Few manufacturers have as much of a widely spread motorsport history as Ford does.
The blue oval manufacturer have been involved at the coal face of almost every top-level motorsport in the world. The World Rally Championship, NASCAR, Formula 1, IndyCar/CART, Le Mans, the Supercars we know and love from over the ditch ... you name it, they've raced in it.
Naturally, that involvement in sport spawned a stack of fast, memorable, and thoroughly collectable Fords. There's the Bathurst-conquering Falcon GT-HO, the GT40 Le Mans legend, the slew of Escorts, and the not-so-humble Sierra Cosworth.
Like the Escort and GT-HO, the Sierra started out life as a basic family car, with a sedan, lift-back, and station wagon in the line-up. The station wagon in particular used to be a ubiquitous sight on Kiwi roads.
Less ubiquitous was the Sierra's ultimate form; the 'Cossie'.
Primarily based on the lift-back (there was a lesser known sedan, too), the RS500 Cosworth was the 'gun' car to have in Group A touring car racing through the mid to late '80s and into the early '90s. As one of the first Group A touring cars to make fruitful use of turbocharging, it quickly became known for how ferocious to drive it was — namely because boost wouldn't come on until quite late, at which point it hits like a tsunami.
Nevertheless, the Sierra had incredible success. It was the weapon of choice for British Touring Car Championship front-runners, and closer to home it won numerous Bathurst 1000 titles and Australian Touring Car Championship crowns.
Given that the race car was based on a homologation special, it's no surprised that the road-going equivalent is similarly savage — 152kW of power squeezed out of the standard RS Cosworth's little turbocharged 2.0-litre, with 167kW extracted from the 'full milk' RS500 Cosworth. Just 500 of the latter made it out of Ford's UK factory.
And, like everything else from the period (you only need to glance at the prices of this car's period rivals; the BMW M3 E30 and Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R), prices on RSs and RS500s have been steadily rising.
Arguably one the best examples here in New Zealand, this Sierra Cosworth is listed on our site, and is currently located in Palmerston North.
It has just 73,370 miles on the clock, with around 10,000 of those being put on it since it was imported to NZ back in 1996.