Collectors on the hunt for rides with celebrity ties should head to the Silverstone Festival next month. Iconic Auctioneers is offering up five cars and bikes with celebrity provenance during a weekend sale at Silverstone Circuit that is running from August 23 to 25. Leading the charge is Jeremy Clarkson’s 1992 Ford Escort RS Cosworth. This small-engined rarity is one of just three pre-production prototypes that reportedly cost the Blue Oval over £250,000 to build. Ford loaned the four-wheeler to the Top Gear star for a year so that he could evaluate it. It was subsequently featured in Top Gear magazine and appeared on the Clarkson’s Car Years TV series. Sporting a Mallard Green exterior and a Raven Hide interior, the Escort is in “superb condition,” according to the auction house. It retains many original details such as the factory sealant and the Ford Motor Company registration. As such, the lot is estimated to fetch between £65,000 and £75,000 (roughly $83,600 and $96,500).
Jeremy Clarkson has never shied away from his love for the Ford Escort RS Cosworth, the wildly-winged homologation special that saw the otherwise naff Mk5 Escort turned into a turbocharged, four-wheel drive rally hero. It’s possible that much of that love came from this very car, which Clarkson ran for a year as a long-term press loan back in the ’90s – and with a decent chunk of cash, you could be its next owner.
The Escort Cosworth, if you needed a refresher, was built so Ford could enter the Escort in Group A rallying in the ’90s. Launched in 1992, it was actually much more closely related to the older Sierra Cosworth than to any other Escort. It packed a 2.0-litre turbocharged Cosworth four-cylinder, sending 224bhp to all four wheels as standard – although this was a hugely tweakable engine and there are examples out there with power pushed into the four figure range.
This particular car is one of three hand-built pre-production prototypes, which was loaned to Clarkson for a year between 1992 and ’93. During that time, it appeared on the Top Gear TV show in its original, far more humble form. It was daily driven by the presenter, used as a camera car for the show, and was even keyed at one point – damage that long since seems to have been rectified. Eventually, it was given away as part of a competition in the first ever issue of Top Gear Magazine. That giveaway included free insurance for a year, which would have been a relief given the truly ludicrous premiums Cosworths commanded in their day.
A 1992 Ford Escort RS Cosworth once evaluated by Jeremy Clarkson over 12 months is heading under the hammer at auction. One of three ‘pre-production prototypes’, this particular Escort RS Cosworth was featured in both Top Gear Magazine and Clarkson’s Car Years, with the former seeing Clarkson running the car for a year and writing 12 different reports about his time with the car.
During Clarkson’s Car Years, the former Top Gear presenter took the Escort to the ‘Buttertubs Pass’ in the Yorkshire Dales where he proclaimed ‘one of my all-time favourite roads meets one of my all time favourite cars, the Cossie’. The Escort RS Cosworth remains one of Ford’s most sought-after models, having been created to homologate a car destined to be used on the World Rally Championship stage. However, it remains a very rare car with just 2,500 homologation special versions ever produced.
This particular pre-production car is rumoured to have cost over £250,000 to produce and had a number of features which differentiated it from a standard Cosworth including a deletion of the catalytic converter. It’s finished in ‘Mallard Green’ with a contrasting ‘Raven Hide’ interior and still retains its original Ford Motor Company registration plate. A clean underside – still with its original sealant from the Ford factory – showcases this car’s spotless bill of health.
Seven years later, Clarkson was reunited with the Mallard Green Cosworth – registered K38 FMC – one last time when he took it for an emotional blast over the Buttertubs Pass in the Yorkshire Dales for his show, Clarkson’s Car Years.
Having been owned privately since then, it’s now popped up in Iconic Auctioneers’ Silverstone Festival sale, taking place on 24 August. Its current owner has refreshed the suspension and brakes, replaced the wheels, and had a new headliner fitted inside.
Obviously, the huge spike in the ’90s collector car market means this doesn’t come cheap. Even with around 82,500 miles on the clock and the car in need of some “very minor mechanical enhancements,” it’s expected to go for between £65,000 and £75,000. Believe it or not, that’s towards the bottom end of the Escort Cossie market today – especially for examples with a connection to tall, frizzy-haired men from Doncaster.
Now, the Ford Escort RS Cosworth is heading under the hammer via Iconic Auctioneers at its event on August 24 where it could fetch up to £75,000 when the hammer falls. A famous Ford previously sold by Iconic Auctioneers – Princess Diana’s black Ford Escort RS Turbo – had a final winning bid of £650,000, so there’s a good chance that this Cosworth could breeze past its estimate.
