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Steve tells us about plans for an even faster Sierra three-door.
The strange universe of Secret Fords contains a parallel world of one-offs, cancelled cars and prototypes. This head-spinner is just one of them – a twin-turbo V6 Sierra that would have left the Cosworth for dead. Let’s look at how this car didn’t happen. Back in 1983, Ford’s head of engine development wanted to give his young engineers a challenge. He was fed up that SVE and Motorsport were getting all the attention, and this was his solution – to develop a twin-turbo installation for the Cologne V6 engines that powered the American Ranger, Explorer,
Mustang as well as the European Capri, Scorpio, and Sierra.
Dunton’s engineers were more interested in mapping the fuelling needs of turbocharged fuel-injected motors than the simple task of bolting on a pair of turbos. They selected JQF Engineering – a specialist that Ford Motorsport had contracted to make the Escort RS1700T’s turbo BDA engines for them. The small company was selected to make four V6 twin-turbo kits.
Cooling, forever an issue with turbos, was aided by giant intercoolers placed under the bonnet. Novel but smart.
The first of the four kits were fitted to a USspec LHD Ranger on Essex plates. The hope was that the US side of Ford would see it as an attractive option; but all that complexity and heat had less appeal to them than a cheap V8.
The second car was this XR4i; it looked the part with colour-coding and two giant bonnet vents to gulp air onto the intercoolers. Power was in the 230bhp range – 50 per cent increase over standard.
A third car was started using a Scorpio, but the axe fell in summer 1984. The Sierra Cosworth programme was just beginning (a car that had the sole job of winning races) and the twin-turbo V6 was still at an early stage of development – and Ford had no appetite to make two high-powered Sierras.
Like so many of the one-offs and cancelled prototypes in Secret Fords the problem was timing; if the RS Cosworth hadn’t happened then we might have been offered an even faster Sierra.