoing a full restoration.

There's a torch depicted on the Gold Medal Edition badges, but the International Olympic Committee probably wouldn't attempt to take any legal action over that. Roy Raymond used the word "Olympic" in his newspaper advertisement, though, so he may have found himself looking down the barrel of lawsuit threats (though at the time, the IOC probably was more concerned with the Warsaw Pact boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, which was payback for the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics Games in Moscow in the wake of the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan). There's a lot of history in the junkyard, if you know where to look!

I had a 1936 Kodak Bullet film camera with me when I found this car, as one does, and so I took this shot of the Gold Medal Edition Escort.

Aside from the cool-looking paint and badges, this car is a cheap base-grade or L trim level model and its MSRP was either $5,827 or $6,091 ($17,930 or $18,742 in 2024 dollars). The engine is a carbureted 1.6-liter CVH with the oddball "cam-in-head" design, rated at 70 horsepower and 88 pound-feet.

The CVH was, legally speaking, an overhead-cam engine (despite using overhead-valve-style valve lifters and rocker arms), so it missed out on the honor of being the last pushrod engine installed in new U.S.-market production vehicles even though it was available here through 2004.

This original buyer of this car didn't go for many options beyond the Gold Medal Edition treatment, but it does have the extra-cost five-speed manual transmission rather than the base four-on-the-floor.

Buick spent the money for official Olympic Games sponsorship, so we'll watch an '84 Buick commercial before the '84 Escort one.

Beats those Japanese imports!

Because it costs real money to be an official Olympics sponsor and Buick had already done so for the 1984 Games, the Gold Medal Edition Fords carefully avoided using any legally registered Olympic Games symbols.

The engine is a carbureted 1.6-liter "cam-in-head" CVH, the base Escort engine for 1984. Output was 70 horsepower and 88 pound-feet, which wasn't bad for an econobox of its time. Higher Escort trim levels could get fuel injected and/or turbocharged versions of this engine.

The base transmission in the 1984 Escort was a four-speed manual, but this car has the optional five-speed.

These plastic Gold Medal Edition badges are screwed into the fender, much as dealership badges were attached to trunk lids at the time. Note that the word "Olympic" does not appear, nor does the official five-ring Olympics symbol. That costs money!

Like so many Colorado residents (including me), the owner of this car appears to have started out in the Upper Midwest.

If you like simple automotive climate controls, this panel is for you. There is no air conditioning, which was considered frivolous for owners of econo-commuters in the early 1980s.

The Gold Medal Edition got you the fender badges, chrome fender lip moldings and two-tone paint in "Polar White" and "Medalist Gold" hues.

This is either a base model or a just-above-base Escort L, which means its MSRP started at $5,827 or $6,091 (about $17,930 or $18,742 in 2024 dollars).

1984 Ford Escort Gold Medal Edition in Colorado Springs wrecking yard.

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