The Ford Escort bears lineage to the Mazda GLC

So. I'm at The Mitty today. It's all awesome, I just about had a dayturnal emission when I saw a Ford GT LeMans race car out on the track, blah blah yadda yadda. The Mitty rules. It really does.

And then I saw this little race car. It's a good little race car. A 1983 Mazda GLC, one of about a dozen factory-backed cars from that year, and the last one still in existence. All the engine and transmission components are, of course, unobtainium. But that's not what I'm getting at.

So I'm photographing this car, and the owner obliges to jack the car up for me so I can photograph the suspension, brakes, under-car stuff. I stick my head under the back and I notice a very familiar three-link strut layout. Its setup—hell, the entire rear subframe—looks almost identical to the BG-chassis Escorts I worked on and loved for many years.

In a sense, duh, it's a front-drive Mazda. Of course it bears lineage. But until I saw it, I never thought that my favorite (crappy econobox) car had ancestry. Noticing that detail definitely put a smile on my face.