Posts Tagged ‘ford’
A Dozen of our Favourite Fords
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
The Ballad of Crazy Horse
Thursday, January 20th, 2011All photos Influx/Dom Romney
You can never underestimate the power of Hollywood in its ability to hijack our automotive imaginations. It must be something to do with those McQueen inspired celluloid memories.
The Mustang has always played the role of the getaway ride for anti-heroes — the primer coated maverick patrolling the dusty blacktops of America, or a shiny coated, vengeful beast, a lethal weapon in the hands of the transgressor.
And it’s perfect casting. There’s never been a ‘good’ reason to own a Mustang. These are cars with which you get down with your bad self. In a Mustang you’re meant to make like a Hollywood antihero from another time and place.
This sort of beautifully irresponsible pastiche is the latest generation of the Ford Mustangs’ entire ethos. And when you let your imagination run riot and hand it over to dedicated cowboy from Roush and Cervini’s these cars are downright decadent. They’re just the sort of motor, in other words that we love to play with.
If you’re a wool-dyed classicist it may all seem a little bit corny. But if you’re looking for ‘correctness’ then go tell it at the concours contest. If fun, on the other hand, is your thing, then come take a walk with us.
Probably the most complete conversion in the UK at the moment, this car oozes the sort of authenticity wrought on the back lots of universal studios. But don’t be fooled. This is not something dreamt up by a load of haircuts in a pitch meeting. This is all car.
Once you’ve been through the lengthy start-up sequence the box engages with a mechanically satisfying clunk. That’ll be the 5 speed short shift manual, which is augmented by an uprated flywheel and the Stage 2 clutch from Zoom. This thing bites like a mad thing and is prone to release a pleasingly controllable fishtail in each firey upshift.
The Roush supercharger generates 5psi of boost, which adds around 145 horses to the team. Then there’s an additional cold air induction system that drags even more boost into the machine, adding roughly another 17. That brings the total to around the 450 – 470 BHP mark, though we didn’t get her on a dyno and there was a misfire or two apparent in the upper rev range.
Remember why this car was named the Mustang in the first place? Well, this thing sounds just how we imagine the talismanic P-51 Mustang fighter sounded when it roared into a strafing run above the fields of Normandy. It barks and growls with a terrifying reverberation with all manner of blower wheeze and rumble.
Those booming sidewinder pipes responsible for the death metal howl are Cat-functional tubes from Cervini’s (the same people who make the lumps and bumps of the ‘Eleanor’ body kit).
Hidden from view meanwhile there’s a complete handling pack from Roush which includes anti-roll bars, control arm, differential torque strap and brace.
If like me, you enjoy these these arcane syllables as poetry then go nuts. But however well they trip off the tongue, on our cosy airfield we were able to flick this behemoth around with the speed and fleetfootedness of a much smaller car.
At time of writing this very car is for sale at £34,000. That’s a lot of car for the price. While I can’t imagine making a consumer decision that would bring such drama to a daily drive, if it’s a third car you’re after, one that represents no holds barred indulgence then I doubt there’s a better deal going.
You’ll never be able to convince the naysayers that buying a genuinely ridiculous Mustang like this. Just like you’ll never convince a junky that heroin isn’t a great thing to get involved in, or that the salt stoked surfer should go and move inland to improve his career prospects.
But know this. Buying into the Mustang thing is just something you do when you dare to dream Hollywood dreams.
Thanks to Martin Lilwall at Dad’s Speed Shop. If you like cars and bikes, you’ll love the coolest little shop in Worcester.
Cosworth & Ford
Thursday, January 20th, 2011Image via Lotus
The legendary Ford Cosworth DFV (Double Four Valve) V8 engine is, by a mile, the most successful F1 racing engine of all time.
Cosworth was founded in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth to build racing engines. They started by making versions of the Ford Kent engine for use in Formula Junior but the DFV story began when new 3-litre regulations were written for F1 beginning in 1966.
Lotus boss Colin Chapman persuaded Ford’s Walter Hayes to bankroll Cosworth’s V8 development programme to the tune of £100,000 and the engine made a winning debut at the ’67 Dutch GP at Zandvoort in Jim Clark’s hands. It changed the face of F1 and, said Ken Tyrrell, was the reason the sport developed in the way that it did.
Ken wasn’t involved in F1 in ’67 but was weighing it up and became an instant DFV fan when he was flown out to that Dutch race. “It was clear that the DFV was the only engine in the race,” Tyrrell said. “Everything else was old-fashioned rubbish. You had to have one.”
Chapman fought tooth and nail to retain Cosworth’s exclusive use for Lotus but that, of course, made no commercial sense to Cosworth, or Ford, and it was a battle Chapman lost. The engine was made available to anyone who happened to drive to Cosworth’s Northampton base with a cheque for £7500 in his pocket.
“You could come away with an engine that would win you the next Grand Prix in the right hands, which was fantastic,” said Tyrrell.
The engine was introduced too late in 1967 to stop Denny Hulme winning the championship with his Brabham-Repco but from 1968 to 1982 inclusive, the DFV would be responsible for 12 of the next 15 world champions! From Clark’s Zandvoort win until 1983, when Michele Alboreto’s Tyrrell scored the DFV’s last success in Detroit, the engine won 155 grands prix.
The championship success story over those 15 years reads like a roll call of the great and the good of the sport. Graham Hill (’68), Jackie Stewart (’69) Jochen Rindt, posthumously (’70), Stewart (’71), Emerson Fittipaldi (’72), Stewart (’73), Fittipaldi (’74), James Hunt (’76), Mario Andretti (’78), Alan Jones (’80), Nelson Piquet (’81), Keke Rosberg (’82).
Fascinating BBC footage of a DFV assembly below
As for the constructors, in order, they were: Lotus, Matra, Lotus, Tyrrell, Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren, McLaren, Lotus, Williams, Brabham, Williams. The only engine to spoil the party and avert a clean sweep of the entire 15 years was Ferrari’ flat-12 that took Niki Lauda to world titles in 1975 – 7 and Jody Scheckter to the crown in 1979.
Many times the doom mongers forecast the end of the road for the DFV. For some, it was as early as 1970 when Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari proved quicker than Rindt’s Lotus at certain venues. Lauda’s success in the mid seventies, which would have been a hat-trick but for his fiery shunt at Nurburgring in ’76, again had so-called experts stating that a 12-cylinder was de rigueur.
They might have been right had it not been for Lotus pioneering the use of ground effect. To maximise impressive downforce generated by venturi tunnels in each sidepod, you needed a narrow engine and suddenly the 90-degree Ford Cosworth V8 was a much better bet than the wider flat-12 Ferrari.
Scheckter’s ’79 triumph for Ferrari was, as much as anything, the result of a strong start, a strange best four from each half of the season championship scoring system that year and the late introduction of the superb Williams FW07, which exploited the ground effects phenomenon even better than Chapman’s Lotuses.
Renault, meanwhile, had arrived in F1 in 1977 with a turbocharged 1.5-litre V6, the equivalency formula back then. Duckworth was scathing about turbos, not considering them ‘proper’ engines but the writing was on the wall and in 1983, the year Alboreto scored that last DFV win, Nelson Piquet won the first turbocharged world title with a Brabham-BMW, pipping Alain Prost’s Renault at
the very last race.
When Cosworth started his company, he said: “We thought it must be possible to make an interesting living messing about with racing cars and engines…” With Ford’s support, he certainly wasn’t wrong!
Rallye Sport
Thursday, January 20th, 2011Lead image Influx/James Lipman
Ford introduced its first-ever RS-badged car, the Escort RS1600, in 1970. Over the forty years since then the Rallye Sport identity has been an important part of Ford’s sporting image.
Over the years the Rallye Sport name has been applied to many spectacular road cars — many of which have proved their point by winning in all sorts of road races as well as numerous rallies and rallycross events. The ‘RS’ badge has never been applied lightly and each and every model and derivative has offered outstanding performance, road holding, vehicle safety and value for money.
There are many reasons people become RS owners. One of the most common is that “My Dad always had an RS”. There’s something down to earth about the RS Ford that has been passed down from father to son time and time again, or in some cases, father to daughter.
Another common refrain amongst members is that a wide eyed kid saw their first Escort Cosworth winning the Monte Carlo rally in 1994 and ever since dreamed of owning a rally car. And the genius of the RS Ford is that it remains relatively accessible, yet manages to remain desireable and in some cases, downright exotic.
Perhaps the RSOC have it right on the money with their “Pride, Passion and Performance” slogan.
So many RS owners take great and unique sort of pride in their cars, and ownership of an RS badged car certainly becomes a passion when the rising costs of insurance and fuel – not to mention restoration and maintainence – fails to deter an owner from taking their RS out to a show or local meet. And the performance, after all, is definitely there.
Whether you are after exceptional road handling and speed or comfort and class the RS has it all. It doesn’t matter which model you fall in love with –and this is why the RS brand has endured over time and been attributed to many Ford models right up to an including the latest 2010 Ford Focus RS500.
In the late eighties The Ford RS owners club was formed by a group of enthusiasts who wanted to celebrate this heritage. Now it’s a thriving international club catering for all RS Models built by Ford since 1969 — from highly modified and track-prepped cars to the meticulous standards of the Concours Competition.
The club has an active schedule of events run by local groups of enthusiasts up and down the country. These events are usually a chance to view some of the best kept RS models out there and meet their dedicated owners, or perhaps find that hard-to-source part you require to complete a complete restoration on your own cherished RS.
Some events include the opportunity to test your RS on a track and on ‘central’ groups day you can run the ¼ Mile drag strip at
Santa Pod.
To find out more about the RSOC visit http://www.rsownersclub.co.uk/
Gallery Images courtesy Ford Media
Working Class Hero
Thursday, January 20th, 2011All Images Influx/James Lipman
Remember Ford’s late-nineties ‘backbone of Britain’ TV advert for the Transit, set to Slade’s ‘Coz I Luv U?’ The advertising industry isn’t generally noted for correcting social wrongs, but on this occasion it at least tried.
The Transit is a Lennonite working class hero; its shapes burned into our collective motoring memory, its longevity and dominance such that it is one of those rare vehicles whose name becomes shorthand for its entire vehicle type.
Your newspaper, fresh food, money, parcels and prisoners are moved by Transit. But despite the fact that over six million have been made since 1965 and – for British readers – that it’s the last Ford still to be made in the UK, it hasn’t acquired the position in popular culture that the pick-up truck — and in particular Ford’s best-selling Ford’s F-series — has in the United States.
Maybe it’s because we don’t buy them for personal use. But maybe we should. It’s not hard to dislike Transits when your experience of them is limited to having one sitting an inch off your rear bumper at 80mph, or having your washing-machine repair man show up half a day late in one or, if female, being verbally molested from the polystyrene-cup-and-Sun infested cab of one.
But have you driven one lately? They’re good to drive. Properly good to drive, putting the driver first in a way a lot of passenger cars don’t bother to. Apart from the expected lofty driving position you get vast wing mirrors that make backing up easier than in something way smaller, an infinitely adjustable driver’s seat, enough cupholders to keep Rab C. Nesbit lubricated on a long trip, and a bin or hole or cubby seemingly telepathically placed to receive everything you ever need to stow.
The driving dynamics have always been better than the average van, accounting for the Transit’s huge popularity with 1970s armed robbers. But it took a huge step forward with the all-new version of the van in 2000, in which Ford’s talismanic global product chief Richard Parry-Jones took a personal interest. He thought it should drive as well as the then-brilliant Focus, and it did. It was so good that, as a young road tester on a car magazine, I lined up all its rivals at Castle Combe race track and alongside touring car driver Phil Bennett set lap times in each. The editors thought the pictures of vans going sideways through The Esses in torrential rain looked irresponsible, and canned the story. They were entirely right, of course. But the Transit aced the lot.
Top Gear had a similar idea a bit later, racing a Transit against a diesel Jaguar S-Type around the Nurburgring. Clarkson was in the Jag, ‘Ring racer Sabine Schmidt in the van. The Jag won by a few seconds, and would have won by far more had the drivers been of equal talent. But the extraordinary thing was that the Transit went around in a shade over ten minutes; very quick for 154 corners and nearly 13 miles of ‘green hell’. And the van was largely standard: a rare combination of big diesel engine, rear drive and the shortest, lightest body, sold in small numbers to foundries and other businesses that need to move small but very heavy dies and presses.
Not that quick Transits are anything new. There have been three generations of ‘Supervan’. The joke seems a bit obvious; take a slow-moving work-horse and double the speed, Benny Hill-style. But you can’t doubt Ford’s commitment. The first, built in the early seventies, had a Le Mans-spec GT40 V8 engine and running gear, and the next two had Formula One engines. And when TWR was developing the Jaguar XJ220 they bolted its drivetrain into a Transit, which had a conveniently similar wheelbase, and sent it out to run durability tests on the public road. Only the roof-mounted air intakes and XJ220 wheels gave it away. Late-eighties Oxfordshire drivers must have thought they were having hallucinations.
The Transit has made some screen appearances; arguably its finest moment comes in the 1987 film version of Freddy Forsyth’s Fourth Protocol, in which Michael Caine uses an MI5-issue Transit to save East Anglia from a Russian Pierce Brosnan with an atomic bomb. You’ll also see it in re-runs of the The Sweeney and The Professionals and The Bill, operating on both sides of the law. Still, we haven’t given it the credit, or the place in our motoring hearts, that it deserves. But, dear Transit, as Noddy Holder sang in that ad, I still like the things you do.
Extraordinary Rendition
Monday, January 10th, 2011
Render. It’s a strange word. Used for anything from plastering to quasi-legal political deportation, when the word is used most beautifully it describes the process of turning dreams into digital reality.
Companies like Vizualtech specialise in turning technical illustration into custom design — a practice without which the modern car industry could scarcely exist. And sometimes, just sometimes, digital renders can blend seamlessly the classic and the contemporary.
Computer artist Bo Zolland created one of the high points of this now ubiquitous but always emerging art in a series of digital renderings of a reimagined 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
The designs are for a client who plans to convert his 2009 Ford Mustang into a new take on the classic lines of the T-Bird.
Which do you prefer. Classic or contemporary?
Images Via Viztech & Ford
Heroes & Villains
Thursday, December 16th, 20101: The DeTomaso Pantera
Is this an Argentinian, Italian or an American car? Not sure, but its street brawler’s yankee heart crossed with latino styling set hearts racing from the pampas to the prairies. Marketed squarely at Americans when it debuted in New York in 1970, the Pantera played Euro exotic in the ‘states and overblown Americano in Modena. A tricky thing to pull off. HERO
2: Dennis Wilson
Not only was he the star of Two Lane Blacktop, he was also a real Beach Boy who really surfed. Revealed his musical talent in Pacific Ocean Blue and confirmed he was the existential hero of the road we all wanted to be. HERO
3: Roadrunner
The pesky cartoon bird was the fastest through the canyons and always frustrating Wile Coyote, who of course utilised all means available, automotive and otherwise, to catch him. Not only a windup, he gave his name to the most muscly of muscle cars. Despite that VILLAIN
4: Peter Fonda
Is it just me or was Peter Fonda always an unlikely countercultural hero? When he mounted the steel pony in Easy Rider and Wild Angels, we just didn’t quite believe the hype. And when he rode up the hill at Goodwood a couple of years ago, it made me cringe. Call me old fashioned but shouldn’t true biker heroes be less…middle class? VILLAIN
5: Ford Pinto
Renowned for allegedly having exploding rear ends, the oil crisis era Ford was the epitome of automotive compromise. On the plus side, it used a European built, rock solid engine that was and is, used all over the place, in a rare example of our sending something over to the states that actually worked. Was cast almost every bad American TV movie of the 1970s and early 80s. On balance; VILLAIN
6: Jay Leno
Not only is he in my opinion very unfunny and non-telegenic, the way he flaunts his ridiculous car collection drives me crazy. That smug face. Those cars. Living proof that money can’t buy you style. Get off our magazine pages, Leno! VILLAIN!
7: Chrysler Grand Voyager
You can bang on all day about how practical they are and how much value for money they represent and how the residual value is blah blah blah. But they are as horrible as the pond-life Alan Sugar acolytes who get ferried around in them. They deserve one another. VILLAIN
