END OF THE FORD FIESTA
The XR badge has come to symbolise fast Fords with the perfect blend of potency and attainability. We drive the first incarnation
XR2 DRIVEN
There was a certain purity about the brief period in the early 1980s before the Group B phenomenon took hold proper, turning the special stages into a frenzy of blistered arches, spiralling power outputs and laughable crowd control.
While Group B served up a batch of legendary road-going homologation specials, they were invariably unobtainable and unlivewithable. Peaky, underdeveloped and thrown together, they were built solely to tick off a requirement on the homologation application. The fact that customers were needed to buy them was a necessary inconvenience.
Before this brilliant but ever-so-slightly-toxic spectacle, there was a group of rally-inspired machines that earned their followings on their own road-going merits. They brought special-stage spirit to the road yet were available and affordable. And today we’re drive one of the best.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
The Renault 5 was pensionable by the time the XR2 arrived as the long-awaited firecracker of the Fiesta range in December 1981, having been launched almost a decade earlier. But there was nothing retiring or indeed shy about the Gordini variant; ‘It sorts out the men from the boy racers,’ one advert claimed. It’s not hard to deduce which marque it was taking aim at…
The front-engined Five was a regular podium finisher in the Monte Carlo Rally in Alpine Group 2 form. It placed first and third in its group in the 1979 edition but there was also now a new future-ASBO-recipient in town – the Ford Fiesta 1600S. It placed second and fourth; not bad for a manufacturer entirely new to deploying front-wheel-drive in motor sport.
These Boreham-built cars, piloted by Roger Clark and Ari Vatenen, wore new round headlights and proud spotlights, and employed an enlivened version of the elderly Kent crossflow based on the lump homologated by the US-spec 1.6-litre Fiesta.
The commendable Monte shift that the two cars put in was the stimulus for the 1981 XR2’s rally thematics; at the time, the World Rally Championship had as big a following as Formula One. The project was executed by Ford’s new Dunton-based Special Vehicle Engineering (SVE) department (the phoenix of the shuttered Advanced Vehicle Operations division), which had previously created the Capri 2.8 Injection as its maiden offering.
A peek under the bonnet reveals that SVE stuck with a carburettor for the XR2 and employed a breathed-on Kent crossflow much like the Monte works machines. This also served to satisfy Ford’s product planners who wanted it to leave some headroom for the Escort XR3, with its newer CVH engi
