if your talking about the mk6 escorts with the zetec engines then personally i would get a 1.8 as the 1.6 has shite small valvues and you cant get naff all out of them.

however if you want something that will be cheap for a year or so till insurance comes down i'd recomend the 1.6 as then you can fit a 2l out of an early mondeo and just use a few bits from the 1.6 and you'll have 136bhp 8)