The first North American Escort went on sale on October 3, 1980, for the 1981 model year, along with its corporate twin, the Mercury Lynx. It was intended to share common components with the European Mk III Escort, although the two design teams diverged in their thinking and the two cars ended up becoming quite different - although they had a similar exterior silhouette, there were no interchangeable elements of the bodyshell and ended up resembling a heavily "Americanized" interpretation of the European original - being larger in every dimension, and featuring a heavy amount of chrome embellishment as was fashionable on American vehicles of the period. In fact, the only directly interchangeable elements between this and the European Escort were the CVH engine and the ATX automatic transmission.