Originally Posted by Max_Torque

great cars! and i think so much more honest and credible than the mk2 version.... although i am a little biased as a member of the original small development team on RS with many 000's of happy miles of RS thrashing under my belt:

trip cars catching a little lime light outside Dunton HQ


sunning themselves on the shores of the Adriatic


mountains:


more mountains:


Stelvio:


stuck at the top (pass wasnt fully opened yet, somethings even an RS can't climb :



probably my fav RS pic:



sorry for the thread hijack, but thought you might like to see those pics (never been seen before) and enjoy your car !!!

Originally Posted by Max_Torque

Those 3 cars were part of the RS development and prototype fleet. The white oldest Attribute Prototype no 3 (AP03), the black Confirmation Prototype No4 (CP04) and the correct coloured blue phase 1 Pre Production no 6 (1PP06). The AP & CP cars were std 3 door foci, with carbon fibre wing and bumper extensions, which actually made them lighter than the production spec steel arched PP cars.

Originally the project was going to be a faily simple turbo engine & body kit job, but pressure from Ford engineering (the original scope saw virtually the complete job farmed out to Tickford) saw the project take on the full mantle of signoff and quality targets & processes, something that contributed to significant delays, but ultimately a better car for sure.

The AP cars were a hoot to drive, especially in there earliest format which did not include throttle based boost control (you could get wheelspin in 4th in the wet!!) AP3 has a tow bar fitted, to enable it to pull a trailer dyno around Nardo for some high temperature engine calibration validation
The cars spent a month or so doing cold temperature & altitude validation in the italian alps (stelvio, passo gau etc) and although very ocasionally overtaken uphill by the odd motorbike, were completely untouchable downhill, with the mega brakes, serious grip and very chuckable handling!

I stil have the log book for 1PP06, and it shows that i drove it for over 8,000 miles during various validation and engineering activities, and like the rest of it's kind, it was failry unceremoniously crushed at the end of the developement activities............. :-(

Originally Posted by Max_Torque

There was never such a thing as the "ford motorsport" exh manifold. all development cars had a tubular fabricated manifold, right up to about 8months from job1. But, a car doing durability mileage accumulation at Lommel had a thermal event (industry speak for catching on fire!!) when the prototype fabricated manifold cracked and set fire to the plastic cam cover on the engine (in fact, the car also had the stainless cam cover heat shield missing which compounded the issue). Unfortunately, as a bit of a knee jerk reaction, the descision was made to swap to a cast log type mainfold. This reduced power and torque by approx 18bhp & 30Nm. Those trip cars all started with the tubular manifold, but were modified to the cast item before the final vailidation trips occured.

The production cast manifold certainly slightly blunted the cars performance and turbo spool compared to the original manifold :-(