Ford Escort RS Cosworth

(T3 & T25)

Maybe you are asking that the T35 and T25 are. The Escort Cosworth was produced in two versions thought the years. The first one had the very large T3 Garrett turbo, which was the cars that raced in the rallies and the T25 was the more political and more sensible version of the Escort. Lets take it from the beginning.

The development of the Escort Cosworth started in 1988, when Ford raced the Sapphire Sierra in the world rally championship. In fact the Sierra was the platform that the Escort was developed. As you can imagine the Escort has Sierra running gear, but with 2.3inches shorter wheelbase made it more manoeuvrable than the Sierra.

The only relationship of the Escort Cosworth and the other Escorts was the roof, doors and tailgate. The new body was virtually hand built. Also the other Escorts had their engines transversely placed, but the Cossie had it longitudinal.

The engine was a further development with an even stronger block now called YBT. It used a very large turbocharger the Garrett T3/T04 which was very laggy, but for competition use its tuning potential was great. This engine produced 227bhp in 6250rpm and 220lb.ft in 3500rpm. This engine was almost undrivable on the road because the turbo lag was very high and the power delivery not very smooth.

But when you get a Cossie is almost impossible not to modify it. And that's where the Escort comes. With only £150 you could re-chip it and boost the output to 270bhp! I do not think that any other engine in the world can do this. There many examples for tuned Escorts, with the greatest known to me, a Collins Engineering Escort with the following specs:

Engine bored to 2300cc

Low compression pistons, Gr.A head gasket

RS500 hybrid T4 turbocharger

RS500 intercooler

Eight injector system with two Bosch fuel pumps

Water injection and many other engine parts Gr.A spec. and RS500 spec.

This Cossie produces 600bhp and look the performance figures:

Tell me, which car except the McLaren F1 (nearly) can outperform this Escort? NONE. Not even superbikes can race it! Now you can understand why I say all the time that the Cosworths are the greatest cars in the whole world and I doubt if cars similar to these specs will even produced again.

Few words about the T25 version of the Escort Cosworth:

After the 2500th T3 Escort produced, Ford turned to the smaller T25 turbo layout, because it was more user friendly. The turbo lag was almost gone and the car in its factory form was very drivable and very fast. You could order it even without the large whaletail spoiler on the boot. My personal opinion is why you want your Cossie to look as an RS2000 when you have the real thing, the Cosworth? The only good thing about removing the huge spoiler was the increased top speed now to over 145mph.

Now lots of photos…

APU Multimedia Assessment