Ford Sierra RS500 voted ‘Ultimate Cosworth’

The Ford Sierra RS500, one of the most iconic performance cars of the 1980s, is celebrating its 30th anniversary in style, having been named the ‘Ultimate Cosworth’ by one of the UK’s biggest one-make car shows.

The RS500 Cosworth pipped its spiritual successor, the Escort RS Cosworth (25 this year), to the post, securing over 55% of the votes in an online survey carried out by ford fire to determine which of the two icons was the leader of the pack.

A special display celebrating both of these famous fast Fords will be one of the main features of this year’s Ford Fair event, which takes place at Silverstone on Sunday, August 6.

The RS500 was originally developed for homologation purposes to give the Eighties’ favourite repmobile, the humble Ford Sierra, a chance to compete in World, European and British Touring Car Championships.

It was famous in the UK, where it performed in the British Touring Car Championship in the hands of drivers such as Andy Rouse, Steve Soper and Tim Harvey. It also competed in the 1988 World Touring Car Championship and enjoyed success in Australia, too, in the hands of legendary Touring Car driver Dick Johnson.

Just 500 RS500 road cars were made, 75% of which were finished in black, the rest in either white or Ford’s distinctive Moonstone Blue. They were finished by Aston Martin Tickford, with a bigger turbo, while the main external identifier was its outrageous ‘whale tail’ spoiler – a far cry from the average showroom Sierra.