When a factory turns a race car into a street car, it’s called homologation. One of our favorites is the Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500.
In the mid 80s, rally fever took over motorsports. The FIA (Federation Internationale de l’automobile), created rally divisions, called Groups, which consisted of production street cars that the factory would transform into rally spec race cars. The caveat was that the manufacturer would have to produce a certain amount of those modified street cars that were road legal and available for public sale in order for the car to qualify to race.
Sometimes factories would build a car from the ground up to be a race car, but other times, the factory would take already existing street cars and tweak them into race cars.
Ford wanted to enter Group A Rally Racing, so they modified 500 street legal Sierra RS Cosworths - calling them the RS500 - every year from 1986 to 1992. Legend goes that the earlier ones shared components with the actual race cars, with stiffer bushings and motors that pulled harder.
The Cossie was quite successful in various forms of motorsports. Ford captured the Australian Touring Car Championship and the Japanese Touring Championship in 1988 and 1989. And the crown jewel was won in 1988 with the DTM Championship.
Unfortunately, due to the cars rear wheel drive layout, it couldn’t keep up with the all wheel drive cars in poor conditions, but was very competent on tarmac stages.
This car became so special due to its motorsport heritage and performance. What also made the RS500 special was that it was a car you could watch on television on Sunday and literally BUY on Monday, as long as you lived in England, because like a lot of great cars, they never make it to the states.