Ford and Cosworth – the perfect combination, like wood and leather or coffee and cream? Nah, none of that wood and leather nonsense here. And the folks who made these drank beer or builder’s tea, not some fancy espresso macchiato. Ford and Cosworth is more like rack and pinion, fast and furious or blood and guts.
Make that blue-blood and guts in this case, as this particular Sierra may have been born a lowly Ford (and in Belgium, of all unlikely places), but it got its degree in Cosworth at Tickford College – i.e. the Aston Martin works — in Newport Pagnell. But let’s start the story at the beginning.
In 1885, the Benz Patentwagen… No, on second thoughts, let’s start at the creation of the Sierra, which took over from the legendary Cortina (and its German equivalent, the Taunus) in late 1982. Ford chose to change the wrapping more than the contents: the Sierra’s far more aerodynamic “jelly mould” shape, credited to Uwe Bahnsen, Bob Lutz and Patrick Le Quément, was truly cutting edge.
It came in four variants – three-door, five-door, wagon and the XR4 coupé, the latter being unsuccessfully federalized as the Merkur XR4Ti. However, modern though it looked on the outside, the Sierra kept its predecessor’s engines and RWD layout. And by the early ’80s that was starting to look mighty old-hat, in this category.
Enter Cosworth, an emanation of Lotus that started collaborating with Ford in the ‘60s. Cosworth and Ford (and Lotus) were extremely successful on the track with such engines as the DFV 3-litre V8, used mostly in Formula 1 for over 15 years. Cosworth also developed the Ford Kent-based BD series engines (4-cyl. DOHC), which powered Escort RS road and rally cars, as well as Formula 3 chassis, for 25 years. For the Sierra RS though, Cosworth worked from a 2-litre T88 “Pinto” block, creating the YB engine.
The original brief was to manufacture 5000 units of the Sierra RS for homologation purposes. The car was unveiled at the 1985 Geneva Motor Show, with sales slated to start for MY 1986. However, Cosworth were contracted to produce 15,000 engines, so Ford ended up making more RSs, later including a five-door variant, to match the number of engines.
The 1990cc Pinto blocks were given a 16-valve DOHC alloy head and a Garrett turbocharger, among a long list of modifications, to reach over 200hp in road spec and over twice that on the track. The transmission was a specially reinforced Borg-Warner 5-speed, the IRS was stiffened, rear disc brakes fitted and the tyres widened, of course. A full aero kit was designed for the body, including a massive “whale tail” rear spoiler – a dire necessity to keep the car from taking flight at high speed.
But that wasn’t the whole extent of the RS program, as Ford and Cosworth soon developed an “evo” variant of the RS. The standard RS was great, but could still use a little more power and exclusivity. Thus the RS500 was born in early 1987 – a Cosworth with extra spice. And extra costs, as the cars were built twice: first in Ford Europe’s facility in Genk, Belgium, then shipped over to the Aston Martin-Tickford works in Buckinghamshire to be comprehensively re-built by hand, with a few added bits here and there.
Ford needed Tickford’s help to get the RS500 homologated and produced, but this was not the first time the two had cooperated. In fact, there was a trickle of beefed-up 2.8i Capris coming out of Newport Pagnell at the time. But the Sierras would not bear Aston Martin-Tickford emblems.
The RS500 had revised spoilers both front and rear for a lot more downforce. An even bigger turbocharger brought the hp count to 227 in road trim, but it also came with an extra rail of injectors and other pre-packaged bits, just sitting there ready to be connected. This meant said 227hp could be turned into over 550 with a minimum of wrenching.
Only 500 Sierras were made by Tickford, all during 1987. Despite their £20k retail price, they sold like the proverbial hotcakes. Well, the modest Ford was rubbing shoulders with the greats, being mentioned in the same breath as the BMW M5, the Alpine V6 Turbo or the Porsche 944S, while being a few grand cheaper as well as more track-ready.
All RS500s produced were RHD and sold on the British market. Almost four fifths of them were painted black, but our CC is a rare white car (one of 56 made; 52 units were moonstone blue) in Japan, and with a pre-2000 license plate, as well. Mind you, that probably helped it survive: the Sierra RS notoriously became Britain’s most stolen car in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and a high number of them ended up wrecked.
A few were also shipped over to Australia and New Zealand, where the Sierra RS500 absolutely dominated the racing scene for several years, becoming something of a legend. It’s also worth noting that the Sierra won the Japanese Touring Car Championship title in 1987, 1988 and 1989. But as great as it was as a touring car, the RWD-only Sierra was hopelessly outclassed in the World Rally Championship – its initial raison d’être – by the likes of the Lancia Delta and the Toyota Celica.
Not that this mattered in the slightest – the Sierra RS500 became one of the most sought-after cars bearing a blue oval. In 2023, a pristine 5000-mile example sold at auction for close to £600k, which probably made it the most expensive Ford in the world. A humble hatchback with a Pinto engine? No, a sporting legend with Aston Martin and Cosworth pedigree.
No wonder why CC’s very own Jim Klein was visibly salivating when we discovered this particular car together last year. For touring car fans and ‘80s aficionados (which describes Jim pretty well, I think) the RS500 Cosworth is up there in the pantheon, the snowy peak of the whole Sierra range.
Related posts:
Car Show Outtake: 1986 Ford Sierra RS Cosworth – Leaving The XR4(T)i In The Dust, by Johannes Dutch
Curbside Classic: 1985-89 Merkur XR4Ti – Too Close To The Sun, by William Stopford
Car Show Classic: 1989 Merkur XR4Ti – Straight From Germany To A Footnote, by Eric703
J’adore your double helping of 80’s week, mon ami, and you are correct, those hounds of Pavlov had nothing on me when this trundled into view at the end of one of Tokyo’s finest streets before parking for my unwashed mass to drip all over it. I note that I apparently refused to cede ground even when you were taking photos, my lower half ending up decorating if not perhaps enhancing the background in several of these. Oops, my bad.
Yes, these were the reason for not a few evenings of teenaged me reading (devouring) imported issues of CAR and Performance Car magazines from the newsstand, and it seemed every few months there would be yet another permutation or reason for “testing” a Cossie by the Brit press, I think the best way to describe the car in relating to Britain’s automotive psyche is as being their version of the O.G. BMW M3 or even the Audi Quattro, both of which it of course competed with on different circuits and just like the M3, started out as a 5000-run homologation version. Unlike the BMW though even though there were a few well-loved successors such as the RS200, Escort Cossie all the way to today’s RS variants, it didn’t quite come to redefine the marque as much as those others did to theirs, or at least not on a global basis, perhaps serving to illustrate how different Ford of Europe was to the mothership in Detroit… Still, greatness it is, and being close to (an intact) one is a rare event indeed, especially now, some forty years post introduction, and that would go for one of the originals, the 500 as seen here is quite another level up.
This is one of my automotive sighting highlights of last year, somehow perhaps even to be outdone the next time around, but from afar not quite sure what tantalizing sculpture of metal, plastic, and rubber that might be…Thank you for letting me relive it.
In all fairness, encountering a car like this on a Tokyo street is not unlike running into a Ford GT40 in a Walmart parking lot — there’d have been no shame if you needed a hand to avoid simply toppling over from startlement.
Another beauty from Ford Europe that we didn’t get to see in the US. The Merkur was a completely obsolete car compared to the Sierra.
The Cosworth version was an icon, along with the Escort.
I just have to say that the development of these hit right at the peak of my obsessive devouring of car magazines (and interaction with a former brother-in-law who was a car guy who believed that everything that was forbidden fruit in the US was automatically 100 times better than anything we could get in the US. He maintained the same thing with regard to music and record releases. A total Barry Judd from High Fidelity kind of guy who once told me “Well, that may be your opinion, but you’re wrong.” Excellent.).
Regardless. These things were cool. And I wanted one sooooooo bad.
Awesome cars in that form, they took Australian touring car racing to another level, none were sold as road cars over there they were all track cars, the Sierra wasnt sold in Aussie at all but Tickford did modified Falcon engines too, My boss at the net factory had a heavily modified Tickford Falcon six in his Tas sedan dirt oval race car, it was fast.
sierras replaced Cortinas in NZ, MK3 & 4s were popular fleet cars the NZ govt was their main customer until the Japanese showed up with better products/prices,
A guy I worked with had a German Sierra wagon with the turbo engine he claimed it was a factory original car, with 15k engines to use up I guess it was.
Of the four Sierra body styles, I do find the XR4 coupé, the best-looking version.
Great credit to Ford for pioneering aero styling, on the Sierra. But the three other body styles appear almost conservative, compared to the more unique/interesting XR4 coupé.
Hmm, I can’t remember, was the alphabet soup XR4ti a Sierra? (I’ve nothing against numbers and letters for names, but XR4ti was a bit much)
Anyway, the magazines loved the Sierra at least in euro trim. I seem to recall them just gushing about them, somewhat less so about the US version with a turbo Pinto engine IIRC.
One of those cars, like the Alfasud that got great reviews that I never really got a handle on due to the US market.
Yes, the XR4Ti was a Sierra, although Ford couldn’t use the Sierra name in the U.S., since GMC already had that trademark. In Europe, there was also a Sierra XR4i (no turbo) with the 2.9-liter Cologne V-6, and subsequently a 4WD Sierra XR4X4, if you really want a tongue-twister.
The RS Cosworth 3-door was replaced by the 4-door Sierra Sapphire Cosworth, of which they built around 25k, split fairly evenly between the early rear drive version and the later all-wheel drive version. These were popular for circuit racing, but also practical as road cars, and unmolested ones still make big money.