THE COMPANY CAR

ROBSON AND THE RS200

When we asked Graham what the highlight of his time working with Ford was, and he declared the RS200 launch without hesitation.

“When the RS200 came along, I was in on the ground floor from the start and was involved totally with that car for the next three years. I ended up writing the driver’s manual and running the factory-supported RS200 Club — we knew all the cars by theirVIN numbers rather than numberplates. Both Bob Howe (the product manager at the time) and I ran four as road cars, covering 20,000 miles in each of them.They were hard work in traffic, but wonderful, a proper poseur’s car and no-one else had one.The red one I ran (below) even had electric windows, proper Recaros and a mobile phone. Hot, though — you didn’t need the heater.The first time I brought one home, I was asked, what have you got that funny little toy car for?

“It was a great time — the car was launched at theTurin motor show, and we were flown in by Ford Air. I remember thinking, It can’t get better than this.”