Ford · introduced 1983
The Ford Orion is one of 571 Ford models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1983. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Ford Orion properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1980s were the decade of turbocharging, electronic fuel injection and the first mass digital engine management — Group B rallying and hot hatches defined its performance culture. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Honda Honda Civic, the Peugeot Peugeot 205, the Toyota Toyota 4Runner — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Ford Orion reads like this: the record lists its engine as 1296 cc OHV "Valencia/HCS" Straight-4 / 1296 cc OHC "CVH" Straight-4 / 1598 cc OHC "CVH" Straight-4 / 1597 cc DOHC "Zetec" Straight-4 / 1796 cc DOHC "Zetec" Straight-4 / 1753 cc OH; drive goes through Ford BC4 4-speed manual / Ford BC5 5-speed manual / Ford ATX 3-speed automatic; the layout is Front engine, Front-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Ford's own catalogue the Ford Orion sits alongside the Ford 021C (1999), the Ford Escort (2015), the Ford Comète, the Ford Köln. The record names the Ford Escort (1968–1980) / Ford Cortina (1962–1982) as its predecessor and the Ford Escort Saloon (1993–1998) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Assembly is recorded at United Kingdom: Halewood (Halewood Body & Assembly) / Germany: Saarlouis / Brazil: São Bernardo do Campo (Ford do Brasil / Ford Brazil) / Spain: Almussafes / Argentina: Pacheco Sta.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Ford Orion costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.