Words and Pictures: FFDave Click here to print this article

When you think of a fast ford you will no doubt think of a cosworth in one form or another...with enough money they can all basically go as fast as each other...but when it comes to looks you really cant beat the first of the bunch of the sierra cosworth's.

In the same way the Series 1 Escort RS Turbo has more character than the Series 2 the early Sierra cosworth has this same unique 80's feel to it!

Edd's sierra is guilty of being full of character...from the outside the genuine RS500 front bumper and huge RS500 style intercooler give this cossie some seriously aggressive looks, particularly with the splitter cm's from the deck!

Along with the clear fog lights, indicators and side repeaters a set of red tail lights complete the clean and neat feel to this car.

Not genuine wheels you might say and you would be right, as these are obviously Escort Cosworth wheels...some will love this some will hate it...either way with them being so wide means some nice wide tyres can be used to aid with grip, a greatly sort after thing for a car with this sort of power!

A set of uprated grooved discs sit up front with Mintex pads which stop this beast suprisingly well, although a bigger set of stoppas' are definitely worth considering.

Now I am sure your wondering what else has been done to this as I already mentioned above about the need for grip...well unlike 99% of other 3 doors this one has been converted to 4 wheel drive! So not only do you get the characteristic looks you get some pretty mad launches and good traction (most of the time) too!

This cossie is quick, and I dont mean stage 3 cosworth quick I mean beyond that...it launches so hard that on a performance meter test it pulled a fraction over 1G - which is more than enough to well and truly plant your head into the seat!

To give you an idea on full boost this car has recorded times at santa pod of 3.57 seconds to 60 Mph, and a 1/4 mile of 11.7 seconds @ 120 Mph!

Unfortuantely just before acquiring the car off of the current Performance Ford magazine editor Ben Birch, it ate a straight cut box...so in order to preserve its life Edd had the boost turned down and a fully rebuilt Escort cosworth box fitted...even with low boost as it were its still recorded a time of 4.1 seconds to 60 Mph and a 1/4 mile of 12.6, which I am sure you will agree is pretty damn respectable.

At the heart of this cossie is its power house consisting of a studded 200 block, 7:2:1 Mahle pistons, balanced bottom end, some funky cams, ported head and a whole host of bits uprated to keep it all together.

A T34 Hybrid with larger compressor housing supplies the boost all 32+ psi of it on full boost, Greys provide the fuel and with all this combination mixing it together it produces around the 400bhp mark with a very big bag of torque to go with it!

As you can see as well as the functional bits the engine bay is home to a host of fancy shiney bits including, Samcos, Carbon fibre turbo heat shield and the odd Spec-R bit of ally fabrication thrown in just for good measure!

So there we have it a ballistic car, that not only looks the part but can put down some seriously impressive times. Its got all the right bits to run this kind of power all day long too so all being well it should experience a good long life at this spec.

Different, Ballistic and very well put together...a stunning car I think you will all agree!