CENTRE OF ATTENTION
434BHP COSIE ON RARE MOTORSPORT RIMS
If there’s one fast Ford that’s the true minefield of second-hand car buying, it has to be the RS Cosworth. Whether it’s the danger zone of a dodgy history, the ticking time bomb of terminal tinworm or the impending explosion of an underfuelled engine, it’s absolutely vital you’re on red alert.
Yet when first inspecting his Moonstone Blue Sierra, Jon Mansell was interested in only the first two factors; anything else was merely trivial. For Jon, witnessing a worn- out YBB spurting fountains of hot oil around the seller’s workshop was barely enough to raise an eyebrow. Being a self- employed mechanic probably helped him stay calm. As did the fact that the Cossie in question was so bodily brilliant that Jon couldn’t risk letting it get away.
“I understand what these cars are like,” says Jon. “The shell is what bothers me, and this was really nice.
“It had done 75,000 miles, and had the usual stone chips and lacquer peeling off the bodykit. But there wasn’t a dent anywhere, it was kept it in a carpeted garage, and it looked like it had never seen a welder.” Jon was simply sold. After all, he’d been craving a three- door
since he was nine years old. He can even recall the exact time he first set eyes on a Cossie in action: “We were going to Gatwick in 1989, and a white Sierra came flying past. I remember seeing that iconic rear fin and thinking, ‘Wow!’”
Roll on nine years, and Jon’s behind the wheel of his very own V6 Capri, learning about arse- out antics with the help of its limited-slip diff. A Mk2 Escort 1600 Sport came next, eventually followed by a trusty Sapphire Cosworth; it might have been painted late-model Nouveau Red, but underneath was a rear-wheel drive bruiser packing just shy of 400bhp – thanks to the Swedish manifold, RS500 intercooler and grey injectors added by Jon.
“It was my everyday car, but you start chasing numbers,” he comments.
moon(stone) on a stick
So instead of pursuing big bhp, Jon opted to save cash for the car he really wanted: a Moonstone three- door. And in 2009, his patience proved worth the wait when a strong contender popped up on Pistonheads, just 20 miles from home.
Jon remembers, “It was owned by a fella who tuned them for a business, and he’d just done a top end rebuild. He took me round the block in it, then we saw a line of
“It had the monstrous sixpots and a really
nice engine”
salad cream across the workshop. When he lifted the bonnet it was spewing pressurised oil – it must’ve had an almighty crack in the block.”
quick fix
Most of us, at that point, would suddenly need to be somewhere else. But Jon wasn’t fussed: “The seller said I could walk away, or he’d fit a new engine, which did me a favour – it was a nice stage three, but the original had awful piston slap.”
Happy with his new purchase, Jon drove the Sierra for a couple of years, enjoying the three- door’s aggressive stance and sheer presence. It was his pride and joy.
As is so often the case,
Jon intended to leave the Cossie relatively stock. But when a well-specced Sapphire came up for sale five minutes down the road, a plan suddenly clicked into place. “It had the monstrous six-pots and a really nice engine that’d just had a no- expense-spared rebuild, with 200 block and GT30 turbo,” says Jon.
“My business partner wanted a Sapphire, so we went halves for it – I used the engine and brakes, and he took the full car with my old parts.”
swap shop[
Packing a dyno-proven 454bhp, the new motor transformed Jon’s Sierra into a proper animal. “With the old T34 it was nice, but now it’s like a rocket when the boost comes in. You really need your wits about you,” he comments.
Traction-troubling thrills kept Jon occupied for a while, but before long the flaking paintwork began to niggle. The next thing Jon knew, he’d stripped the Sierra down to its bare bones and was starting a full restoration.
“It was quite a nervous moment, taking off the bodykit,” he remembers, “I was really surprised the metal was still there.”
In fact, the floorpan was far better than you’d imagine. Once the paint, underseal and wax were removed, the naked bodywork revealed only a couple
of rust spots so Jon welded in a small patch at the bottom of one rear wheelarch, and another in the engine bay just beneath the washer bottle.
He then primed the floorpan, coated it in stonechip, lathered on some Moonstone Blue, and topped it with layers of lacquer – which should mean it’ll stay sparkling for the next couple of decades. As Jon says, “I’ll get caught out by the weather sooner or later. I’m not going to turn around just because it’s raining.”
With the windows out and the interior removed, the bodywork respray was farmed out to the paint shop next door – pretty much the only job Jon didn’t tackle himself. Jon added a set of genuine RS500 spoilers; a mate supplied
“It’s so much more fun now, the back’s very lairy,
it wants to swap ends if you’re not ready”
the rear pair, but the front was found on eBay in a smashed-up state. With plastic-welding and a splash of Moonstone metallic, it was soon returned to looking like new.
After a couple of months, the whole lot was ready for bolting back together. Jon had most of the underpinnings powdercoated, and swapped the diff for a 3.9:1 unit supplied by a fellow RS Owners Club member. “There’s much more pick-up now,” he grins. “It whips up through the gears.”
rolling hard
Jon also invested in adjustable front top mounts and lower arms to play around with caster and camber settings – partly for future track use, but mainly to accommodate his 9x17in threepiece split-rims without having to hack away the ( now-rolled) original wheelarches.
Jon says, “They came as fourstud BBS E50s, so I bought a set of MK Motorsport centre-lock hub adaptors and got my friend to machine some centres from billet alloy.”
Swapped from black to powder-coated gold, they suit this stunning Sierra’s touring- car theme to perfection – a style that’s enhanced by Jon’s six-point Safety Devices roll cage and flocked dashboard, which houses auxiliary gauges and Turbosmart e-Boost2 boost controller ( don’t worry: the Sierra’s stock uncracked dash is safely stored away).
Jon’s retained the factory Recaros and had the saggy old headlining retrimmed in originalstyle cloth, but that’s as far as he’s staying with what Ford provided.
He laughs, “I’m a big fan of modified – a modern turbo- diesel would run rings around a standard Cossie in a load of diesel smoke.
“It’s so much more fun now. The back’s very lairy – it wants to swap ends if you’re not ready – and getting the power down is a bit like an on- off switch. But since fitting the Airtec intercooler and Hart plenum, my mate will work his magic at the rolling road. We’re going to dial in the cams and set the boost to make it more driveable,” he adds.
Jon’s planning a coil- on-plug conversion, and will soon embark on a hydraulic clutch conversion to make the six-paddle AP easier to live with. After which, his only plans are to spend his next summers packed with shows and weekend runs – to get out and have fun. Job done.