ESCORT RS1800

It’s a fact often bandied about in pubs by real ale drinkers in rally jackets that the Mk2 Escort RS1800 is the ‘winningest’ car of all time. And it’s true – the RS1800 was and is a sensational rally car, hugely successful in period and still very much so today.

Interestingly, it was a car that almost didn’t happen. The AVO plant shut down in 1975, the last Rallye Sport Escort rolling off the production line in January of that year… but Ford management appreciated the value of the sporting halo models, and a proposal was drawn up to produce the RS2000 and Mexico as volume road cars, and the RS1800 to be built at a ‘Pilot Plant’ at Aveley effectively as a special developed for motorsport. This would form the basis of the continuing works entries in the World Rally Championship, using a 1.8litre version of the Cosworth 16v BDA with a Brian Hart aluminium block; the bodyshells were hugely strengthened and fitted with wider arches, and the spec was further beefed up with a straight-cut ZF gearbox and a five-linked rear. The RS1800 won the RAC Rally every year from 1975-79 as well as scooping countless other victories, and all the great names found success in these cars – Bjorn Waldegard, Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikkola...

The roadgoing version was essentially a Mexico shell with the Cosworth-Hart BDA fitted, which was an incredible formula – a real racecar-for-the-road. The total number of road cars built was officially undisclosed, but thought to be just 109 examples. Today, owning a rally-spec

RS1800 is a sign that you’re deadly serious and a true connoisseur; owning a road-spec RS1800? Well, that’s akin to harnessing a unicorn.