Cosworth Love

It seems that our omission of the Sierra Cosworth from out list of defin­itive cars of the eighties set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Close readers of Influx may have noticed my disclaimer: having come to the age of road-​​legality in 1984, within spitting distance of the Ford plant in Dagenham, all things Cosworth seemed to me locked in tight to the local quotidian. I was a boy from down by the river in vaguely metro­politan Essex who dreamed of escape. So naturally the cars I lusted after were more the banks of the River Po than that of the Thames.

it seemed to me that all things Dagenham, like the Sierra, even in it’s RS Cosworth guise, were glued together with the same stuff as myself. Call me a self-​​loather, but I aspired to all things Italian and exotic. That’s why, as soon as I convinced the DVLA to give me a provi­sional licence, I scored an angular, and at the time quite other­worldly, Vespa T5.

I felt we had to include the XR3i as a true piece of Dagenham-​​made ubiquity. Most of my peers seemed to aspire to the ownership of one. But at the time, the Sierra seemed old mannish and overbearing. As a teenager it just never appealed to me.

I haven’t really looked back since. I remain a lover of all things Italian.

But maturity has a way of dispersing one’s preju­dices, and with the approach of middle age you’re likely to look back at the cultural elements of your youth with slightly less Anger and a little more nostalgia.

I’ll never personally be one of the huge number of people out there who dig most things with a Ford badge, and absolutely anything with a Cosworth engine as its beating heart. But, we have to admit that having been consid­ering the burly charm of the Sierra Cosworth, in its various guises, these last 24 hours, we have to acknow­ledge that this piece of estuarine muscle was an inspired piece of engin­eering, and in retro­spect, an intriguingly brutal prospect.

Here’s something special for the Cosworth fans out there.