Ford Escort Rs Cosworth

Ford Escort Rs Cosworth

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Initially built for World Rally Championship Group A competition homologation, these AWD turbocharged hatches were victorious at 10 different WRC events from 1993-1997. More sedate road-going versions followed, and the model will forever be famous for its dramatic rear wing.

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Via: Wikimedia Commons, Neil, CC BY 2.0
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The Ford Escort Cosworth was a supercar-slayer for the blue-collar worker, but these days they're quickly skyrocketing out of reach.
The Ford Escort RS Cosworth, affectionately known as the Cossie, is one of the most iconic homologation specials of all time. Essentially, it was a Ford Sierra RS Cosworth , but in a smaller, more palatable disguise, one that's easier to market and drew a crowd to the dealerships by winning races under the Escort name... and it did succeed. In the hands of talented drivers like Carlos Sainz, the Cossie won 8 WRC Group A rallies, and the public went to showrooms to buy the Escort.It was a truly groundbreaking car. On one hand, it can handle the toughest terrains with relative ease, drifting with all four wheels while going very fast on gravel tracks, on the other hand, it can be a regular car that can handle some errands and highway cruising without any worry. It was all the car for all people. We love fast Fords around here, especially some that have no business being this fast , and Escort RS Cosworth is one of those cars, we just adore it. And people love it too, but still, there have been some forgotten facts about this superb machinery. Let's go down memory lane and rediscover the forgotten facts about Ford Escort RS Cosworth. Related: 5 Awesome Ford RS Models (5 Audi RS Models We’d Rather Own)
Homologation specials are just race cars that are road legal. FIA or other governing bodies of some race disciplines sometimes makes it mandatory to build some number of cars for the public before they can race. The Escort RS Cosworth is one of them, and a pretty good one.
After Group B folded, Ford needed another car for Group A rallying, and they thought that cramming a Sierra Cosworth running gear under a cute Mk5 Escort was a good idea, but it wasn't. It was a fantastic idea! Earlier models, some 2500 cars, had the same Garrett turbo as the RS200 rally monster. But after the cars were homologated, Ford and Cosworth built some more of them and sold them to the public, because why not?! In the end, total production was 7145 vehicles.
Turbos were pretty laggy back in the early days of forced induction. When the '90s came, turbos were better, more efficient, and less laggy, but somebody somehow forgot to mention it to the folks at Cosworth, because the Cossie is known for its turbo lag, especially the earlier ones.
We all know how turbocharging works, and we know that a turbocharger needs some time to deliver the desired effect on performance because it needs some time to spool up. Nowadays, we really don't have to wait, but the Escort's big turbo was different. It was like driving the Millennium Falcon. You put your foot down, the engine will start to rev, but nothing will happen and in a second or two, the turbocharger will hit, and you will be pushed back in your seat wondering what happened while hanging on for dear life. It was very fun.
The Ford Escort RS Cosworth was a pretty special rally car, and it got the guts to back its claims. It was powered by a 2-liter four-pot that could produce 227 horsepower on earlier cars and 220 in the later ones, with 221 lb-ft of torque. All of those power was fed to all four wheels with LSD.
The results were phenomenal. This was a pretty light car, around 2800 lbs, and all that power and torque meant that it was very quick on a rally stage. Between 1993 and 1997, the Cossie won 10 WRC races, while it never won a championship, it was one of the more exciting cars that Group A had in those days.
A well-engineered suspension setup and a good AWD system were both present on the Cossie and the car just handled like a dream. But if you wanted to drift it, you could powerslide it around corners with relative ease and live to tell the story. It was that good, and it still is nice compared to the modern cars.
Yes, compared to modern machinery, the steering feels a little heavy but the road-holding is just phenomenal. That huge rear spoiler and the front splitter is not for show, it is there to provide actual aerodynamic downforce when you need it. And they work pretty well because the cornering speeds are very high if you are brave enough to give into corners at 80 mph in what is essentially a small family hatchback.
The Ford Escort RS Cosworth was, and still is, a stunning car. An Mk.5 Escort with functional hood scoops, front splitter, and a huge "whale-tail" rear spoiler is just a great sight. The Escort was already a fine-looking car, but those rally modifications gave the car a more purpose-built feel. And it was purpose-built, the Cossie was the first mass-produced car to provide front and rear downforce.
Designers Stephen Harper and Frank Stephenson really had a field day when it comes to designing the Cossie, but if you think that a spoiler that big is interesting, Stephenson, who designed it, wanted the car to have 3 spoilers, but bean counters at Ford scrapped the middle spoiler to save a little bit of money.
Two different engines were used for Cossies, but both of them worked like a charm and delivered what's expected from them. The technical wizards from Cosworth took an older Pinto block and worked out miracles from them. This resulted in an engine that not only could take the abuse from the turbo, it also could be modified up to 1000 horsepower.
Cosworth ranks pretty high amongst the world's best high-performance engine builders, but the engines on the Escort RS Cossie were pretty bulletproof, and you could modify it very easily to 275 horsepower without changing any bits whatsoever. After 275 horses, however, the transmission needs to be changed for a stronger one.
There was a time where rallying was more popular than Formula 1, but with the cancellation of Group B, rally world lost its main draw; a stage where designers and engineers have free rein and build fire-breathing monsters that almost didn't have any regulations to bound them. But Group A was different.
Group A had different kinds of rules, it has a regulations book limiting the power and other areas of the cars, so WRC wasn't that interesting to the general public anymore. But rallying was still pretty much very exciting, thanks to cars like Escort RS Cosworth and Celica GT-Four .
While the Ford Escort RS Cosworth couldn't manage to snatch the WRC championship, it was one of the most iconic fast Fords of all time. It was very important because it was very inspiring to see an Escort, just like the one you saw or own, ripping it up on Europe's hardest terrains and challenging weather conditions.
The Escort Cossie was the ultimate car for the British motoring enthusiasts for one simple reason, it was obtainable. Cosworth and Ford worked together on a car that could accelerate as fast as a Ferrari Testarossa and have a top speed of 147 mph. All of those for a fairly manageable price. This is why the Escort RS Cosworth is iconic, that and the huge rear wing.
In an old segment of the original Top Gear, when Jeremy Clarkson was reviewing the Ford Mondeo, the tracking car was a Ford Escort RS Cosworth, and there's a good reason for that. There weren't many cars that could do what the Escort could; delivering almost supercar levels of performance on a perfectly capable and practical hatchback body. In the clip, we can see a cameraman shooting Jeremy from the trunk of a Cossie.
This was a very impressive feat. On a Sunday morning, you could do your groceries, handle a couple of errands, and go to track without changing a single thing and be faster than almost anything. This was a great everyday car for any automotive enthusiast, even if you have 12 Ferraris, you would've wanted a Cossie.
The Escort Cossie is now 28 years old and since the day it was introduced, it was seen as an instant classic. It was rare, it was good-looking, it was fast, and it was exciting. For a few years now, they've been regarded as classics and their prices are going up. And they will not stop climbing.
The Cossie was a beast from a different but familiar time. The original one had a big and laggy turbocharger, but later models were more of a driver's car. Ford made a limited number of Cossies and almost all of them were handmade by Karmann. Now, there are even fewer left, mostly because of rust. So, if you want an iconic fast Ford, get a Cossie while you can.
Emre is a photographer, writer, and researcher. He always liked the mechanical side of the automobile world and bitten by the racing bug later in his life. He spent his earlier days on the field but later switched to online journalism. Nowadays he is writing for the HotCars and expressing his love for the mechanical art that is known as automobiles.

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