Clean Bandit, Sierra RS Cosworth

hat’s the first thing that strikes you when you look at this Sierra RS Cosworth? The cleanliness of it? The subtle RS500 upgrades to the nose? The staggered 17in wheels? No, while those are all worthy of note, there’s one thing that’s really jumping up and down and screaming and poking you in the eye here: the car’s out and about in the rain, sliding around like a buttered salmon on the asphalt as owner Raymond Lutton gives that heavily tweaked YB a solid bootful of grunt, time and time again. These three-doors may be increasingly finding themselves being pampered in hermetically sealed collections, but there are still dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts out there ready to use them as the good Ford intended. The fact that Raymond freely admits that it’s a show car makes this all the more impressive. He loves to park it up on a concours lawn and compare notes with owners of other similarly flawless machines – usually bringing home a trophy or two – but he never forgets what the car’s for. Touring Car DNA courses through the Sierra’s veins, and this fella’s more than happy to indulge its racy whims.

Speaking of DNA, it’s fair to say that Raymond is a Ford man through and through. Indeed, he’s been playing about with these machines for long enough to be able to map the trajectory from everyday runabout to revered old-school toy. “I started out in 1987 with Mk2 Escorts and Capris as daily drivers,” he explains, “then I got into classic Fords around 1997.” You see what’s happened there? Over the course of a decade, the scenescape of Blue Ovals shifted, meaning that the sort of cars Raymond was into all along had made the transition from ten-a-penny smokers to desirable collectibles; he didn’t change his proclivities, it was the world that changed around him, and he found himself referring to his stalwart motors as classics simply because that’s what they’d become. “First of all, there was an Escort RS1600i, then a Capri 2.0S, then a Series 2 RS Turbo, before finally arriving at the three-door Sierra RS Cosworth, which I’ve owned for nearly seven years now. Why a Cosworth? Well, you don’t really get a better classic Ford than a threedoor, do you?!”

SIERRA COSWORTH 

ENGINE 2.0-litre Cosworth YB turbo - bored out to 2.1-litres, Mahle forged pistons, H-beam forged rods, Stage 3 chip, Burton Power high-pressure oil pump, Burton Power water pump, Burton Power fuel pressure regulator, Samco hoses, Group A head gasket, ported and polished head, ARP head and crank bolts, competition bearings, Vibra-Technics engine mounts, lightened and balanced crank and flywheel, L6 ECU, green (803) injectors, T34 turbo, Scorpion 4in exhaust system .

POWER 330bhp (est.) 

TRANSMISSION Original T5 gearbox, with AP clutch and Group A gearbox mount 

SUSPENSION OE-spec dampers with uprated springs, fully polybushed, strut brace 

BRAKES Cossie 2WD calipers with drilled and grooved discs, EBC Green Stuff pads, braided lines WHEELS & TYRES 7.5x17in (front) and 8.5x17in (rear) Lenso alloys with, 205/35 (front) and 215/35 (rear) Kumho tyres EXTERIOR RS500 front splitter, RS500 front grilles 

INTERIOR Original Cosworth, with additional boost, oil t Trusty T34 turbo provides emp and oil pressure gauges

Sound reasoning, we can get on board with that! The car was on sale on Gumtree and it was only ten miles away from his house, so you can’t blame Raymond for taking a look, can you? Even if it was just out of idle curiosity it would have been worth a peep, although the ripples in the fabric of the cosmos itself ensured that the act of bringing it back home with him was always an inevitability. “These never come up for sale, not in Northern Ireland anyway,” he shrugs. “I thought – why not? And of course, I ended up buying it.” The Sierra turned out to be a bit of a peach. It had taken pride of place in a Ford dealership showroom for an impressive ten years, meaning that it had been spared endless winters, rainstorms, parking dings and salted roads by virtue of it hiding inside all the time! When Raymond happened across it, the car was totally factory-stock and had just 56,000 miles on the clock. And you don’t find a Cossie like that every day, that goes without saying.

Naturally, any car that’s been on extended hiatus will require a certain level of recommissioning, and Raymond took this as an opportunity to rework and upgrade a few choice elements, to transmogrify it into the three-door that Ford should have built from the start. The aim here wasn’t to radically alter the mechanicals or the character of the car; simply to augment, tweak, hone and refine. The engine was bored out to 2.1-litres by a local engineer, before being entrusted to good friend Thomas Purdy for rebuilding, and the spec sheet is now a joy to behold: the 2.1-litre YB wears its T34 turbo with pride, and now boasts a ported and polished head, clamped down over a Group A gasket by ARP bolts, and the L6 ECU works in tandem with a Stage 3 chip. The re-bore necessitated some modifications to the internals, so now there’s a set of Mahle forged pistons rocketing up and down in there, aided by H-beam forged rods. The Burton Power catalogue has been given a good going-over, with their own proprietary high-pressure oil pump, water pump and fuel pressure regulator having been cherrypicked from the list. The crank and flywheel have both been lightened and balanced, the motor sits on Vibra-Technics mounts, the fuelling’s running greens, and the final flourish is the mighty 4in Scorpion system, for that retro old-school bark.

All the go to match the show, then – and the chassis has been artfully tweaked to suit. Again, it’s a case of evolution rather than revolution; it’s still wearing stock dampers, albeit with uprated springs, and it’s the addition of polybushes throughout that’s really helped to tighten up the ride to better-then-new finesse. The stock calipers now clamp drilled and grooved discs with EBC’s Green Stuff pads, a set of braided lines helping to firm up that pedal feel, and they hide behind Lenso 17in rims in staggered widths to imbue that classic Touring Car chic. What’s perhaps most interesting about this build, given Raymond’s ruthless efficiency in terms of wringing out all of that YB’s power and uprating the chassis to make it all deployable, is the fact that the car has been sponsored by Triple9ine Detailing Products, who provide all of the potions, lotions and unguents required to keep the Cossie shimmering on the show scene. See the way the water’s gorgeously beading off the paintwork? That’s because Raymond puts a hell of a lot of elbow grease into looking after it.

…All of which brings us back to where we came in. This is by far and away one of the cleanest three-doors we’ve seen, and it’s obvious from a mile off how much care and attention goes into keeping it pristine. But as we see it buzzing back and forth in front of Ade’s lens, dirty rainwater streaming from its previously gleaming arches, the tail shimmying as Raymond dumps the clutch and sends stones pinging off the underside, it’s obvious that this fella has a very clear idea what his car’s all about. He’s old-school Ford throughout, and with so many years of high-octane hijinks under his belt, this Cossie was never going to get an easy ride. “It’s won a lot of awards now that it’s a show car,” he grins. “It always draws a crowd when it’s parked up, with people coming over to take photos.” But you know, and we know, that this isn’t the full story. If only those rosette-toting show judges could see what Raymond gets up to on the way home…

Sources: Fast Ford Summer 2018

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