1987 Ford Sierra RS 500 Cosworth from UK and Ireland - Comments

Turbo oil feed pipe failure when standard. Lots of things when modified.

Massive street cred. BIG turbo lag, but otherwise devastating performance. 2.4 litre 600 bhp conversion means this is a total supercar killer.

I have owned my RS500 for 3 years. It is very frightning to to drive, I'm producing 580bhp and I'm on my third T4 Garret.

Well I've got a 700 horsepower RS500 so there!!!

Excellent well done I only have a 88 4x4 at 200hp still keeps with scoobys.

I don't see why anyone would mod an RS500 to the extent of putting a totally different engine in it. These are rare, collectable cars (only 500 ever made) and concours examples are still changing hands at near the original list price. A Ford with "inflation only" depreciation over nearly two decades - who would have thought it?

Had you done this conversion on a standard Cosworth, it would have probably added to the value, but on an RS500 you've devalued your car significantly, and of course made it one less of those 500 now on the road as Ford intended. Besides which, changing/converting the engine like that wipes out most of the unique features that made the RS500 special in the first place.

A pointless and costly mistake.

There is noway a 2.0 sierra will keep up with scoobies. maybe in reverse. why do people buy these cars, they are so ugly.rs500 only good in straight line. useless at twists and turns.

The RS500 is a legend. Keep standard, or lose money. Its totally up to you!!!

RS 500 a Sure classic with lighting performance better wipes the floor with scoobies.

Well if your talking stock for stock, the RS 500 would probably be head to head with a WRX, but STI onwards and it certainly won't be wiping the floor with a scoob, it would do very well to stay near. It's a 19 year old car remember, and if your talking STI prodrive or WR1 then forget it, it would be embarrassed.

Seen many Highly modded RS 500's wipe the floor with Scoobies some running well in excess of 500 Bhp accept the facts and forget the myths!

Is the rs500 the version with rwd and whale tail spoiler.

Did you read it? STOCK FOR STOCK, You could tune an impreza or cossie over 500bhp, but that's not what I was saying.

More to the point did you read it (where in my comments did I say stock for stock???) it was you that mention stock for stock!!!

You can get more power out of the Cosworth engine than you can get out of the Scooby engine or even the Mitsubishi Evo unit. This is a fact.

The Cosworth's engine is a hand-bult, detuned competition unit. It's heavy due to its cast iron block, but this makes it tough, and the bottom end is massively over engineered. It's "natural" power output is around 300 bhp. This is what the first engine Cosworth built on "default" settings made, and they subsequently detuned it for road use.

If you don't cut corners, and get someone who knows their stuff to do the work, 650 bhp is available with reasonable reliability. And you don't have to waste time and money ripping the emissions gear off it like you do the Scooby and Evo - it never had it in the first place. 500 bhp is easy. Mitsubishi's best effort in the Evo was 400 bhp with questionable driveability, and Scoobies can't go beyond 350 or so without upgrading virtually every moving component in the engine.

Cars might have moved on, but the Cossie YB motor is still the king of the four pots in terms of raw BHP. You can even rebore it to 2.4 litres which tells you how much meat there is in this block. Tough as old boots.

Well impreza's now come with 2.5 as standard so theirs plenty of meat there. And the engine and transmission have always been rally bred, so of course its tough. I don't think they have all steel engines though. Just saying the most powerful cossie I've seen either on TV or in mags is about 500 BHP, of corse that's awesome, but I've seen the japanese saloons with more.

I've seen Cossies with loads more than 500 Bhp (that's not thier limit 700 Hp is not uncommon in this area, the cosworth block is a mile stone in 4 pot tuning with a fine history in motor sport and the Japaneese are yet to better it!