Cleaning the roof and doing a nose job are definately the way to go!
Since you're good with body work, then rear wheel skirts should be easy (even
I made them, so how hard can it be?). A Kammback-style roof extension will get good airflow after you remove the roof rack. Plus bellypan and low rr tires. All of these things will notieably help highway milage.
Member Gascort has modded a '93 Escort iirc, you may look around for his posts. Here are three of his mods:
Thoughts on my grill block?
Kammback yields +4 mpg
Solar roof
__________________
e·co·mod·ding: the art of turning vehicles into what they should be
What matters is
where you're going, not
how fast.
"... we humans tend to screw up everything that's good enough as it is...or everything that we're attracted to, we love to go and defile it." - Chris Cornell
[Old] Piwoslaw's Peugeot 307sw modding thread