Hey coolsan, welcome to the club!
I´ve only been an Escort owner for about 5 months, so I´m still learning too, but what wisdom I have, I´ll share with you.
I bought a 91 LX in June, and one of the things that it needed right away was new rear coil springs, both were broken. I´ve heard that this is common with scorts.
I bought a 94 LX last month, and quickly discovered that I was having transmission problems. I was kinda surprised, since it only has 32k miles. But sure enough, the trans was slipping and refusing to upshift whenever the car was cold. Obviously, it´s an auto. Iheard that was fairly common for scorts too. I had the trans rebuilt, and promised myself that the next scort I buy will be 5 speed- I´d rather drive stick anyway!
The last thing that I know of that may be common with scorts is rough idle. I know from the service records that my 94 was in with about 5k miles on it for a rough idle. (it runs smooth as silk now) Also, my 91 has kind of a rough idle, the wheel shakes a bit when I´m at a stoplight, but with 106k miles on it I don´t expect perfection, and the shake kinda gives the scort character!
Lastly, the temp gage recently stopped working on my 94- refer to my post on this.
Hope I haven´t discouraged you from becoming an Escort owner! I´m overall very happy with my 2 scorts and will definitely buy another in the future. They are cheap to buy relative to most other cars, fun to drive, and look good, even stock. Good luck!