Rally
Ford's Top 5 Greatest Hits
As Ford pull out of the WRC, we take a look back at the manufacturer's greatest rallying machines.
The Escort Mk 1 driven by Jean Francois Pinot
© DPPI
Hannu Mikkola on the London to Mexico Rally
© Ford
The Escort Mk 1
The first incarnation of the Ford Escort is, quite simply, the granddaddy of modern rally cars. The car achieved arguably its most famous result in 1970, when Finnish rally legend Hannu Mikkola manhandled an Escort 1850GT to victory in the London to Mexico World Cup Rally, a gruelling 16,000 mile trek through 20 countries. The rear-wheel drive RS1600, the most common rallying incarnation of the car, became serious bedroom-wall fodder for thrusting young men in the 1970s, with the road-going version ushering in the age of the hot hatch the UK.
The RS200 was a bit of a monster...
© Ford
The RS200
By the 1980s, rally hard taken on a more serious, competitive edge. With the advent of the Group B era in 1982, unsuspecting rally drivers suddenly found themselves having to control snorting beasts of cars which kicked out a couple of hundred more horsepower than they were used to. Ford realised that using quaint Escorts against the likes of Peugeot’s 205 T16 and Audi’s monstrous Quattro was simply not going to cut it. So it purpose-built a car, the RS200, especially for the job. The combination of the short wheelbase and an engine that pushed out a maximum output of around 450bhp made the RS200 a tricky little beast to handle. The car achieved a relatively unimpressive career-best of third at the 1986 Rally of Sweden, before Group B was abolished later that year following the death of Lancia driver Henri Toivonen at the Tour de Corse. Despite the RS200’s lack of success, however, it remains one of the icons of 1980s rallying.
Carlos Sainz won the 1997 Rally Indonesia
© Francois Baudin/DPPI
The Escort RS Cosworth
The RS200's effective replacement, the Escort RS Cosworth was perhaps most famous for the homologated road car that it birthed. In the WRC, though, the Escort was driven by some of the biggest names in the business, including the immaculately-moustached Juha Kankkunen and Spanish rallying legend Carlos Sainz. The Mk 5 and Mk 6 versions achieved ten WRC victories between them between 1993-1998, before the Escort bowed out after thirty years of rallying competition, only to be replaced by…
Colin McRae at the 2000 Rally Argentina
© Ford
The Focus WRC Mk 1
Run by Ford as its factory team car from 1999–2002, the first incarnation of the Focus made its WRC debut in the hands of Simon Jean-Joseph and 1995 WRC champion Colin McRae at the Monte Carlo Rally. The car got off to an inauspicious start, when scrutineers at the rally discovered an illegal water pump on the car and promptly disqualified it from the event. From then on, though, the car notched up eleven WRC victories, all of them coming from either McRae or Carlos Sainz, who’d returned to Ford following two years with Toyota.
The 2012 Rally GB was Ford's last factory win
© Ford
The Fiesta WRC
The Fiesta will go down in history as the last factory car fielded by Ford in the WRC. It was brought in in 2011 to replace the Focus, with the factory team cars of Mikko Hirvonen, who drove for the team in 2011 before switching to Citroen, and Jari-Matti Latvala notching up five WRC wins between them – with privateer Mads Ostberg scoring another Fiesta win at this year’s Rally de Portugal. M-Sport owner Malcolm Wilson, who has run the Ford World Rally Team’s operations since 1997, plans to field Fiesta WRCs in the 2013 championship with his own M-Sport Team, but has hinted that without Ford’s backing, it will be difficult for him to continue using the Blue Oval's cars beyond that.