The greatest touring car of all time

More than arguably any other car, Ford's RS500 comes to mind when talking about touring car racing's most spectacular machines.

In many ways the turbo tin-top was flawed. Chiefly, the Sierra chassis and its rubber were incapable of coping with the 500+bhp its two-litre engine produced.

Despite (or perhaps because of) that, the RS500 could just be the greatest touring car of all time. The flame-spitting turbos won around the world and were memorable to watch even if they weren't battling wheel to wheel.

Ford had already tasted success with the XR4Ti and RS Cosworth in the mid-'80s, but the RS500 moved the Group A goalposts. A bigger intercooler, improved aero, better suspension and twin injectors helped turn the 350bhp RS Cosworth into the 500bhp RS500 and immediately made all other frontrunning Group A cars obsolete.

The car came too late to stop BMW's Robert Ravaglia taking the 1987 World Touring Car crown, but thereafter Ford was unstoppable, at least in terms of overall race wins.

Eggenberger-run works RS500s won all but three of the 11 European Touring Car rounds in 1988 as Ford swept to the manufacturers' title.

Elsewhere, Klaus Ludwig won the DTM in his RS500, Dick Johnson took the first of his turbo-powered Australian Touring Car titles and the car won every single round of the British Touring Car Championship.

Indeed, after Andy Rouse took the machine's first series victory at Donington Park in September 1987 no other car would win a BTCC round until the move to the single-class two-litre era at the beginning of 1991.

As Malcolm Swetnam, former team boss of the BTCC Trakstar RS500 team, says, "If you didn't have a turbocharged Sierra you weren't going to win".

Power increased throughout the RS500's era and the cars never looked easy to drive, particularly when the tyres inevitably went off during a race.

Tim Harvey, who won two BTCC races as well as the 1989 Macau Guia race in the RS500's heyday, nevertheless remains a fan.

"As a racing car, probably the [earlier] Rover SD1 was better, but in terms of fun the RS500 was unparalleled - 560bhp and 175mph was pretty exciting," says the 1992 BTCC champion.

"The balance of the car was totally dominated by the power and the turbo lag. You're not talking about a finely honed handling machine, it was a hammer to crack a nut, but immense fun. There aren't many cars that take people's breath away on the pitwall.

"Everybody was fixated with power in the late-'80s. I remember at the old Grand Prix circuit at Silverstone going through the fast version of Club in fifth gear and having wheelspin."

The likes of Harvey, Rouse and Steve Soper made the car famous, but many drivers got to experience the RS500 as the car filled the top class of Group A grids, particularly in the BTCC.

"Those really were the best touring cars that there have ever been, but at the time, we were just racing what was put in front of us," says Karl Jones, one of the underfunded RS500 BTCC drivers during the era.

"They were demanding cars, and I had come straight from doing several seasons in a front-wheel-drive cars. My first test was at Boreham on the way up to Oulton Park [round two of 1988] - and it was wet. I remember being sideways everywhere because the Tarmac at Boreham wasn't great. I wondered what I had let myself in for.

"Also, after about three laps, you were covered in sweat. The turbo was right in front of you, and the exhaust went down the driver's side. You were in a cooker.

"Our car suffered a bit because it had rally suspension on it - it was all we could get hold of, and we just couldn't get the car low enough to get the performance out of it.

"It certainly made the car lively and Thruxton soon became my favourite track. It really was balls-to-the-wall stuff. At Noble the car would bounce about 12 feet across the track when you were on a really fast lap. It was a white-knuckle ride."

Chris Hodgetts, who raced RS500s after taking two BTCC titles from the smaller classes, agrees you needed a good example to be competitive.

"They were awesome cars at the time," he recalls. "You knew you were stepping into something a bit special when you got in one.

"But it was also quite a frustrating time, because although the cars were seen as off-the-peg racers, they weren't. Unless you were in an Eggenberger or Andy Rouse Engineering car, it was hard to get right to the front.

"There were issues of being on the right tyres and having the right tuning, and you needed all of those bits to be in place before you could attack properly. They were very physical to drive, but you got the satisfaction when you got it right.

"When I was driving the Brooklyn-backed car, in 1988 and 1989, I remember racing at Birmingham and going past a mosque at 163mph on a public road. Just amazing really - there weren't many national racing cars you could do that in."

Such performance often made the rubber a deciding factor. Whether that is a plus or a minus probably depends on your point of view.

In 1990, Robb Gravett (Yokohama), Rouse (Pirelli) and Harvey (Dunlop) engaged in a BTCC title battle in which the tyre war played a significant part.

"Tyres made more difference than anything else because no tyre was going to handle that sort of power easily," recalls Harvey.

Gravett and Yokohama won out, an RS500 driver finally taking the overall BTCC crown after previous Class A top runner Rouse had twice been denied by the championship's idiosyncratic class-based scoring system.

By then the Ford's dominance was such that the impending end of its Group A homologation helped encourage the birth of new regulations, a formula that would become known as Super Touring. It was simply impossible to see a way of continuing the existing category without the bewinged Sierra.

In Germany, the more sophisticated DTM rules and factory efforts from BMW, Audi and Mercedes had ended the RS500's domination early, while the ETCC had died after 1988.

In Australia, following two Bathurst 1000 successes (and one taken away post-race) the Ford came up against the era's ultimate turbocar: Nissan's Skyline GT-R.

The four-wheel-drive monster was too much for the sideways Ford, but the RS500 - in John Bowe's hands - was still able to win the penultimate round of the 1992 Australian championship, the last season before the rules changed and finally ended the great Ford's contemporary front-line career for good.

In terms of touring car's greatest era, it's hard to look beyond the Super Tourers of the '90s. Massive manufacturer interest, top drivers and its worldwide reach ensure its place, but no one car stood out like the RS500 beforehand thanks to the constantly changing competitive order.

The Ford Lotus Cortina is another contender for the greatest touring car crown. The image of Jim Clark three-wheeling the '60s tin-top is iconic, but even that struggles to match the spectacular RS500 and it is worth noting that only the great Clark was actually able to win a BTCC outright with a Cortina.

In terms of BTCC wins, Chevrolet's Camaro, the Ford Capri, and the Vauxhall Astra Coupe beat the RS500's tally of 40. The Camaro certainly made a great noise but didn't have the same impact in terms of numbers, the Capri did but lacked the brute force, and the Astra dominated one of the BTCC's weaker eras.

Which probably just leaves the Ford's old rival, the BMW M3. There is no doubt the German saloon is one of the all-time great racers, but the Ford saw it off in Group A and later M3s could be classed more as GTs than touring cars.

After three decades, the flawed Ford monster thus still takes our top spot.