60 years of FORD PERFORMANCE

From RS to ST, Ford's sporting sub-brands have been delivering high-speed thrills to British enthusiasts ever since the Lotus-tweaked Cortina appeared in 1963

- CHARLIE CALDERWOOD/SIMON HUCKNALL

By the dawn of the 1960s, Ford had already done more to democratise the motor car than any other marque, but, never a firm to miss an opportunity to make a few extra quid, the Blue Oval brought high-performance machinery to a whole new section of society with the Lotus Cortina of 1963. And it has been at it ever since. While others have dipped in and out of the market, with cheap sports cars or hotted-up versions of family cars, Ford has offered a virtually unbroken line of attainable performance models in Britain to the present day.

Despite that continuity, it has taken markedly different approaches to reach those ends. Most famous have been the motorsport-inspired RS models, but it all began with external input from Lotus - and there would be collaboration once again with Cosworth, a name attached to the most extreme products of the 1980s and '90s. Simultaneously, a lower-priced line was introduced wearing the XR moniker, followed by the modern ST badge. To mark six decades of blue-collar performance, we've gathered our pick from each arm of the ubiquitous 'Fast Ford'.

LOTUS CORTINA

The Lotus Cortina was transformative for Ford of Britain. Like switching from black-and-white to colour TV, it brought depth and pizzazz to a worthy but rather dull brand and aligned it with the chutzpah of the '60s. That its sporting legacy permeated through successive decades at Ford was testament to the vision not of a designer or engineer, but a PR man.