THE STORY OF… FORD’S 4X4 MACHINES

The next time a pub bore insists that Audi was the first to win anything in motorsport with four-wheel-drive cars, please make sure you correct them.

You know that Ford was there well ahead of the rest, with fearsome four-wheel drive rallycross Capris back in 1969. It took time (and stuffy regulations didn’t make it easy) for Boreham, then M-Sport, to repeat the dose, but nowadays we expect all similar sporting cars to have such a sophisticated system.

So, Ford of Europe and four-wheel-drive cars have been together now for 50 years, usually by developing the installation for very powerful cars that needed it, and always with very successful installations.

FIRST OF ITS KIND

First of all, there was the brutish 3.0-litre Capri, of which Boreham built up three for rallycross use in 1969 and 1971. Road-car prototypes were already being developed at Dunton by then,