FORD HEROES
Mk2 Escort superstar, Ari Vatanen, is a true Ford legend.
Ari Vatanen is one of the all-time Ford icons, his name being synonymous with rear-drive Escorts sliding through forests and bouncing over snowy yumps. Born in Finland in 1952, he started rallying in his teens, and debuted in the World Rally Championship in 1974. He drove an Opel Ascona in his rookie year, gaining a lot of media attention by beating Hannu Mikkola on the Nortti Rally, and by the following year he was competing internationally in a Datsun 120Y. Vatanen’s first works drive was offered at the end of the 1975 season, with Ford keen to get him behind the wheel of an Escort RS1800; despite crashing out on the second day of the RAC Rally, team manager Stuart Turner was sufficiently wowed by his skills to offer him a seat in the 1976 British Rally Championship. Vatanen duly won the BRC, and competed in Fords in the WRC throughout 1977-80; when Ford withdrew from the series in 1979 he carried on campaigning Escorts for the Rothmans Rally Team. He took a Rothmans Escort to victory in 1981, becoming the only privateer driver to win the WRC – a title he retains to this day.
Vatanen went back to Opel in 1983, before signing with Peugeot in ’84 to drive the Group B 205 T16. His time with Peugeot was turbulent to say the least; on course to win the 1985 title, he then suffered a series of accidents, one so serious that it took eighteen months to recover. He was back in the game by 1987 however, and impressively won the Paris-Dakar four times, in ’87, ’89, ’90 and ’91 – he didn’t win in 1988 because his car was stolen! One of Vatanen’s most widely-known performances of this era was the infamous ‘Climb Dance’ video at Pikes Peak; he then went on to drive for Mitsubishi and Subaru, before returning to Ford in 1994 – piloting the Escort RS Cosworth for a semi-private team, then being drafted in by the works team to stand in for the injured Francois Delecour.
Vatanen’s motoring career has taken in a great many marques, models and disciplines, and outside of motorsport he’s been a powerful political entity in the European Parliament – but for most Ford fans, his name will always be associated with Mk2 Escorts. Particularly ones with Rothmans stripes!