The most successful, most stolen car you’ve never heard of
Cosworth has a thing for engines. They can take a relatively workaday mill and bake tire-eviscerating performance into it. Few things highlight that fact better than the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth, a race-bred performance car with supercar performance at a bargain-basement price. But the racing legend had a dark side: it was one of the most stolen performance car models in Britain during its heyday.
The Ford Sierra RS Cosworth dominated 84% of the races it entered– and a stolen car staple UK
Some cars stand out for their specs. Unfortunately, some of those cars stand out to a very specific population: car thieves. Think the venerable Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. Volcanic performance in an easily identifiable and somewhat common car. In 1980s Great Britain, that car was the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth, one of the most stolen performance cars in the country.
Cosworth joined forces with the Blue Oval to take an accessible three-door and turn it into an animal. At its core, the Sierra RS Cosworth’s four-cylinder block was an ordinary, cast-iron donor from the oft-reviled Ford Pinto. However, Cosworth topped the Ford block with a lightweight, twin-cam aluminum head and a huge Garrett turbo. Fiddle with the injectors and go bigger with the turbochargers, and the so-called Cossie could summon over 500 horsepower.
The result? The race-prepped Ford Sierra RS Cosworth managed an 84% win rate at the top of its game. You read that right. It won 84% of the touring car races it entered, stacking championships as it did. According to former Top Gear host and The Grand Tour star Richard Hammond, the Cossie was “the most successful racing car ever made.” High praise, but all of it earned.
But where Ford and Cosworth succeeded in making a superhatch for the public, they failed in security. Simple, easily defeated locks are the only thing that stands between a criminal and a 149-mph car. Frankly, the combination of high performance and easy theft made the Cossie a stolen car staple in the UK.
Britons were often treated to reports of car thieves stealing the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth for follow-on crimes, simple joyrides, and everything in between. It got so bad, in fact, that Cossie owners were many times more likely to report a stolen car than the average vehicle owner. Steep discounts couldn’t save the Sierra, though. By 1992, the Cosworth-tweaked Ford was no more.
