RE:CREATION

Your projects: Pushed aside in the BTCC history books by the Cosworth and RS500, the 1985 championship-winning Merkur XR4Ti started the ball rolling for the Sierra’s success, and Alan Strachen is building a tribute to remind everyone why.

- Simon Woolley

Think Ford-badged British and European Touring Cars of the mid-to-late 1980s and it’s the all-conquering RS500s that spring to mind. But wind the clock back just a year or two, and any internet search will fire you down a new wormhole — one based around the Merkur XR4Ti. Yes, the Sierra-shaped and 2.3-litre turbocharged Lima-engined Ford US production car was used as the basis for Ford’s attack on the British and European Saloon Car Championships in 1985 and 1986 — while also sneakily providing parts and development for the impending Cosworth version introduced the in the latter half of the second season. A development tool it may have been, but the XR4Ti was incredibly successful — giving Andy Rouse his British Saloon Car Championship title win in 1985.

One person who’s determined to put the XR4Ti back on the map is Alan Strachen. A former Andy Rouse Engineering employee, Alan now runs AWS (www.aws-engineering. co.uk), a hugely-respected restoration and race car preparation business in the Midlands, responsible for sympathetically returning some iconic cars back to the race track — a huge number of them Fords. For the last five years though, in-between restoring original race cars and running his own Super Touring Mk1 Mondeo (see June 2019 issue), he’s also been toiling away on recreating a 1985-spec XR4Ti, which should be hitting the race tracks of the UK and mainland Europe next year. Turn the page to find out how and why.

Why build the car?