SUPER TOURING MONDEO
This amazing Super Touring Mondeo is one of the last cars built by the legendary Andy Rouse Engineering.
This amazing V6-powered Super Touring Mondeo is one of the last cars built by the legendary Andy Rouse Engineering — now carefully rebuilt by AWS Engineering’s Alan Strachan.
A side from the flame-belching Group B machines from the heyday of the WRC, few categories of motorsport have captured the public’s attention quite as much as the Super Touring cars raced in the ‘90s. The combination of unrestrictive rules that gave free reign to designers to do what they do best and highly specialised race machines clothed in saloon bodyshells proved to be a potent combination for both fans and manufacturers, and the grids of national touring car championships across Europe ballooned. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the UK, and there’s little argument that the BTCC was the world’s premier tin-top series for most of the decade.
The thing is, nothing dates faster than yesterday’s race car and for a long while towards the start of the last decade it was quite hard to sell Super Tourers for strong money – but not any more! The car you see here is one of the very best. Certainly if you were to pick any one of Ford’s BTCC Mondeos from that era then this one would be very near the top of your wish list. Owned by Alan Strachan of AWS Engineering, he started his career with Andy Rouse Engineering, the very firm that built the BTCC Mondeos in the first place.
World class
Ford was involved from 1993, of course — they had little choice once the rules were changes to render the all-conquering Sierra RS500 obsolete! It was also the ideal opportunity to promote the firm’s all new and very important world car, the Mondeo. The Super Touring regulations had been penned with precisely this in mind; an attempt to lure more manufacturers into touring car racing with the promise of race cars with a tangible visual link to the ones littering their forecourts. The AWS car is resplendent in iconic 1995 Valvoline livery but it was actually built at the end of that year and intended to be raced in the 1996 season. Ford eventually decided to take their business to West Surrey Racing instead, possibly thanks to a disagreement over what powerplant the car should run.
“Chassis 96-001 was actually built with a four-cylinder engine in mind but when the
contract went to WSR we changed it back to 2-litre V6 spec,” recalls Alan of how the car came to be. “At the same time it reverted back to full 1995 set-up, so to all intents and purposes this is a car from that year. It was then sold to a Czech privateer to use in their national championship, then spent a few years on the European hillclimb circuit.”
Alan’s time spent on the front line of the BTCC during its heyday meant he was ideally placed to set about restoring the Mondeo when it came up for sale a few years ago.
Despite being advertised and sold as being ready to race, the Mondeo was actually anything but. Alan and the team at AWS Engineering had little choice but to commence an intensive re-commissioning process, though luckily the all important V6 engine was in-situ and in good order. Also still in place and still in good working order was the sophisticated Xtrac sequential gearbox and differential, an important point as a failure here could well have de-railed the entire project. “Some parts can still be sourced nowadays, though even then it’s
something of a struggle, but specialist components like the gearbox are very, very hard to track down. Xtrac supplied a large portion of the field in period, but such was the amount of money flowing around at the time that one gearbox won’t fit another engine — they’re almost totally bespoke for each team and each car.”
The bodyshell itself had weathered the years remarkably well, but tackling the little bits and pieces that were required provided the team with an opportunity to reacquaint themselves with just how far removed the Super Tourers actually were from their showroom-bound cousins.
“The shells actually arrived at our workshop covered in massive yellow stickers declaring ‘not for road use, competition only,” Alan explains. “They were built on the same Genk assembly line as the regular cars but only when the rest of the line was closed for maintenance and upgrade. The workers would trim off any unnecessary trim and brackets there and then, so the weight saving began before we’d even seen the shells!”
All of this focussed development resulted in race cars that were the very definition of uncompromising. If you’ve ever wondered why pretty much all Super Touring replicas look a little odd it’s because the race cars were so focussed; 19 inch wheels would just about sit behind standard-ish arches, but only until the cars were used in anger – then the wheels would force the wafer-thin metal out in order to give enough clearance. Alan points out that pushing the Mondeo around the workshop can take up to 20 minutes, as it only has 5 degrees of steering lock and because the tyres kiss the arch when stationary. Full force In period the Rouse-prepared Mondeos were always a force to be reckoned with, particularly with drivers like Radisich and, for 1993 and 1994, Andy Rouse himself. The former saw the Rouse-prepared Mondeos compete in a handful of races towards the end of the season (the car was still being developed at the time), but Radisich still managed to win at Brands,
Donnington and Silverstone, results that left him third overall, a result he repeated in ‘94. Ford had to wait until 2000 to finally win the championship, but that doesn’t mean the car you see here is in anyway a poor relation, particularly as Super Touring is enjoying something of a nostalgic renaissance at present.
“Partly, I decided to buy and race the Mondeo as there’s a lot of nostalgia associated with this car,” Alan explains. “It’s a wonderful car to drive, every bit as fast as you’d expect of something with so much money invested and so much careful development — it’s certainly quicker than I am!”
Alan goes onto explain that there were a number of unexpected hurdles to overcome when it came to actually racing the car, one of which centred around tyres;
“It would’ve had Michelins back in 1995 but we weren’t able to find the correct size and spec nowadays, hence why we’re now running Hoosiers. Finding the type of tyre that came closest to replicating the feel of the car back in the day took a long time and for a while it suffered from scary snap oversteer, which wasn’t exactly fun.” Interpreting the rules Ford’s commitment to winning at all costs can be seen in their willingness to experiment with different drive layouts. At the time BTCC rules stated that a manufacturer could run front or rear wheel drive in their race cars, providing a similar model was available to the general public of course. Ford got around this by claiming that their 4x4 Mondeo may as well be rear wheel drive (as did Vauxhall with their Cavalier) and spent the early part of 1993 campaigning a rear-wheel-drive car.
“It turned out to be a nicely balanced, well mannered car, but the weight penalty for running rear-wheel-drive turned out to be too much to overcome. The decision to revert to front-wheel-drive was made soon after.”
If nothing else these stories simply serve to underline just how seriously manufacturers took the BTCC at the time, and how much money they were willing to invest in winning it outright!
“FORD ALSO SPENT THE EARLY PART OF 1993 CAMPAIGNING A REAR DRIVE VERSION”