Blue oval brilliance: 50 years of the Ford RS

A half century of fast Fords

Ford uses the RS name in the same way as Alfa Romeo and Subaru use Quadrifoglio and WRX respectively, and as Renault once used Gordini.

In each case, the manufacturer is saying, “Look! These cars are special. If high performance is what you want, here’s where you can find it.”

The very first Ford RS was introduced in the late 1960s. Based on the P7 range, it was developed in Germany and never sold in the UK, so with all respect to our German friends we’re going to pass over that one and start with the car which kicked off British interest in the RS half a century ago.

Introducing the BDA

Ford launched a high-powered derivative of the 1968 Mk1 Escort very early in that car’s life cycle. The Twin Cam was quick, but not as quick as its successor, the 1970 RS1600.

This car had a 1.6-litre 16-valve version of Ford’s celebrated Kent engine developed by Cosworth and named BDA.

In standard form it was barely more powerful than the Twin Cam at 120bhp, but it was a lot more tuneable, and brought Ford and its customers enormous success in races and rallies.

The first RS Capri

Ford of Germany, a separate organisation from Ford of Britain at the time, put its 2.6-litre Cologne V6 engine under the bonnet of a Capri and called it the RS2600.

The car existed mainly because Ford wanted to have a crack at the European Touring Car Championship.

And it turned out that was a very good idea, because RS2600 drivers Dieter Glemser and Jochen Mass won the Drivers title in 1971 and 1972 respectively. 

Higher number, less power

Rapid though the Escort RS1600 may have been, it was quite an expensive way to go motoring, whether on roads, race circuits or forest tracks.

In 1973 Ford brought out the RS2000, which used the less powerful but also less temperamental 100bhp 2-litre Pinto engine.

The RS2000 was praised for its handling and ride quality. This was partly the work of racing driver Gerry Birrell, who did much of the development before being killed in qualifying for a Formula 2 race.

More power for the Capri

Following Ford of Germany’s lead with the RS2600, Ford of Britain went a step further in 1973 and created the RS3100, a Capri with a slightly enlarged 3.1-litre version of its Essex V6 engine.

This allowed it to run in the over-3-litre class in the European Touring Car Championship. The race cars had a Cosworth engine known as the GA, which was loosely based on the standard Essex.

The great Mk2

Although it dates back to the mid 1970s, the Mk2 Escort RS1800 is still one of the world’s best-loved rally cars.

Cosworth once again produced the engine, now measuring 1.8 litres. A 2-litre version called the BDG producing around 240bhp powered the competition cars.

Bjorn Waldegard contested the African rounds of the 1979 World Rally Championship in a Mercedes but used an RS1800 for all the others. He became the first Drivers Champion in the series, which until then had given points only to manufacturers.

Return of the RS2000

The second RS2000 was again fitted with the 2-litre Pinto engine.

It’s easy to spot from a distance because Ford gave it a twin-headlight ‘droop snoot’ front end. This was said to improve pedestrian safety and, along with a more subtle bootlid spoiler, to reduce aerodynamic lift.

Celebrating a Mexican win

Ford created a version of the Mk1 Escort called the Mexico to celebrate its win in the 1970 London to Mexico marathon, and although it didn’t use the RS name on that occasion, it did bring it in for the Mk2.

The later car had a 1.6-litre Pinto engine, but by 1976 this wasn’t a very exciting thing to have in a sporty Escort, and the RS Mexico was withdrawn after just two years.

The first front-wheel drive RS

Early higher-powered versions of the Mk3 Escort were known as the XR3 (carburettors) and XR3i (fuel injection).

The XR3i in turn was the basis of the RS1600i, which had 115bhp rather than the XR3i’s 103bhp from the same 1.6-litre engine.

Other changes included higher gearing, revised suspension, a front spoiler, a rear wing and – perhaps almost as important to some people – bonnet stripes.

The rally car that might have been

The fact that the Mk3 Escort was front-wheel drive meant it was a non-starter as a top-level rally car. Ford tried to get round that by developing the RS1700T, a rear-wheel drive version with a turbocharged 1.8-litre Cosworth BDA derivative known as the BDT.

It seemed very promising in the early 1980s, but this was the time when Audi turned the sport upside-down by taking advantage of a new rule (ignored at first by rival manufacturers) allowing four-wheel drive.

Ford realised that the RS1700T couldn’t compete with Audi’s quattros and abandoned the project.

The first road-going turbo RS

Ford brought turbocharging to road-going RS models for the first time in 1984. The Escort RS Turbo was a replacement for the RS1600i, with 130bhp in standard form and the potential for much more.

The first examples were built to allow Ford to use the car in international competition. Later versions had the same power output but were less stressful to drive on public roads, with higher gearing and softer suspension.

Designed from scratch

The RS200 was the first RS not based on an existing production model. It replaced the RS1700T and seemed destined for far greater success with its mid-mounted BDT engine, four-wheel drive and a composite body built by Reliant. Unfortunately it was built for the Group B class, which was dropped after the 1986 season.

With 247bhp, the standard RS200 was the most powerful RS production car yet. In various forms of motorsport, particularly rallycross, power figures were much higher, reportedly exceeding 600bhp in some cases.

Boosting the Sierra

The Sierra RS Cosworth remains, along with the Escort RS1800 one of Ford’s most celebrated RS models.

Its engine was basically a 2-litre Pinto heavily reworked by Cosworth (which added a turbocharger and a 16-valve cylinder head) and produced 201bhp in standard form.

It went on sale in 1985, and vastly modified versions of the car became very successful in racing and rallying.

An even more special Sierra

In order to compete in Group A, Ford had to build 5000 road-going examples of the Sierra RS Cosworth. The rules also allowed it to build a further 500 evolution versions, which were named, reasonably enough, RS500.

Maximum power was only slightly higher at 224bhp, but the engine could be tuned to produce more than 600bhp. With slightly less than that, the RS500 gave Ford the Entrants title in the 1987 World Touring Car Championship.

The four-wheel drive Sierra

In 1988, Ford created an RS Cosworth version of the Sapphire, the five-door saloon version of the Sierra launched a year earlier, and followed it up with a four-wheel drive variant in 1990.

Ford used the latter as the basis of its World Rally Championship campaign from 1990, scoring several podium positions though never winning an event outright.

The first RS Fiesta

Although Ford had been building Fiestas since 1976, it wasn’t until 1990 that it first offered an RS version.

The 1.6-litre RS Turbo had a maximum output of 133bhp, well above the 109bhp of the XR2i, and was described in the Sunday Times as being “more fun than a Ferrari at 10 percent of the price”.

Owners loved it, but so did car thieves. Insurance premiums soon skyrocketed, and the RS Turbo was abandoned in 1992.

A new RS2000

Ford began to recycle RS names in 1991 when it brought out a new Escort RS2000. Features included all-round disc brakes (an unusual feature at the time) and good handling, which had not previously been considered a strong point of front-wheel drive Escorts.

The engine was the new 16-valve Zetec. The contemporary Escort XR3i used this in 1.8-litre form producing 129bhp. In the RS2000, both the size and the output increased, to 2 litres and 148bhp respectively.

Return of the RS1800

Appalling though it may seem to people who believe the RS1800 name should never appear on anything other than a Mk2 Escort, Ford brought it back for the Fiesta RS Turbo’s replacement in 1992.

There was no turbocharger this time, but the engine capacity had been raised from 1.6 to 1.8 litres, and maximum power was very similar at 129bhp.

The most exciting Escort

A year after introducing the new RS2000, Ford launched a far more dramatic Escort called the RS Cosworth.

Other than the body shape, there wasn’t much Escort about it. Under the skin, it was based on the four-wheel drive Sierra/Sapphire platform and used the same running gear.

This was yet another RS intended largely for competition use, and although it didn’t manage to win a World Rally Championship title, it did take 10 rounds between 1993 and 1998.

The last Escort RS

Other than the Cosworth, the only four-wheel drive RS Escort was the last car of that name Ford ever build, 24 years after the introduction of the RS1600.

As its name suggests, the RS2000 4x4 was simply a new version of the 1992 RS2000 with drive going to all four wheels.

Despite the resulting benefits, the 4x4 was slower, less economical and more expensive than the front-wheel drive car, and unsurprisingly that didn’t help sales in the slightest.


Into a new century

With the exception of the Tierra and Lynx sold in the Far East, all 21st century RS models have been based on the Focus.

The first, launched in 2001, was front-wheel drive – either because it didn’t need four-wheel drive or because Ford couldn’t afford it, depending on which employee you spoke to.

The competition version, however, did have four-wheel drive. Ford’s most successful rally car since the RS1800 of the 1970s, it won the World Manufacturers title in 2006 and 2007.

Five-cylinder RS

Until 2009, all RS Ford engines had either four- or six-cylinder engines. The second-generation Focus RS used a 2.5-litre five-cylinder provided by Volvo, which was part of Ford’s short-lived Premier Automotive Group. This engine produced 225bhp in the Focus ST, but a much more robust 301bhp in the RS.

The car was still front-wheel drive, but its ingenious RevoKnuckle front suspension arrangement eliminated most of the torque steer, which some reviewers had wrongly attributed to the limited-slip differential in the 2001 car.

Another RS500

An RS500 version of the second Focus made a brief appearance in 2010. As with the Sierra of the same name, only 500 were built (101 of them for the UK market), though this time the number had nothing to do with qualifying for international motorsport.

The 2.5-litre Volvo engine was used again, but now tuned to produce 345bhp, the highest figure yet for a standard RS.

Four-wheel drive again

And finally, we reach the most recent example of Ford’s venerable RS line, in the form of the third-gen Focus RS.

The first Focus RS to have four-wheel drive, it arrived in 2016 and was produced for two years. Like the RS500, it had a 345bhp engine, but not the Volvo one; this unit was a turbocharged 2.3-litre EcoBoost, also used in less powerful form in the Mustang.

Other features included a drift mode (which allowed the driver to get more sideways than the safety features would otherwise permit) and a launch control system which seemed impressive, but was found in competition to make almost no difference to the standing-start acceleration.

With the fourth-generation Ford Focus having now been around for a couple of years, we expect to see a new RS model sometime soon. Until then, we’ll be quite happy with the classic versions, thank you very much.