Pentti Airikkala with the bashed Rothmans car in 1981

Magazine Subscription

Subscribe to Classic Motoring Magazine and save over 20%

Subscribe NOW

Available at all good newsagents including WHSmith

Fancy owning a motorsport legend? Paul Davies looks at true classics that made their names on rally stages and race tracks, and still provide fine drives today

It’s the car that keeps winning. Roger Clark took Ford’s Escort RS1800 to its debut rally win on the Granite City Rally back in 1975, a few months later he repeated the feat on the Welsh International, and at the close of the year Timo Makinen triumphed on the RAC Rally. Thirty-one years later Jim McRae won the 2006 running of the ‘other’ RAC, the Roger Albert Clark Rally, in a similar car. The humble Ford Escort - in all its forms from 1300 Sport to RS status - can justly claim to be the most successful rally car ever, but it was the second-generation Mk2 version that did more than any other to forge such a formidable reputation. After Clark and Makinen’s early triumphs, the RS1800 went on to win the Lombard RAC Rally a further four years in succession. In 1979 Bjorn Waldegard achieved the greatest goal of all - victory in the World Rally Championship - a feat repeated by Ari Vatanen in 1981 with his privately entered, David Sutton run, car. And don’t forget Russell Brookes, the gritty Englishman won the British Rally Championship in ‘77 and scored a third placing on the RAC, was third again in ’78, and second in ’79, in Ford’s finest. It was a fair racer too: in Europe the Capri RS3100 was Ford’s flagship, but in the UK it was always on the front row of the grid - who can forget Dave Brodie’s sinful black ‘Run Baby Run’ Special Saloon of the early 1970s? The RS1800 was Ford’s 1.8-litre BDA powered ‘homologation special’ for motorsport.
Regulations demanded 400 should be built within 12 months, but the highest estimate for production cars in a two-year period peters out at just 109… Still, everyone else played the same game in those days. With two-cam, sixteen-valve, Cosworth power the road car delivered 115bhp, but works rally cars soon had in excess of 250bhp with alloy block, two-litre, engines and upwards of 300bhp was quite possible with a further increase in capacity and the addition of fuel injection. Few cars remained standard for long… The RS1800 was in fact a Mk2 Mexico, sharing the same heavy-duty bodyshell, with the 88bhp 1.6-litre Pinto engine swapped for the 1.8 BDA (Belt Driven ‘A’) unit. A close ratio, fourspeed, gearbox and heavy duty axle completed the specification. Cars were built initially in Halewood, Lancashire, and later at Ford’s Saarlouis plant in Germany. When Waldegard became world champion, the Mk2 Escort was out of production, and its front-wheel drive replacement deprived Ford of motorsport success for many years. But, that didn’t stop the Mk2 from winning. With thousands of available bodyshells (any Mk2 will do) and a ready supply of engines, self-built rally cars appeared from garages and lock-ups all over the country to race, rally and win. Even now anyone, well almost anyone, can build a competitive Escort and get results. It’s currently the weapon of choice in the British Rally Championship, and - believe me - there’s no finer sight than a Mk2 Escort going sideways at speed in a Welsh forest (and he should know-ed)!