I've always given Cosworth Fords a bit of a hard time. It's the Rover fanboy in me sticking up for the T-series although I seem to lose that battle 10 times out of 10 through 99% of people's eyes.
I had never driven a proper 'Cossie' until today, and that came about purely based off of a Car Throttle article that came across my feed
To preface this drive, some of you may have noticed that when people refer to a car as 'Clarkson's', it can sometimes be a title attached rather liberally to a vehicle. For example, AutoAlex's Ferrari 360, a car that JC drove literally once for a DVD of his.
This Cosworth is slightly different. Was Jeremy's name ever on the V5... No. But does this car have much more of a claim to Clarkson's ownership than that sheddy Ferrari? Absolutely.
He drove this very Cossie as a daily from 1992-1993 via a longterm loan from Ford. His name is on the paperwork as the 'borrower' and he drove it all over the UK going about his 1990s business. It was then given away as a prize car in the first ever edition of Top Gear magazine, but it would come back into Clarkson's life later in the '90s through his 'Car Years' programme, where he was reunited with it in the Yorkshire Dales.
I saw it come up in an auction listing for Iconic Auctioneers, and I had to have a spin in it before it went under the hammer.
There was something very cool about turning up to the shoot in my recently fixed Mondeo; One of the driveshafts nearly fully let go, so it was on the driveway for a few weeks. From one mediocrely fast Ford to one of the fastest Fords.
I definitely expected there to be more crossover of parts inside the Escort, but this car is firmly from the pre-Mk1 Focus, Mk2 Mondeo era of Ford. It's very dated, but in all the best ways. Not just the interior, but the whole car reminds me a lot of the Lancia Delta Integrale, and considering their direct Group A WRC homologation connections, I guess that makes perfect sense.
The Escort is sharper than I expected it to be. If I'm honest, I would have assumed it was all engine and little going on chassis-wise, but the Cossie is a much more complete package than I'd given it credit for. Through the steering wheel tilted towards the ceiling in a way that you simply don't find in cars nowadays, the front end feels beautifully responsive, meaning you want to quickly find the twistiest roads you can on Google Maps. There is a certain feeling that any road car with motorsport connections send back through the steering wheel and the seat, and the Escort very much translates all the right tingles that a homologation car should.
Despite being initially told that the car was completely stock, my arse dyno could definitely decipher a power figure of around 300bhp, and a chat with the owner afterwards confirmed that my rear's senses were pretty much spot on. That amount of power however quickly showed up the brakes – the looked small behind those legendary wheels anyway, and after a third-gear pull, I was left stabbing my foot slightly too deep into the footwell to make sure this £70,000 hatchback made it around the corner I was swiftly entering.
This Escort Cosworth was a big tick on the car bucket list, especially with the provenance behind it. Would I pay £65-75,000 for it? No, I'd prefer to add a Ford Racing Puma to the garage alongside the Mondeo, both Imperial Blue heroes. But the values of Cossies are only going to keep ascending in my opinion, and the Clarkson premium will almost certainly be a nice sprinkle on top forevermore.