Cat & Mouse

…or should that be ‘Copycat and Rouse’? At fi rst glance, this may look for all the world like a genuine Rouse RS500 – but it isn’t, and its owner, Ali McMillan would never pretend that it was. Nevertheless, it’s far more authentic than you might expect…

- Dan Bevis

If you’re one of those people who stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the linear passage of time, you’ll no doubt be astounded to learn that Tenacious D’s iconic song ‘Tribute’ came out as long ago as 2002. Imagine! That means it’s been serving as a helpful explanatory prop for anything that acts as a tribute for nigh-on a decade and a half, which is exactly why we’re wheeling it out here. You see, that song is about the greatest song ever written, the greatest song in the world. It doesn’t at any point claim to actually be the greatest song in the world, but that’s a point often overlooked by people who, having sleepwalked right past the giveaway title, refuse to accept the logic of what they’re hearing.

So it is with the RS500 Cosworth you’re looking at here. People see the legendary ICS Scotland livery on a Sierra, and immediately think ‘Aha, it’s a Rouse car’. Then they do a little digging, and get all affronted when they find that it isn’t. But there’s no room for that sort of pedantic grumpiness here; this car, as you’ve presumably guessed by now, is a tribute. It never claims to be a Rouse car, merely a homage to arguably ‘the greatest BTCC car in the world’, or whichever label you fancy playing with. The twist here, however, is that part of its creation involved a genuine Rouse RS500, and a number of those true-blue parts now find themselves inside this car…