ANDY ROUSE: THE SIERRA RS500 WAS THE ULTIMATE TIN-TOP

Andy Rouse doesn’t look like your typical racing driver. He doesn’t act like one either. There is no ego to have to pander to, there is no smoke that needs to be blown in any direction.

He is a man who loves motorsport and loves the challenge of unearthing the latest trick from the chassis or the engine. After that had been achieved, he set about chipping the odd tenth of his lap time from his position behind the wheel.

Despite retiring from the British Touring Car Championship back in 1994, he still maintains fourth place in the all-time race winners’ list with a remarkable 60 victories – despite the fact that drivers have three times as many opportunities to collect silverware in the modern generation.

Rouse was at the forefront of so many different race programmes with many different manufacturers – indeed, his quartet of titles were all taken in different types of car. However, his victories in Ford’s products are among the most memorable.

Andy Rouse and his Andy Rouse Engineering firm was at the heart of the development of what ultimately was the highpoint of Group A tin-tops with the Ford Sierra RS500. It was a brutal monster that Rouse was a master at taming and, as he did so, he secured his place in the minds of a generation of motorsport fans.

He very kindly took time out of his schedule to tackle the Motorsport News readers’ questions, and we are very grateful.

“The first car I built was a home-made jalopy”
Andy Rouse

Question: What made you start driving competitively?

Joseph Anthony Via“I was always interested in cars, right from a young age. It was just my thing and it didn’t really come from my family or anything like that. It was a personal passion, and my access point into it was doing autograss or, as they called it back then, jalopy racing. “I used to get on my bike and cycle all around Gloucestershire to the nearest event wherever it was that weekend. I used to love watching the racing.