The very first press picture of the RS1800 road car was released by Ford in mid-1975, months after the motorsport programme had begun.

Transcription

1 The very first press picture of the RS1800 road car was released by Ford in mid-1975, months after the motorsport programme had begun. At that stage, the handful of cars being built were converted from Escort 1600 Sports which had been built at Halewood. 18

2 LAR 800P ( Cossack Mk 3 ) was not a lucky car for Roger Clark. He achieved two second places and one third on British internationals this being the Scottish where he finished closely behind Russell Brookes Escort. Although Ford didn t spend much time developing the RS2000, it entered three Group 1 cars in the 1976 Tour of Britain. Roger Clark gave it everything for a few hours, after which the transmission failed, causing him to retire. Only one of the three works Group 1 RS2000s finished the 1976 Tour of Britain and that was Ari Vatanen s car, the much-praised outright winner. Here seen at Mallory Park, he spent days disputing the lead with Brian Culcheth s Triumph Dolomite Sprint. 69

3 Originally tried out on Escort Twin-Cams at the end of the 1960s, in regular use from 1970, and persistently refined and improved thereafter, the five-speed ZF gearbox was standard wear on all RS1800 rally cars. This original-type assembly took ages to exchange at the side of the road, but Mick Jones team eventually devised ways of changing a box within twenty minutes. Although this is a 1973 shot of an RS1600 being prepared at Boreham, it shows off one of the various fuel-injection engine installations which were tried in those, and later years. Even by 1979, though, Boreham and its drivers still preferred to use BDG engines equipped with twin dual-choke Weber carburettors. 28

4 The very first time Cossack sponsored Roger Clark s RS1800 was in May Although the combo was good enough to win the Welsh International Rally, this shot proves that a great deal of tarmac-spec development remained to be done. Incidentally, that is Russell Brookes new HHJ 702N car behind. 701N, 702N and 703N started the event. It was almost a steam-roller Boreham performance, for if Tony Pond s Opel hadn t muscled its way into fourth place the new MkIIs (led by the irrepressible Mr Clark) would have taken Timo whinged about his fifth place, and a lack of performance, but on investigation this was traced to a rock-flattened exhaust pipe which was strangling the engine. 52 Having won the Welsh Rally, Roger Clark then dominated the Scottish Rally of June 1975.

5 JJN 974N the most successful Escort MkII of all time? In 1975 Gilbert Staepelaere of Belgium took delivery of a brand-new (Boreham-built) MkII. Gilbert was employed by Ford-Belgium, and many looked on him as a regular works team member, even though his cars were always maintained in Belgium, and he did not regularly compete in World events. JJN 974N was the seventh works MkII, originally registered on 2 June 1975, and it started its first rally (the Taurus rally, in Germany, which it won) in August From then until the end of 1978, Gilbert used cars carrying this identity to start 41 international rallies, winning no fewer than 24 of them, taking second place three times, and third four times! To achieve this, every winter the car was usually treated to a complete rebuild around a new bodyshell, at least one of these re-creations being carried out in David Sutton s workshops. Boreham eventually sold the last car to Ford Belgium in 1978, and in recent years at least one restored machine (but with which of several bodyshells, no-one really knows!) came back on to the classic scene. No other works Escort even comes close to approaching this record, not even Russell Brookes hard-working STW 129R, which rallied for three seasons, and won two internationals and several national-status events. Ari Vatanen and David Richards won the Cyprus Rally in 1979 (Roger Clark had won in 1978); a rough, tough and hot event for which an Escort was ideally suited. 106