Siera RS500 named 'ultimate Cosworth' as it hits 30

One of the most iconic performance cars of the 1980s is celebrating its 30th anniversary in style, having been named the ‘Ultimate Cosworth’ by one of the UK’s biggest one-make car shows.

The Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth pipped its spiritual successor, the Escort RS Cosworth, to the post, securing over 55 per cent of the votes in an online survey carried out by Ford Fair to determine which of the two icons was the daddy. The Escort also has a major anniversary in 2017, celebrating its 25th birthday.

The RS500 was originally developed for homologation purposes to give the Eighties’ favourite repmobile, the humble Ford Sierra, a chance to compete in World, European and British Touring Car Championships. It was famous in the UK, where it performed in the British Touring Car Championship in the hands of drivers such as Andy Rouse, Steve Soper and Tim Harvey. It also competed in the 1988 World Touring Car Championship and enjoyed success in Australia, too, in the hands of legendary Touring Car driver Dick Johnson.

Just 500 RS500 road cars were made, 75 per cent of which were finished in black, the rest in either white or Ford’s distinctive Moonstone Blue. They were finished by Aston Martin Tickford, with a bigger turbo, while the main external identifier was its outrageous ‘whale tail’ spoiler – a far cry from the average showroom Sierra.