THE GROUP S RS200
After spending two-and-a-half years developing the ill-fated rear-wheel-drive Mk3 Escort-based RS1700T, Ford was a little late to the Group B party with the sublime RS200 in the mid 1980s.
Debuted on the 1986 Swedish Rally (where Stig Blomqvist recorded a third-place finish in what would be the RS200’s best result in world rallying), it was considered technologically superior to many of its rivals. But the short development phase meant – at world championship level, at least – the RS200 only got to shine against the well-established opposition from Peugeot, Lancia and Audi on the Swedish, Acropolis and RAC rallies. At national level it fared somewhat better by winning the British and several European championships. But relegated to history in the same year of its launch, the whole project is filed under the heading ‘What could have been’.
Looking back, it seems obvious that the high-risk nature of Group B was unsustainable but cancelling the entire prototype class in favour of the production-based Group A left every manufacturer – with the notable exception of Lancia – without a competitive model.
What had been anticipated for 1987 or 1988, albeit only theoretically, was the introduction of a
