The 3 door Ford Sierra Cosworth

Its official, this iconic racing ford is truely a classic, 25 years ago mike costin and keith duckworth of Cosworth Racing where given Fords run of the mill family car engine (The Pinto 2.0 8v) and where asked to build a high powered N/A engine using one of cosworth 16v cylinder heads for racing use in the ford sierra. Cosworth however had other ideas and pitched an idea to ford of a turbo charged and intercooled version of the pinto to use in touring car racing, Ford decided to go with and thank god they did because the YB was born!

The Ford Cosworth YB engine was about to change the futur for ford in a big way, the pinto divired YB had a total overhaul by Cosworth using a set of low compression forged MAHLE dished pistons, forged con-rods capable of upto 700bhp, and bolted to the highly developed 16v head was a Garrett air research T03 water cooled turbo feeding a front mounted intercooler. The engine developed 204bhp and 203lb/sf of torque with the turbo coming in resonably early, the YB was then bolted to the Borg warner T5 gearbox from the ford mustang.
The Ford Sierra then went through a series of changes to cope with the new 204bhp engine by SVE such as new springs and shock absorbers, new wheels and tyres, full bodykit, bonnet vents to pull heat from the turbocharged engine, and the iconic rear wing (wail tail) which served a very important job as ill get to shortly.
Once the car was finshed the test began as the 1200kg sierra was rocketed upto 60 in just 6.6 seconds and reaching a top speed of 150mph!! making it a very real threat to the 280bhp M5 BMW and transing the BMW M3 in the process, at 150mph Ford found the car to be very twitchy and unstable so the ledgedary wail-tail spoiler was fitted to supply and additional 25kgs of down force.

Ford took the proven Sierra RS Cosworth into rallying and into touring car racing where it prove to be a dominator!

Even today as a standard car the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth with its 204 bhp can match the performance of much more powerful modern equivalents such as the 226bhp modeo ST220 (o-60 6.6,153mph) and the Ford Focus ST (225bhp,0-60 6.5,150mph), however the Cosworth really is in a league of its own due to the discovered fact that the YB/B engine turned out to be one off the most tunable engines ever, a simple chip, uprated actuator, exhaust and air filter upgarde ups the power to between 270-280bhp. While changing the injectors and upping the boost can increase this to 300bhp.

Most Sierra cosworths out there now run between 300-500bhp meaning you should think twice when trying to overtake this classic family missile -