ESCORT WRC
Looking back at the rally career of a Ford icon, the Escort WRC.
The Escort WRC is a rallying oddity, make no mistake. It might be one of the most brutal looking (and sounding) cars to ever ruffle a gravel apex or bother a Welsh pine forest, but Ford’s first World Rally Car was a stopgap, the result of massive regulation based upheaval in rallying’s upper echelon, and therefore something of an automotive link bridging Group A to WRC. Here’s its story, somewhat broken looking rear wing and comically aggressive anti-lag an’ all.
Ford’s relationship with top-tier rallying was one of compromise for much of the latter quarter of the 20th century. Cars like the RS1700T, the RS200, and even the Sierra Sapphire, all showed pace and potential yet all three were undone, either by timing, circumstance, or in the case of the latter, size and mass.
It was into this world that the Escort Cosworth stepped in 1993, very much Ford Motorsport’s shining hope for the ‘90s and the car with which it hoped to restore dented pride. But while its Monte-bagging performances did enable its maker to save face and regain some rallying respect, a mix of poor luck and lack of pace (not to mention Delecour’s F40 incident) meant that the bewinged Ford wasn’t really a regular Impreza or a Celica-beater.
All of which brings us to 1996, the year in which the FIA rubber stamped the regulations that become the World Rally Car formula we now know. The passage of time has served to cloud what was an incredibly turbulent time for the sport of rallying, with Toyota’s enforced sabbatical having turned the squabble for honours into a two horse race; Subaru pitched against Mitsubishi.
Against the Japanese might now dominating rallying’s top tier, the Escort Cosworth couldn’t help but look a mite old hat. Carlos Sainz’s metronomic point scoring ability enabled him to clinch 3rd in the drivers’ championship that year, but it couldn’t hide the awkward truth, namely that the Cosworth was no longer a match for its closest rivals.
It’s true what they say though; the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just as the present World Rally Championship is in a state of near-panic as to its continued viability for OEM car makers, so it was just over twenty years ago. Toyota would of course return to the fold in time for 1997, but the powers that be were painfully aware that they were one lost car maker away from a real crisis of competitiveness.
The WRC simply wouldn’t be a viable, competitive proposition without at least 3 car makers involved, and this presented
“Carlos Sainz’s metronomic point scoring ability enabled him to clinch 3rd in the drivers’ championship .... ”
Ford and M-Sport with something of an opportunity – with the powers that be with a temporarily weaker hand than usual, there was wiggle room regarding Ford’s next car, one that would be built to the World Rally Car rules.
The Escort itself was living on borrowed time of course, what with the much-vaunted Focus due to make its forecourt bow in just over a year’s time. No car maker, not even one as large as Ford, was going to countenance the idea of designing, testing and building a World Rally Car from scratch, not if its Works career (and mass market relevance) was going to be measured in months rather than years.
So, Ford went to the FIA, not quite cap in hand but certainly with a timid, all or nothing request. The Escort, the backbone of FoMoCo’s rallying exploits for well over 20 years, required a stay of execution, some bending of the rules and the consent of Ford’s rivals. In return, the FIA would get another manufacture entrant for the first season run under the WRC regs. The deal was duly done, albeit with a rumble of dissent from some of the Blue Oval’s rivals, all of whom had to (eventually) consent to the move.
Rubber stamping the paperwork was, if anything, the easy bit – it was now down to M-Sport and Ford to carry out the revisions required to make the Escort a competitive rally car once more, and with mere months in which to do it. A good idea of just how frenetic the pace of development was can be gleaned from the fact that just 6 months separated the FIA’s approval of the Escort and its initial homologation. Tall orders don’t come much steeper.
Much of the re-engineering work was focussed on one of the Escort’s biggest weak points and a link with its late ‘80s, Sierra underpinnings, its semi-trailing rear suspension setup. As is the case today, rally engineers at the tail end of the 20th century were constantly striving to improve the suspension performance, and more specifically, the suspension travel, of their cars, and the development of the new Escort gave M-Sport’s finest greater freedom to make improvements in this regard.
The Escort WRC’s revised rear suspension system was nominally based on that of the Mondeo road car, although it was heavily revised in readiness for a life spent hammering special stages. The ‘strut independent’ layout was nevertheless a quantum leap over the semi-trailing system the Escort had inherited from its Sierrabased forbearer, and far more conducive to maximising road-tyre contact. It increased the Escort’s competitiveness on rough gravel events at a stroke, and can quite rightly be viewed as the biggest, most effective deviation from the spec of the road-going Cosworth.
While the venerable Cosworth YB was a fundamentally reliable engine and well suited to continued use, it had been hampered by the addition of Ford’s sevenspeed gearbox in the later portion of the Escort Cosworth’s career, the MS95. This unit didn’t survive the move from Group A to WRC rules and was replaced by a far more capable X-Trac sequential system before the conclusion of the year.
The performance of Group A rally cars had been soaring for a full decade by the time the Escort WRC took its competitive bow and the FIA, with the tragedies associated Group B no doubt at the forefront of their mind, had taken steps to peg back performance via the introduction of mandated turbo restrictors, a 34mm one for the ’97 season. This had hampered the YB to a disproportionate degree and as such Ford took steps to rectify things as far as possible with the Escort WRC.
The most obvious engine change was
“Sainz won twice, in Greece and Indonesia, while a rash of podiums kept him (and Ford) in the hunt until the end”
its forced induction system, with an IHI turbo replacing the mammoth Garret found on the ‘Big Turbo’ Cosworth. This also meant that Ford could now build an EsCos road car with a smaller, more responsive T25 turbo better suited to road use, without having to meet strict homologation rules. The new car also gained a new exhaust manifold, and revised injection system and Pectel engine management.
The most obvious under bonnet difference between the Escort and its ‘proper’ World Rally Car rivals was the position of its engine, the YB’s rear-wheel drive, Sierra-based origins all too apparent in its longitudinal location. The likes of Mitsubishi and, in time, Toyota, Peugeot, Seat and Skoda, all used transverse engine layouts. Subaru’s flat four ‘boxer’ was located longitudinally, though its unique configuration ensured it was a very different beast to the old-school Escort.
Visually, there was a world of difference between the Cosworth and the WRC, Ford having spent hours in its German wind tunnel to devise an aerodynamic package that both met the new rules and was more effective than found on its predecessor. The Cosworth’s signature rear wing was too large and was replaced, the new car gaining its somewhat divisive (yet wind tunnel proven) spoiler, while the front end was revised to aid airflow and therefore cooling over the significantly enlarged intercooler and radiator.
Four Works drivers piloted the Escort WRC over the course of its short, two-year career – Carlos Sainz, Bruno Thiry, Armin Schwarz and, when the latter’s sponsorship funds failed to materialise by the midpoint of the 1997 season, Juha Kankkunen. It’s fair to say that Ford were somewhat fortunate to secure the services of Sainz for the Escort’s debut season. The two-time champ had found himself on enforced gardening leave by Toyota’s yearlong ban, and while his would-be team mate, Kankkunen, opted to spend his downtime playing golf and tending to his moustache, Sainz signed a two-year deal with Ford.
1997 would prove to be the Escort WRC’s best season, which perhaps isn’t that surprising when you consider the rapidly evolving nature of the ‘pure’ World Rally Cars it was facing off against. Sainz won twice, in Greece and Indonesia, while a rash of podiums kept him (and Ford) in the hunt until the end. He fell some way short of Makinen and Mitsubishi, but it was a positive season all the same.
The following year was tougher. Increased World Rally Car competition from rivals like Subaru and Toyota, now with its Corolla WRC with Sainz at the wheel, ultimately told, and there were no more Escort victories. Kankkunen contributed further podiums, including incredible drives to 2nd on the Monte, the Safari and the RAC, but it was clear that the tide had finally, and permanently, turned against the Escort.
The history books don’t do the Escort WRC any favours, not if you define success by bare stats alone. It collected a handful of wins over the course of its short, two-year career, and effectively kept the wolf from the door as far as Ford’s world rallying aspirations were concerned. Not great, not a world beater, certainly a less successful car than the Focus which replaced it.
Yet as is so often the case when talk turns to truly iconic rally cars, the ones which remains stubbornly rooted within your mind’s eye the instant you catch sight of them, the Escort WRC endures. It might not have been Ford’s most successful rally car, but if nothing else the WRC is a fascinating artefact from one of World Rallying’s most significant periods. It really is nothing less than the missing link, bridging the Group A Cosworth and the pure, World Rally Car Focus WRC of 1999.
Whether it’s down to its role in cementing the relationship between Ford and M-Sport, because it was the last in a line of models forever associated with rallying or merely because it looked simply brilliant in either Repsol or Ford Motorsport getup, the Escort WRC is still, and will always be, a firm favourite fast Ford.