Unlike some of us, Adelaide’s Davor Pribicevic’s shed isn’t full of a multitude of half-finished projects. His focus is honed on just one – a 578hp, SR20-powered Ford Escort RS2000 – and while it’s had the odd nap since 1999, it’s been turning the tyres longer than it hasn’t been.

First published in the November 2025 issue of Street Machine

There was a time when Escorts were everywhere, starting out as venerable second cars for the household, then demoted to P-plater runabouts, and usually followed by the wreckers. Naturally, Davor went through a few of Ford’s finest small car during his misspent youth, and for every one of those, there were at least a couple of busted rear ends.

“That’s how I found this,” Davor explains. “I had just blown the diff in my yellow Escort – I went through 12 of them back in the day – so I got the Trading Post, and there this one was under ‘Wrecking’.” A quick phone call later and Davor was at a dodgy unit complex looking at an Escort RS2000, which, despite the listing, was complete right down to the slant polyurethane nose and squishy black boot spoiler.

“He wanted two grand for it, because he’d just put these gold wheels and new tyres on it, but they just didn’t work for some reason. We came to $800 without the rims, and I’m like, ‘Sick!’. Then I realise I’m 17 and don’t have $800,” Davor laughs.

Still, Davor’s desire for the R2000 must have won out over his lack of funds, as the deal was done. “It must have been pranged in the front, because the nosecone was white and the driver’s door didn’t shut properly,” he says of the Esky’s condition. “But I planned to rebuild it – on my apprentice wage.”

Davor got started by pulling the car apart in his garage, but that’s where it stayed from 2000 until 2009. “I’m glad I was able to keep it during that period where the little kids came along,” he says. “The main reason that happened was that it wasn’t worth anything to sell, and because it was in pieces, it was too hard to sell anyway.”

Davor’s apprentice wage eventually turned into fully qualified employment at Blackwood Dyno Tune & Service, where a random customer interaction netted him a Nissan SR20 motor. “This guy came in and offered it for a carton of beer,” he recalls. “It was all stripped, but complete. I couldn’t get him a carton quick enough!” With mechanical nous in his head and the Escort still in his shed, Davor knew it was time to return it to the road.

The car was painted in 2009, while Davor was building the motor. “I had a mate spray it in BMW Chili Red, because I realised early on that I can’t do paint,” Davor explains. With a now-colour-coded nose and a shed-built SR20, the Escort hit the road in 2010 and performed all its required duties almost without fault. “I fanged it around, dragged it and hillclimbed it,” Davor says. “Actually, my son Junior got a phone call from his mate at Willunga Hillclimb one day, dobbing me in for cutting sick with the traction control off. He said I was a madman!”

As was the way at the time, the RS2000 wasn’t engineered with the SR20, at least not to begin with. “I got pulled into an RBT, with the fuel pumps whizzing away in the copper’s ears,” Davor recalls. Fortunately, the cop was tripping on nostalgia rather than exhaust fumes. “He asked me if it was an original RS2000, and I freaked out; I wondered if it was a trick question,” he laughs.

It turned out that the officer just wanted to share the story of binning his own RS2000 upside-down in a paddock, but the encounter did prompt Davor to get it properly engineered. “It really didn’t need much; the engineer prepared a report, and it had a lane-change test at Goolwa Airport,” he says.

Now that he had the ability to cruise, race and fang his Escort with near-impunity, Davor did so whenever he could. “I built that motor myself, and it lasted me 14 years before I blew it up,” he says. “It had forged pistons and stock everything else.”

Davor whipped the head off the SR mill and upgraded to a Cosworth MLS gasket, embiggening the cams while he was there. Meanwhile, he’d opened his own shop, Performance Auto & Dyno, which meant tuning was a pretty economical process.

“The boost got turned up little by little,” he says. “Initially, it had 260hp at the wheels. Then I tuned it for E85 and added some more boost, and we were at just under 400hp.”

Davor then swapped in a Garrett G25-660 and a 45hp shot of nitrous, and his shed-built SR20 topped out at 455hp at the wheels – enough to run a 10.7 down the quarter at 135mph. Not bad for a four-cylinder with a stick-shift!

Until, of course, it went bang. “I was at the roll racing and had my wife Michelle in the car with me. We pulled fourth gear, and it went ‘kaboom’, then coasted over the finish line with the side of the block missing and a little bit of an engine bay fire,” Davor recalls. “We must have burned off all the oil, as they didn’t close the track, but the smoke behind was pretty impressive – and I still beat the LS next to me!”

While putting a new motor together, Davor chose to get a few things sorted that had been annoying him. “The engine bay was always just a matte red, not shiny like the rest of the car. Plus, my driver’s door still didn’t shut properly,” he says. “So, I went to Southern Classics & Customs, and they found a whole bunch of other stuff stemming from before I bought it.”

Turns out, that white nosecone from decades ago was hiding a litany of sins, but Adam Van Der Linden and the SC&C crew got it all straightened out.

The new combo is a RWD SR20DET block mated to a NEO VVL SR20VE head with variable valve lift, requiring a notch in the engine bay to accommodate the VVL solenoid. “It kicks in at 6800rpm – a bit higher than factory – and revs to 9000,” Davor says. “The trick is getting the turbo right, which we’ve changed a couple of times with the new motor.”

The current turbo is a Pulsar PSR 6262G/G35-900 capable of 900hp. “While we’re not making that, we’re hitting some very high exhaust back pressure and pretty high turbo speed,” Davor says. “We’re working on all that at the moment; we have a different exhaust manifold coming, and then we can hopefully dial it all in.”

With ready access to a dyno, Davor’s Escort has hit the rollers more than a few times: “The most we’ve seen so far is 578hp at 8600rpm.” That’s a fair bit of grunt in anyone’s language, let alone stuffed into a 1000kg Escort!

Davor has yet to take the Esky down the quarter with the new combo, but you can be sure it’ll run in the single digits, and with a built BorgWarner now under its bum, he’s not likely to blow up Escort differential #13.

“Oh, I dunno – with just under 600hp at the wheels, I reckon it’s a possibility,” he smiles. “We shall see.”

DAVOR PRIBICEVIC
1979 FORD ESCORT RS2000

THANKS
My wife Michelle and children Joanna, Davor, Jayke, Phoenix and Anastasia; Adam and Jodie at Southern Classics & Customs; Ken Steel; Adam at AJ Trim; Chris at Penrite; Haltech; Raceworks; EFI Solutions/TAARKS; Sleeka Spares.