SAPH COSSIE
You can’t really call a Sapphire RS Cosworth a sleeper – but you might not expect Andrew Cross’s subtly styled executive saloon to be packing such mighty horsepower. That big ol’ Borg Warner has a lot to answer for…
Brutal RWD Sapphire Cosworth is built for the B-road blast!
It only takes one out-of-place anachronism to ensure amusing double-takes and perplexed discussions aplenty. Look at the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, set in the year 1194, in which they use a refracting telescope that wouldn’t have been invented until the early 1600s. In the movie Glory, set during the US civil war, you can clearly see an extra wearing a digital watch. The Pirates of the Caribbean series seems to have an issue with correctly dating fruit, featuring Granny Smith apples and sweet bananas that wouldn’t have existed in the 1740s. There are countless examples of this – the point is that if something jarringly new appears out of context, you have to rub your eyes and take a second look, just to ensure that you really are seeing what you think you are. The same is the case with this Sapphire RS Cosworth’s engine bay. At
“Chief among the upgrades in the new-wave spec was the Borg Warner EFR7064 turbo – a brutal piece of kit that spools like crazy...”
first glance, you may think ‘Yep, that’s a well looked-after Cossie,’ but then something big and surprising catches your eye. It’s that turbo. A mighty Borg Warner EFR7064, wearing a pipe like an elephant’s leg. It’s as if someone’s placed a big magnifying glass over that particular section of the bay.
This car’s about way more than a big turbo, of course. It’s the brainchild of Andrew Cross, a man who knows a thing or two about putting together high-quality RS Fords. He’s been around this block a few times over the years; indeed, he’s had no fewer than five cars featured in Fast Ford before this one, so it’s safe to say this fella knows his Dagenham onions. The last fifteen years have seen Andrew owning more Fords than you can imagine, every single one either being built up from a shell or bought as a base and extensively modified. So, we’d better stick the kettle on and settle into the tale of exactly why he’s gone for a Saph Cossie this time…
“Quite simply, I started regretting getting rid of my 1988 Mercury Grey 2WD Sapphire about two weeks after it went,” he reasons. “I told a mate about this, and he mentioned that he’d just MOT’d a good Sapphire that the owner was thinking of selling. I went and met the owner and viewed the car, and a deal was done there and then.”
This all happened twelve years ago, so this isn’t exactly a build that’s been rushed through to completion under the spectre of some spurious and arbitrary deadline; no, it’s been more of an ongoing endeavour punctuated by the odd smattering of real life, distraction and shadowplay. At the
time of purchase, the car was sporting a pretty desirable spec: Stage 3 tune, 4-pot brakes with 330mm discs, the classic TSW Imola multispoke wheels that were oh-so on-trend at one time… the paint was a little tired, but on the whole it was pretty decent so Andrew immediately pressed it into service. “It was my daily driver, and I was adding little bits here and there, which was all going fine until a track day at Donington Park in 2011 when the block cracked due to a water leak and the car got too hot,” he recalls. “It still managed to get me halfway home though, before the alternator packed up and starter motor collapsed! The AA got me the rest of the way home and I fixed it all overnight – aside from the block crack, of course. I continued to use it for a few months – with very frequent water topups! – before I found the time to remove the engine and fix it properly.”
As is so often the case, however, the demands of real life pushed the Cossie onto the back burner and, with the engine out and the car not currently contributing anything vital to family life, it ended up sitting untouched for the best part of five years. House moves took priority, then two children arrived on the scene, and there was a wedding to pay for… in addition, Andrew still had a Series One RS Turbo that was flourishing on the concours circuit, and his wife had a lovely Fiesta RS Turbo, so the Sapphire wasn’t presenting itself as a priority. But inevitably its time was always going to come eventually: in August 2018, with the wedding taken care of, the kids settled and the house renovated, the car
“...When the family’s not in it, it likes a good thrashing on the B-roads…”
was exhumed to see what was what.
“The build was meant to be a basic Stage 3, but a friend, Richard Youll, persisted in bullying me and it ended up getting a bit out of hand,” Andrew laughs. Chief among the upgrades in the new-wave spec was the aforementioned Borg Warner EFR7064 turbo – a brutal piece of kit that spools like crazy, its cunning precision specs offering power levels hitherto unheard of for its compressor wheel size. This is the kind of turbo technology that would have been simply unimaginable back when the RS Cosworth was new on the forecourts. “This was the first time I’d fitted a Borg Warner, so it did present a few hurdles,” Andrew explains. “It required custom hoses, new exhaust, airbox lid adaptors, designing and manufacturing damper brackets for the EFR… all part of the fun though, and all the work on the car was carried out in my own garage by myself and two friends; the only work done by a tuner was the management install and mapping.” The engine data is really quite impressive now; that cracked block has been ousted for a long-studded 200 block, stuffed with Arrow rods and Wiseco pistons, and running an 8:1 compression ratio. Uprated cooling and intercooling were a necessity, as was beefedup fuelling, and Andrew’s done a wonderful job of making the engine bay and build look almost factory-stock but with a twist. Naturally that groovy turbo is the elephant in the room! And the management he talks about is an Emtron setup, which not only corrals all of this hardcore equipment into putting out a sturdy 511bhp, it also offers the grin factor of anti-lag and launch control.
The chassis upgrades to suit are pleasingly old-school too. Koni adjustables are mated to Bayjoo springs, as Ford lads and lasses have been swearing by for years, while the brakes are a formidable combo of AP Racing 6-pots up front and Reyland gear out back; a Quaife LSD keeps the smiles coming, and those Imolas have been replaced with the timeless Compomotive MO6-spoke rims. A proper spec – retro ’90s hooligan with usable 21st-century power.
“It’s a Sunday fun car now, used for enjoying the local roads with my family,” Andrew smiles. But then a malevolent glint twinkles in his eye. “And then, when the family’s not in it, it likes a good thrashing on the B-roads…” Yep, there it is, that retro RS passion – never leaves you, does it? This was a long and protracted gestation before the Cossie finally hit the road, but it was well worth the wait. Andrew’s Sapphire may not just be all about the big turbo, although it does rather dominate proceedings; thankfully, despite that elephant in the room, everything’s totally appropriate and fit for purpose here. The past, remastered.