...growing up in the 70s and 80s I fondly remember the cosworth when it first came out.
Having never been in one then or now how does it compare to modern car ??? Handling/performance??
RS TURBO I did go in and back then it was like sh1t of a shovel ! What would it compare to now ???
Feel free to post pictures!!!
I remember a dude I worked with had an RS Turbo and took me out in it once. Must have been early nineties.
Holy carp! It was insane. Never been into cars, bikes are my thing, but that blew me away. I'd never been in such a fast car.
Any excuse to post a picture of my series one! It was roughly 200bhp, fast enough for me. I remember the lad i bought it off had moved on to a 4x4 Sapphire, that was quick!
Never been in either. But the RS turbo 'only' had about 130bhp, so the modern equivalent is probably the bog standard ford focus!
The Cosworth had 230bhp or thereabouts.
The current Civic Type R had 320hp. But that's FWD.
BMW M140? Very different engine (long stroke, 3l straight 6 vs very short stroke 2l 4 cyl).
I once rode in a Lancia Delta Integrale. Holy shit it was quick. Remember power to weight ratio - back then - a 1.7 (think Austin Maxi twin carb) was bonkers because they had no safety stuff so weighed about as much as half a bag of crisps.
Still quick but any competent hot hatch would have one these days. Just better everything despite huge weight.
I owned a mk3 rs1600, was sunburst orange, slightly modified (read totally) with a huge spax lowering kit, filter, ss exhaust, head ported and polished and a kandn. Prob got 135 bhp at most but it was still fast to me. Got stolen, got it back but trashed and we ended up putting the engine is a 5 door mk4 and switching to a webber carb
Ah, those were the days 🙂
One imagines an Escort Cosworth might feel a little agricultural by today's standards, but it's about 500kg lighter than a Type R, so not slow. 🙂
someone who new a thing or 3 about fast cars said something about lightness once.
I'm sure on the road a general muppet driver (me) would be far quicker in a modern car and without killing themself (myself). I doubt the difference would be as much in the hands of a good driver on a track...where stability control systems and such would be less important.
I'm from Essex, I've seen all kinds of wannbe Cossies and some of the most hideous excesses of modified car culture so anything RS Cosworth to me is either nicked, badged or an uninsurable ticket to hire purchase bankruptcy back in the day. Believe me, a Y-reg mint green five-door Sierra L with a whale tail, a (probably pilfered) Alpine tape deck and "it's 'ad fings done to it" under the bonnet in St Botholph's carpark was depressingly common, especially when it was parked next to a 1.6 Capri Laser that had been bastardised with a half-arsed convertible hack job, seemingly an entire Testarossa rear complete with side strakes, pop up headlights and nail varnish pink paint.
I envy anyone from the north after witnessing that.
I was lucky enough as a kid to be involved in a fair bit of rallying which meant I was surrounded from a very early age by fast Ford's, the first family car I remember was indeed my dad's red mk1 mex that doubled up as his rally car, my uncle had the original sierra cosworth in white complete with "whale tail". I remember hushed talk at the time about how he was struggling to pay for it especially the insurance. On goung in it I vividly remember being literally pinned to the rear seats whilst my dad drove and another instance racing (leaving for dead) a souped up Astra whilst on the way to a trentham gardens rac stage. It also had the best alarm system that money could buy which sounded just like a police car, you could sound it manually,he may of on the odd occasion used it to get us to the front of a special stage queue at the rac. He then went on to the series one rs turbo mainly due to financial reasons but it was nothing like the Sierra.
Mates then all had the rs turbos rs orions, rs fiestas in the mid to late 90s, one I again remember vividly was the fiesta version, the most stolen car at the time, it had been tinkered with and was just ****ing dangerous it was that fast, it was around the same time I was involved in a sapphire crash (passenger) and a year later a mate then died, how more of us didn't end that way was anybodies guess.
A good mate who's a mechanic/dealer now has somewhere we call "the field of dreams" which constantly has various guises of the 500s, sapphire cozzys and rs turbos, a lot of them are track cars and all of them have been fiddled with.
Lots of good memories but a tinge of sadness that still affects us all today.
My dad was an engineer at Ford through the 80s and 90s, he used to bring home plenty of silly stuff. Once he came home with a Fiesta RS1800 which was absolutely bonkers, almost impossible to accelerate and keep in a straight line at the same time. My fondest memory is being picked up from cubs in a modified Sierra Cosworth which had a “couple of turbos” attached to it. The thing looked like a heap from the outside with bits held in place with tape, inside it had racing seats and harnesses. Being from Essex everyone would look at thinking it was a shit box, then it would start up and flames would fly from the exhaust due to the anti lag system, pretty much nothing could keep up with it.
Those were the days!
My bog standard Legacy would eat most of them tbh. But the difference is, it still feels like a sensible car. I remember my uncle's whale tail as basically being a box of madness. Obviously helped along by 80s Ford build quality, it was incredibly noisy and brutal feeling. I'm not sure if it was really stripped back inside? But it felt it. Even though he was a pretty sensible driver it was still just so different.
What always kind of interests me with this sort of thing is that he got it when they were on the way out, and it got quietly scrapped a few years later purely because of rust- it was right in the period when they'd lost their initial desirability but before they went back up in the world (though I'm sure some of the parts got good new homes). He bought my dad's mk3 cavalier off him, and practically everyone thought he was going up in the world from that daft old Ford.
Indeed! I'm thinking I'm younger than I am also! The lads were in the quick Ford's from 93 onwards when we were all 18.
My dad pushed his mex down the tip at work after stripping it for bits to build a kit car. He still weeps about it today ...
Northwind..depending on what kind of " bog standard " Legacy you have ..it wouldn't "eat most of them"..
It's not a particularly fast car ..
It would eat Wrightys mates orion it would probably be a glx with sporty wheels
I’m lucky enough to have a mate who went through a stage of having various cars.
Escort Cosworth, Clio V6, Lotus Elise, Impreza
The Cosworth was the one that disappointed the most. Turbo lag was unbelievable and then when it did come in the back end ducked and the front end went sky ward.
I never drove it but I get the impression you needed to be a very competent driver to get anything out of it.
He’s gutted he didn’t keep it as he last saw it for sale for >£40k
Elise impressed me most, followed by Impreza, Clio, Escort
I also grew up in the era and had a Ford CVH 1.6 injection car, complete with mayonaise in the rocker cover lol.
Some of them were genuinely quick but it was probably more down to the overall feel of the cars.
Being much lighter and less soundproofed you sure felt it when pushing on, whereas today even in the heavy lumps we are somewhat cossetted by niceness and don't notice speed as much.
It's a testament to how how manufacturers have come in all aspects, tyres, suspension, engines etc etc.
There's probably a lot of you tube videos showing as much and didn't Clarksons trio put older supercars round the track for them to be humiliated by todays hot hatches, but I (sadly) think most of todays warm (200Hp ish) sporty hatchbacks and above would beat most older cars in general driving.
Maybe track days in the hands of good drivers could be different.
It would eat Wrightys mates orion it would probably be a glx with sporty wheels
Unfortunately for the owner it wasnt a standard glx, it was previously owned by my mate the mechanic before he sold it to one of the older lads around 94/95 as he really didn't trust it's handling, what did eat it was a local bridge and the drop down the embankment on to the old railway line 😂
The Escort Cosworth especially was very special, it wasn’t really an Escort at all. Different body/chassis made in a different factory. I think they only had 220ish bhp and with 80s/90s gearbox / suspension and tyres it wouldn't be that fast by modern standards.
But rather than think of it as a normal car tuned up like most hot hatches it was a rally car down-tuned.
My best mate lives on a garage, so I experience all kinds of cars. The worst was a Renault 9 turbo. Bloody fast, 9mpg and didn’t really go around corners. It was a nightmare in the wet.
A lot of what Twonks say is right. I owned a mint XR3 twin carb which was a lucky barn find and after that a Mk2 XR2 and I thought they were were quick, yet we about 3.5s slower to 60 than the diesel estate that’s currently in my garage. I still have a fondness for that XR2...
There are at least 2 Ford Cosworths in this picture. Not sure what was under the bonnet on 2 of the MK1s though. The Sapphire is my mates that I get to help service in the FIA Historical Championship. A very nice, well presented car.
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Did you ever look under the bonnet Kryton57? The xr3i was fuel injected no twin carbs unless it had a different engine. They needed a pacemaker as they were pish Ford did have a few duffers along the way
My mum had the XR4i which was the Cossie forerunner, 2.8 V6 (I think), it was very quick but bits broke if you let your 18 year old son drive it (engine mounts, clutch, brakes)😁.
I also got to drive a V12 Jag XJS, that was blisteringly quick but had terrifying handling.
Had Sierra Cossie for a while (about 6 months) ran like a bag of nails for most of that.... The coupe sierra body had the hugest doors imaginable and the rear spoiler was right in the rear view mirrors eyeline (not that anything was behind you for long). Really lumpy round town and at low speeds and the interior rattled a lot and it was a bit too loud for long runs/motorway driving. Would make a good trackday car if you have your own mechanic and deep pockets.
A mate has an Escort Cosworth, and at one time he had 3 cosworth sierras and 2 escort cosworths. He has it tuned to some stupid bhp which requires an engine rebuild every 30k miles.
He also has a mitsubishi evo.
Comparing he says the escort cosworth is like a sledgehammer and the evo a scalpel.
Several of his friends that were in the cosworth clubs are now in the evo groups and, although he says they were good drivers, they seemed to often roll their evos into a field within 6 months of having it. Something to do with not knowing when the car is actually on the limits ast the evos computers were doing all the work, and then when they couldn't cope anymore it was all over.
What was all the fuss about?
Probably because we were entering an era where car manufacturers were getting excited by the fact that we could push the boundaries to extremes and making “normal” cars fast.
That brought a lot of new folks into the market, made your standard two door/four door family car exciting to drive..
Mates had RS1600’s and alarmingly would get nicked (natch)
But heady days they were indeed.
Now this is a fast Ford...
(Go look at Ken's other Ford project cars and other RS200 video's)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.motor1.com/news/307199/ken-block-new-escort-cosworth/amp/
Did you ever look under the bonnet Kryton57? The xr3i was fuel injected no twin carbs unless it had a different engine
Whilst your are correct regarding the XR3i, I'm referring to its rarer predecessor the XR3 which has a twin choke carb.
https://classics.honestjohn.co.uk/reviews/ford/escort-xr3xr3i/
My father in law had a thing about big Fords.
He had a series of Granadas including a 2.9 V6 Cosworth.
....and a Scorpio Cosworth which we don't mention.
Also the legacy being a 4x4 will weigh 100kg more than a Sierra or 200kg more than a Ford escorts rs turbo
Then there are the 25% drive train power losses to whp figures
In the wet or in the snow totally different story p
I did the milk deliveries as a kid. The guy who owned the round had a crossie RS500. We used to collect the milk money on a Friday evening in it. Good fun
Ok kryton i hold my hands up must have been rarer than hens teeth, they must have been really bad and embarrassing for Ford, i bet the choke was a pull out on the dash and no intake growl
Being into my cars a lot when I was younger, I had friends who were Ford mad.
The old S1 and S2 Escort RS turbos were junk. I had a William Clio at the time and it was so much more a drivers car, it was another league. I dread to think how much an S1 Turbo is worth these days.
One of my friends I felt like he grew up and ended up with an Elise 111s after his Escort. But then he went full mental and swapped it for a ratty old Sapphire Cossie. Another total let down of a car. Never got the Escort Cosworth either, especially as it came around the era of the Impreza, and Evo which ran ring round it.
Never got it, never will. But to them, I was probably the enemy - I went down the Evo & Skyline road.
I had an ex ford press car Sapphire Cosworth back in the late 90’s. 10 years later was looking for another one as a wee hobby car. Having in the interim owned various fast Subaru’s/ Audi’s/ BMW’s from roughly the same era I was surprised at how agricultural in all aspects the Cossies was, yet originally it was seen as the dogs.
As an interesting(or not) aside, after the inevitable cylinder head gasket failure on my Cossie was replaced, the well garage doing the work stuck the car on the rolling road to check all was ok. The owner phoned me to ask what had been done to the car as was pumping out approx 70bhp more than any other standard car he had had on the rollers. To my knowledge nothing had been done to the car so he checked the ecu and found that the factory seals were still in place. From this we formed the opinion that as this was a press car, and had been used in various publications for performance testing, that it ‘may’ have been chipped directly from the factory to ensure the performance figures would be in line with expectations 😉
When I was 16 my Dad bought one of the first BMWs imported into the UK, a 2002. Nobody knew what it was and it was outrageously fast for that era so we had quite a lot of fun burning off sporty cars at the lights.
I always wondered the sierra 2.8L vs a Cossy.
Anyone care to shed light?
👍
Like many on here I had old ford's back in the day. Started with a succession of mk2 escorts and ended with sierras. I was at college one day and my mate turned up with a 205 gti which blew my escort away. I had done everything I could to get more power out of it and stripped interior to reduce weight. I got rid of it after that. It was massive fun especially off road though.
I then had a number of 4x4 sierras unfortunately I couldn't afford a cossie. They were all good and gripped well but again slow when compared to modern cars. The difference being with newer cars is they are way more refined and as such lack the excitement that goes with the visceral car.
The other thing is people get doe eyed and sentimental when looking back at these cars and would be surprised how crap they are if they drove one now. That said I am on the hunt for a mk2 escort van. Perfect machine to get my bike in and head off to the trail centres.
The most 'bonkers' car I had was the 2L twin cam Fiat Mirafiori sport. Crappy rust bucket but would burn off an Xr3 (not the xr3i though) Bet my old van is faster than that was. I was more into bikes though.
But, tinged with sadness as someone said above. My classmate was killed with another girl when her boyfriend (17 at the time) rolled his Mexico on the a590.
With the bikes it was worse. Lads making decent money in the shipyard going from restricted 125s to hire purchase ZXRs etc, a few round here met a sticky end.
I always wondered the sierra 2.8L vs a Cossy.
Anyone care to shed light?
I guess there will be fans of both and they're not massively different performance wise as standard, about 1 to 2 seconds slower 0-60 (which was the only measure that mattered in the 80s!)
Once you start tuning though it won't get close. The 2.8 is a Cologne engine from the 60s and ran K-Jet injection (like a early Golf GTis) I seem to recall Turbo Technics made a kit for them that made them sort of Cosworth pace.
The YB engine in the Cosworth was the basis of all the Rally and Touring cars of the era, any idiot with a couple of cheap bolt on bits could get 300bhp from one of them (although not always for long) and if you were committed enough the sky was pretty much the limit. They're still making mad cars from them now. 800bhp versions that do 200mph.
This was my view on Saturday at Godwood, behind plenty of fast Fords including a couple of modified Sierra Cosworth. I was a passenger in a stripped out 1996 M3 so a bit newer. The driver was very skilled and had the measure of the Sierras in the corners if not on the pit straight. Whatever you think of them, they’re a magnificent sight and sound at full chat on a track. 😎
I think someone above hit the nail on the head with the comment that the Escort Cosworth was a rally car wound back, nothing on the market these days really is. The other thing is you can have a car with no nannying electronics to save you from yourself (Whether that's a good or a bad point) and the crash protection offered would be totally unacceptable these days.
For raw performance on track and on the road, they probably wouldn't see where a modern hot hatch went, and an XR4x4 is really not particularly fast by modern standards. Some of the tuned up Sierras and Escorts are, in fact I think 5th gear years ago had an 800bhp Sierra that hit 200mph (driven by a bloke in a fleece)... but that's another story altogether!
A colleague had a RS Turbo (white) for a while, it was indeed pretty quick - not sure I ever got a lift in it (he had a succession of quick cars, latterly Lotus Elise in BRG. For a while I think the car park had Gordon's RS Turbo, Dave's Astra 1.9/2.0 GTE (I think) and my 205 1.9 GTI...
I think someone above hit the nail on the head with the comment that the Escort Cosworth was a rally car wound back, nothing on the market these days really is. The other thing is you can have a car with no nannying electronics to save you from yourself (Whether that’s a good or a bad point) and the crash protection offered would be totally unacceptable these days.
It'd be interesting to know how true the weight gain "fact" is. Obviously the Golf is heavier than the Mk1, but is an UP? Which is closer to the original size. Especially if you stripped it back to 80's spec levels with manual windows, no AC, etc. How much weight has the chassis itself gained, or has the metal just been rearranged to be more efficient.