ESCORT COSWORTH
Proper road-sport EsCos with all the right upgrades in the right places.
RS-model Fords are like a virus. Once they’ve swum into your bloodstream, they’re chewing their way into your DNA for life. There’s no way your immune system can do anything about it, those white blood cells just have to waft on by and accept the fact that more and more cells are turning blue and oval-shaped. Just ask Steven Wark – he got infected at an early age, and this magnificently restored and upgraded Escort RS Cosworth is the ultimate result.
Steven says, “I’ve always been a massive Ford fan. My first RS was a Mercury Grey
“It’s been my dream car since I was at school, And I’d made a promise to myself of getting a feature in Fast Ford – so this is a massive achievement”
S2 Escort Turbo when I was 19. You couldn’t have slapped the smile off my face when I bought that.”
Sadly, Steven’s first toe in the RS waters got savagely torn away when somebody crashed into it a year later, but it didn’t take him long to get back in the Rallye Sport groove: over the years he’s owned all sorts of aspirational fare, including a 260bhp Mk1 Focus RS, a Stage 3 Sapphire RS Cosworth 4x4, an Escort RS Cosworth in Imperial Blue, a 360bhp Mk2 Focus RS, another Mk2 Focus RS with 400bhp and oodles of tasty upgrades, a particularly wild Escort RS Cosworth with 545bhp, and a Mk3 Focus RS, which he bought under the illusion that it’d be a sensible family car.
“Over the past 18 years, I’ve always had an RS in my life,” he says.
Now, you’ll no doubt have spotted an Imperial Blue Escort Cossie in that list, and of course another Imperial Blue Escort Cossie is what we having flexing for the lens today. So how did that come about?
Well, quite simply, Steven really liked the last one, and it felt like a no-brainer to revisit that particular format when the opportunity arose. “It’s been my all-time dream car since I was at school,” he says. “I had to sell my previous Escort Cosworth when my wife was pregnant with our first daughter in 2015; I managed to save up and get another before the prices started to get out of touch, luckily. And I’d always made a promise to myself of getting a feature in Fast Ford – so this is a massive achievement for me.”
Happy to oblige, and obviously these
things are earned on merit. You don’t get a mag feature as a long-service award; the car in question has to be something special – and Steven’s really, really is.
It represents the perfect fusion of restoration and modification; he’s been through the rebuild with a fine-tooth comb to replace everything with new OE parts or upgraded items where appropriate. It all looks essentially stock inside and out, but there’s all kinds of power under the bonnet and a cleverly upgraded chassis to deploy it all. This is what it would be like if Ford were to sell you a new Escort RS Cosworth today.
The search for the right car to meet his demands was subject to the usual disappointments, with everything either overpriced or not up to scratch (or both), and Steven reached a point of giving up. He was all set to fly down to London to view a Moonstone three-door Sierra, when at the last minute a mate pointed him towards a decent-looking EsCos in Peterhead.
Steven recalls, “I called the guy, and everything seemed pretty good about the car. It was an Imperial Blue Small Turbo, with AP brakes and a Stage 3 tune. So I jumped on the first train. While I was viewing the car, the seller’s phone was red hot with calls and texts, which put pressure on me to buy or walk away – so I bought it there and then.”
To begin with, the Cossie was everything he’d been dreaming of. But of course, as is the nature of the deeply afflicted RS sufferer, it wasn’t long before Steven started mapping out a few improvements.
This initially stemmed from the engine bay, which was a little too bling for his liking and meant he was reluctant to lift the bonnet at shows. He’d been buying parts here and there, and with a plan forming, the makeover quickly snowballed. What started as a vague idea to powder-coat a few tanks and fit some more subtle hoses turned into an in-depth project to send the car away for a full underbonnet and underside restoration.
Steven says, “The Escort went to Carl Dunn in Cumbria, who stripped the full underside and engine bay. The engine was supposedly running 330bhp on a big-turbo conversion, but I was worried that the oil pressure was quite low, so I wanted to get it checked out.
“After talking to Bill at my local motorsport garage, we decided to send it down to
“We sent it to Harvey Gibbs at SCS. What I had in mind was a reliable and useable 400bhp engine, if there is such a thing”
Harvey Gibbs at SCS for a full engine and turbo rebuild. What I had in mind was a reliable and useable 400bhp engine, if there is such a thing.”
While this was in the works, Carl was busy stripping and steam-cleaning the underside, before prepping and painting with Raptor underseal, using OEM-colour tint. Imperial Blue overspray was applied for an authentic factory appearance, and then all parts were stripped, media-blasted and powder-primed, before the shell was sent to Gibby’s Spraying Services for the bay to be painted.
“I wanted to keep the car looking as original as possible, while improving it where I could,” says Steven, and it’s fair to say he’s achieved that with gusto. The SCS-built YBP beautifully fulfils the brief and then some, with its superlative hand-built spec yielding 426bhp and 390lb.ft on the dyno.
The transmission has received the same careful treatment, rejuvenated and refreshed, and the eagle-eyed will have spotted the replica 18in Cossie wheels with larger inners to house the vast new brakes. Everything throughout the car has been carefully thought through and masterfully carried out.
Which, naturally, is all to be expected from a man so afflicted by the RS virus. There’s no vaccine for this condition; no miracle cure – but, frankly, there doesn’t need to be. Having this stuff swimming in your blood can only make you stronger.