If you are in your late 40s or early 50s, chances are, the most memorable Ford in your life that you may have forgotten about was probably the Ford Laser, affectionately known as the “sampan”.
Malaysians have an adorable habit of renaming their cars according to whatever that comes across their mind, and in this case the car reminds them of an upturned indigenous small Malay water craft, the sampan.
While doing research for “Classic Chatter” I inadvertently came across pictures of the three-door hatchback version of the third generation Ford Laser, and it really caught my attention.
The weird thing is that up to the point of seeing the picture, this car has left nearly zero imprint on my memory, but the photograph opened a floodgate and a small stream trickled out.
In Japan and Australia, the model was sold from 1989 till 1994, in Malaysia it probably ran a little later than those dates and this was a time for a kid born in the late 1960s and early 1970s to start appreciating cars.
In my case, I thought it was one of those modern, if slightly anodyne sedan-based sporty hatchback dreamt up and sold by the marketing department.
For a time I used to squat at a friend’s bachelor pad in Bukit Damansara. It was a house of four young pilots, so the cars that they had was sort of an indication of what young men at the time dreamed of buying if they could afford it.
The roster of cars were two Honda Civics, a Mazda Astina, a Ford Laser “sampan” and a first generation Mazda Miata. Apart from the Miata, these were dream first cars for most young men in the early to mid-1990s.
Of the lot, the Ford Laser looked the most sinister because it was black and had red stripes, and it was a three-door car.
I remembered seeing a few illegal night races on the Federal Highway where this car took part.
It was all rather exciting and I quietly thought that this is the Capri of my generation.
For those who still remember, the Ford Laser and Mazda Astina shared the same underpinnings because Ford had bought 25 per cent of Mazda, and were sharing car platforms for Asia and Oceania and some parts of Africa and the Middle East.
This is the third generation of shared platform, and by this point the cars from the two brands were starting to look very different.
Ford’s design was the more conservative of the two, Mazda being Mazda went full monty and gave the Astina pop-up headlamps, the ultimate status symbol in the 1980s and 1990s.
While the Mazda Astina may have pop-up lamps, it also had five doors, which meant it was a family car while the Ford Laser only had three doors, which gave it a bit more street credentials.
For some reason, I distinctly remember the Laser pitching the DOHC label very hard and today the term is more widely used than twin-cam to describe an engine valve operating mechanism.
I trust regular readers to know what DOHC means but in case there are those wandering in here for the first time, these four letters form the acronym for Double Over Head Cam.
Having two cams was a big performance enhancing feature, said Ford’s Marketing Department.
DOHC and 16-valves were marketing must-haves.
The Ford Laser was doing what many popular hot hatches were doing before they become classics, they have faded from our memory, enough for cars to be abandoned and ignored.
Once this phase is complete, many cars would have rotted away beyond restoration, and those that remain will become more valuable.
While the “sampan” may have been dreamt up by the marketing department, or not, it is a good-looking car because it is endowed with pleasing proportions.
The surface treatment is interesting, and gives it a neat and aerodynamic look, which attracted the upturned watercraft nickname.
It looked so good out of the showroom, there were few body kits that improved its appearance.
Many owners kept the stock look and most of them changed only the wheels to make it look a bit different.
Engine-wise there were turbo modifications, but these were pretty straightforward because Mazda almost always had turbo engines in their Japanese domestic model range at that time.
Most “sampan” were sold with fabric interiors, but they were tasty in dark grey material, and the body hugging bucket seats kept the driver in place should a twisty patch of tarmac show up.
The dashboard has a neat design that looks decent today, and has aged nicely.
The 1.8-litre DOHC engine had a decent and punchy mid-range, but sounded a bit gruff at it approaches the redline and that was exactly how most Ford Laser drivers liked it.
A quick browse online showed that this car is now on the market quite unloved for under RM5,000 and these low prices will likely remain unless this article triggers a mountain of response.
If you were a fan, look around for nice, forgotten, low-mileage examples and get yourself one. Mechanical parts are relatively easy to get because they are Mazda-based, but cosmetic bits will require a bit more time in breakers yards.
Many of the cars have Mazda turbo engines under the bonnet. Those are fine if you are not too fussy about originality because DNA-wise they are near similar, but if you do find one with an original engine it would be fantastic.
Happy Hunting