The life of a Ford Racing Puma that’s lived up to its name
Unlike so many cosseted Racing Pumas, this fast Ford has lived up to its name, from daily-driver to 200bhp hillclimb stormer, track warrior to restoration job
1999 – Martin Wells pays £22,680 for a new daily driver
‘I was a long-term RS Ford owner,’ says Martin Wells as he recalls a lifetime of loyalty to the Blue Oval. ‘Back in 1999, I had a national show-winning MKI Escort RS Mexico, and my daily driver was a MKVI Escort RS2000. But it was getting on a bit and I fancied a replacement. Whatever it was, it would be my first new car.’
Being a rally fan, picking favourite marques was easy, but narrowing down something that Martin could enjoy throwing around yet still use as a practical everyday car wasn’t quite so straightforward. ‘I testdrove an Audi S3 and a Subaru Impreza, but I just wasn’t finding the kind of car I liked. The Toyota Celica was nice enough, but not fast or powerful enough – they’d stopped making the Gt-four by that point – although I did like its styling, and the idea of a having a coupé as a daily driver.
‘I took my Escort Mexico to the Fast Ford day at Silverstone in August 1999, where I found the Ford Motor Company’s stand promoting the Puma, and this new sportier variant, the Racing Puma. I was interested, and picked up a brochure, but I wanted to find out more than was in this flimsy paper handout they gave me before I took the plunge and bought one.
‘It turned out that only so many Ford dealers were selling the Racing Puma. I called a local dealer, Sky Ford in Hemel Hempstead, which had been an official Ford RS dealership in the past, although by the late Nineties Ford had been going through a bit of a lull and had abandoned the RS brand for a while.
I asked Ben, the Sky Ford salesman who answered the phone, whether I could find out more about the Racing Puma and book a test drive, and he said, “I think you’re better-informed about this car than we are” – they hadn’t heard of it! But sure enough, not long afterwards Sky phoned me back and said it was getting a demonstrator in from Aston Martin Tickford, which was building it. I took my test drive and made my mind up immediately – it was perfect, exactly what I wanted. Practical and cheap to run, yet with such sharp responses and very fast, as Tiff Needell famously demonstrated on Top Gear.’
Martin placed his order for the £22,680 car – the price including a £430 two-year, three-service Ford Extra Cover – arranged to part-exchange his trusty MKVI Escort RS2000, and waited for seven months.
‘It took a long time before it was ready,’ says Martin. ‘Racing Pumas weren’t built on a production line, but were hand-finished in a traditional workshop by the same people who built Aston Martins.
I placed my order, believing I was one of the earliest in the queue –I had called Sky pretty-much as soon as I got back from Silverstone – and then had to wait for confirmation of build allocation within the 500-car
production run. In the end, I got number 72 – the first example to be sold by Sky.’
The Racing Puma’s production plan was troubled. Ford’s intention had been to build 1000 examples, half for the UK market, the rest for Germany. However, Ford Germany rejected the idea and the build run was cut back to just 500. Its price made it a hard sell against the Subaru Impreza Turbo, which was winning rallies at the time, was 50bhp more powerful than the Racing Puma and more than £1000 cheaper.
‘I remember picking the car up well, because it was the same day Ben was taking delivery of another Racing Puma, W829 XEV, that Sky was giving away in a charity competition. I drove up there with him, then back to Aylesbury in convoy in our new cars.
‘It was a Monday, and I’d taken the day off work especially. I drove my car, W398 UGS, straight from the Tickford works in Newport Pagnell to the pub for the Middlesex RS Club meeting, where they made a feature of its arrival on the night. I nicknamed it ‘Wugsy’, after the numberplate.
‘I absolutely loved it. As a package it was excellent – nice feedback through the wheel, good handling and braking – and it had to fulfil daily-driver duties too, which it did for three years.
‘In 2003, I got an invite, as part of the committee of the RS Club, from Sony to have my car digitally captured at Castle Combe for the Gran Turismo games. They recorded all the information about the car – its looks, the noise and so on – but sadly it wasn’t put in the final game. Sony did have issues recording its exhaust note. The Racing Puma has a very resonant, raspy sound, which comes primarily from the mid-section of the exhaust pipe. They couldn’t seem to capture it and kept doing repeat laps, but the microphone was aimed at the tailpipe.
‘Also in 2003, I went into business with my brother, and the Racing Puma proved too expensive to run as a company car, driving to Bracknell and back every day, so it became a weekend car. I also became a family man around this time too.’
However, the lure of fast Ford life never waned. ‘When you bought a Racing Puma, part of the official ownership package included membership of the Ford Racing Owners’ Club, and I attended as many of its events as I could,’ said Martin. ‘Sadly I heard all about the 25-car VIP convoy trip to Le Mans from other members, which by all accounts was a fantastic weekend that I missed! But I didn’t miss the Silverstone and Castle Combe events, where we’d get taken round the track for hot laps by Ford’s BTCC drivers. At the time, Ford was evaluating a four-wheeldrive Cosworth Puma, presumably for rallying, which would get taken round the track during these events, but I haven’t heard anything about it since, and obviously it never evolved into a road or rally car.
‘I never drove it on track myself at these events, I just enjoyed it on the road. I’d spent so long restoring my Mexico that I didn’t want to risk damaging the Puma. So much so that when I attended my very first Castle Combe Action Day with the Puma, it was with a buggy in the boot and my child on the back seat!
‘I’ll always remember my favourite-ever drive in that car though. We were supposed to be flying to Inverness in Scotland, but the air traffic control computer systems went down. We waited in the departure lounge at Gatwick airport for six hours before realising that the flight just wasn’t going to happen, so instead I loaded the family into the Puma and drove right through the night.
‘It was incredible. Everyone else in the car was asleep, but the sun had started to rise as I reached the Highlands, and there were animals everywhere you looked at that time in the morning. Sadly the drive dispatched two rabbits and a sparrow, and a pheasant took one of the door mirrors out!’
By October 2005, a growing family forced Martin to revisit the rally-inspired list of potential daily-drivers he’d made six years earlier. ‘I part-exchanged it at Adams Subaru in Aylesbury for a new Impreza WRX Sportswagon – a bigger, more practical car’.
2005 – In the Trade
Although it was an exclusive, desirable fast Ford, the Racing Puma was a tricky thing for certain dealerships to sell, owing to its rare and specialist nature. ‘I remember Martin’s car well,’ says Matt Axford, salesman at Adams Subaru, where he still works, selling boxer-engined 4x4 beasts. ‘A friend of mine had one at the time too, it looked gorgeous. But obviously, people know Adams for Subaru and – now – Mitsubishi too. We’re very much a four-wheel-drive centre, not really somewhere people come to for fast Fords, so we sold it into the motor trade in 2006.’
2007 – Graham Gillings part-exes an Aygo plus £8250
‘I was brought up on MKI and MKII Escorts in the Eighties, all modified with engines of between 1.6 and 2.1 litres, and I did drag racing, grasstrack racing and rallying with them,’ says the Racing Puma’s current owner Graham Gillings. ‘But when mortgages and family life were higher on my priority list, they all went. However, 20 years later, when the mortgage was paid off and my daughter had grown up, I received an inheritance of £8250 when my Grandad passed away, along with his Toyota Aygo. I really wanted an AC Cobra replica kit car, but common sense took over so I decided to find a coupé with four seats instead. I already had a standard 1.7-litre Puma, and liked the way it drove, so I went looking for a Racing version.
‘I found it on ebay, being sold by a chap who got hold of unusual cars in the trade and sold them on. He’d had it for a few months and had even tried commuting in it, but it’s not a motorway car. I traded in the Aygo and the £8250 for it. This was in June 2007.
‘I took it along to the RS Day at Castle Combe the next month, and met several other Racing Puma owners, many of whom are still good friends. The Ford Racing Puma ownership scene is quite an exclusive club, and before long I was being invited along to track days, the first one being at Colerne
‘Our flight wasn’t happening. I loaded the family into the Puma and drove through the night’
Airfield with a group called Talk Torque in 2009. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in one of my cars, and I was hooked! But the Racing Puma was going to need some modifications if it was to hold its own on race tracks and at hill climbs.’ Graham also gave it an ‘FRP’ numberplate, and a new nickname, K9.
‘A limited-slip differential was a £250 option on the Racing Puma, but for reasons I will never understand only 80 of the 500 buyers opted for it. Martin wasn’t one of them, so in 2010 I fitted one from an Escort RS Turbo Series 2, and started doing more track days at Keevil airfield, Hullavington and Castle Combe, as well as using it as my daily-driver in my job as an electrician.
‘The next major modification was the rear wing in 2011. Most people think it’s aftermarket when they see it, but it’s actually a very rare genuine Ford Motorsport part. I’d had a couple of sideways moments at Castle Combe and needed more rear downforce, so on ebay – once again – I found a chap who was breaking a genuine Puma S1600 works rally car for spares. The wing – Motorsport part number 909 – was just £30, bargain of the year. Now they’re £500.’ Graham also found a set of shift lights and a full harness, being sold from a broken Ford press car.
More motor sport use nearly saw Graham trade in the Puma for a new Focus MKII RS in 2012, after regularly finding himself being left behind on the straight between Camp and Quarry at Castle Combe. ‘The salesman talked me out of it! He said that, compared to the Puma, I’d be disappointed by the first corner.’ Instead, Graham looked for more power.
‘I didn’t want to turbocharge it because that would involve altering the original engine setup, so I took it to Wizards of NOS in Armthorpe, South Yorkshire to be fitted with a removable nitrous oxide injection system. It now has 200bhp at the flick of a switch.’ After testing the new setup at the Gurston Down Hillclimb School – at which Graham posted the fastest-ever score for a novice – he took it to Castle Combe.
‘Ben Collins – the former Top Gear “Stig” – was there testing with Marlin Sports Cars,’ he recalls. ‘He saw it in the car park, said, “Oh, it’s one of those!” then we went out on track. With the NOS engaged, I was keeping up with Ben in the Bmw-powered Marlin demonstrator. I can go through Quarry at 90mph in the Racing Puma and hit 125 on the straight now.’
‘But the car was starting to suffer. In 2017 I spun it unintentionally on track for the first time, and saw the rust bubbles coming through in the official trackside photos. It would break my heart if I wrecked it.’
Graham has just returned the Puma to the road after a two-year home restoration. ‘I cut out all the rust, replaced rotten panels, pumped it full of rust inhibitor and Waxoyl, powdercoated the suspension, and it’s been resprayed by my friend Dave Pritchard at DP Motorsport. I’ll never sell it. Still want a Cobra though!’
‘I didn’t want to turbocharge it so I fitted it with a nitrous oxide system. It now has 200bhp at the flick of a switch’