Came across this fine site when following a link to the f40 pics thread, and as a result lost a few days of my life trawling every other interesting thread I can find here .

I also did a search to see how well known another iconic car from the same era as the f40 was on the site, and not a lot came up so I thought I would start a thread.

Both cars created quite a stir in the late 80s, and although the RS500 had a more humble basis, it became unbeatable around the world in the touring car races it competed in, so much so that the governing bodies changed the rules in the end so other manufacturers could play.

Like most cars it then became old news and faded away, but in recent years now that the base models sierra have all rusted away, the Cosworths and specifically the RS500 have gained classic status and become very collectable, with prices rising rapidly throughout these tough last few years. With the 25th anniversary fast approaching this trend seems to continue upwards.

I am interested to hear of peoples memories of the cars, and whether they owned or still own one, and would love to see as many personal pics of the road and race cars that can be found.

I will start the ball rolling, I have owned a variety of cosworths over the last 20 years, but last year finally found the car that really ticked all the boxes.

It was an RS500, and located half way around the world from me, during negotations I was beaten to it, but fate played a hand and a few months later it was back in the UK, and after some further negotiations it was mine.

If your not aware Ford only built exactly 500 examples of the RS500 purely so they could compete in motorsport, many were stolen, modified, crashed and abused over the years, so to find a low miles unmolested original one is very hard, to find a moonstone blue one even harder as only 52 of the 500 came in that colour, and only two of the 500 had aircon from new, and my new steed is one of them (the other is in Brunei)and the cherry on the cake is its build number 499 (number 500 has been lost since 1988)

If you dont know what the RS500 looks like, here are some photos of mine to jog the memory, hope you like it and look forward to reading other peoples recollections of the cars.

 

We never got the Sierra Cosworth RS500 here but I've got the closest thing that was available on our shores: a Merkur XR4Ti.

Engine and looks wise, it's a far cry from the Sierra but it's better than nothing. Beautiful car you had though. I love that Moonstone Blue.

 

I know a chap here in the UK with a US spec Merkur, be nice to see a photo of yours.

All road 500s were right hand drive and only sold in the UK officially, one went to the states but is now back, and quite a few went into collections in europe, the far east and Australia

 

Freekin awesome.

Remember crawling all over the Group-A Sierras in the pits when I was a kid.

 

Welcome! Nice first post.