I've been using a 4-7 year old seat in my van - one that just anchors the back and uses the normal seat belt to hold the kid in, it's a Hipod Boston seat. The anchor point screws in underneath the front edge of the van floor, where the tie down clip thing usually is to hold down the spare wheel. The geometry is all correct (is within the minimum angles), but I also have a set of Nissan Pulsar seats in my van, not the normal Escort ones, so the belt from the seat goes up through the top head rest of the seat, and can't slide off the edges like I imagine it would on a normal Escort one. Once my little guy is bolted in you can't move the seat! He loves cruising around with me in the van, shades on, looking cool...
Not sure about having to have it engineered, but RACT said it was fine. Might need to have it engineered if you drilled a hole to mount the anchor point...