Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2023 från Fast Ford

T his feels like an appropriate machine to include in our Show Car Special, even if 105E Anglias aren’t exactly the typical Fast Ford subject matter. If you’ve been to pretty much any major modded car show in the UK in recent years you’ll have spotted this full-on custom, and it’s scooped silverware at the Players Classic, Still Static, FittedUK and all sorts. Why mention this in the News section? Well, the car has recently changed hands and, intriguingly, it’s currently for sale with Chelsea Cars in Wandsworth. We recently spoke to our buddy Jonny Smith from YouTube channel The Late Brake Show, and he tells us he’s planning to make a video on the Misfit soon, so keep an eye out for that……

We don’t want to pick a fight, of course we don’t. But it’s fair to say that certain sectors of the car modifying scene can be a bit, er, tribal. It’s not exactly Quadrophenia scenes on Brighton beach with Vauxhall owners throwing rocks at Skoda fans, but you get the type of thing. You like what you like, and there’s a natural order to the inherent disorder. And if you’re a level-headed sort of character with strong feelings about what makes a cool car, like Grant Butler is, you might be taking a broad aerial view of all this and feeling like a tongue-in-cheek riposte may be in order. “I built this Mondeo to show that the Volkswagen scene is a bit samey-samey,” he grins. “Their version of a build…

The XR3i name carries a lot of cultural weight. Hero of the seafront, legend of the traffic light grand prix, the original XR3 was a true 1980s everyman hero; resplendent in its cloverleaf alloys and jazzy stripy seats, with boisterous bolt-on spoilers and the obligatory spotlights, it was everything a petrolhead wanted at the time, pre-modified by Ford and ready to rock. Since the Mk3 platform was so radically different from the rear-drive Escorts that came before it, Ford played a blinder by deciding to launch the sporting variant at the same time as the everyday models – the 1.6-litre CVH had a twin-choke Weber carb and produced a handy 96bhp, and in the early days of the hot hatch era this was heady stuff. A couple of years later…

I have owned the ST now for six months. It’s covered 7,000 miles in that time and is proving to be a great all-rounder: performance, practicality, and all the spec you could need. Heated seats in the winter are always a bonus! The Mountune upgrades have given the car another level of character, and the lowering springs give it a spot-on stance. So a few weeks ago I wanted to just tweak the car’s performance, and a visit to Airtec in Canvey Island was on the cards with Alan and Ryan suggesting some under-bonnet modifications to let the engine breathe more, and also make the car run even smoother alongside the M235 plug-in map. A selection of upgrades were fitted to the ST. The enclosed induction kit houses the air…

Eventwinners John Griffiths and Emma Morrison leapt their way to victory at a cold but sunny Brands Hatch on Saturday 21st January, in Round 3 of the MGJ Engineering Circuit Rally Championship. The duo took maximum points, continuing their impressive form from Round 2 at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire. And in addition to the unbeatable points haul, John took his first overall win in the Fiesta R5 to lead the drivers’ championship, with Emma now heading the co-driver championship. This latest round of the series incorporated rally specials including past and present Ford icons. Competitors took on a transformed Brands Hatch with eight rally stages, with the best five scores counted. The rally layout used not only the famous Kent circuit, but also sections of the paddock, pit lane, access…

Photos JASON DODD There are car shows, and there are car shows. And SEMA? Well yes, that’s most definitely a car show – with another one tacked onto the side, and another, and another, plus about a dozen more. Imagine it like a city of tuner cars all coalescing under the bright lights of Las Vegas; hundreds upon hundreds of the world’s most fastidiously and innovatively modified rides all brought together in one place. …except that it’s not really a car show at all, not in the traditional sense. Members of the public can’t just buy a ticket and turn up. Because, you see, this is actually a trade event: running annually since 1967, the acronym stands for Specialty Equipment Market Association, and it’s a place for brands and tuners…

When you visit a farm, there are certain things you expect to see – tractors, quad bikes, muck spreaders, all totally commonplace. But on a quiet little farm just a little north of Belfast, something rather special is afoot. We’re meeting up with Michael Scullin at Belfast port on a dreary winter’s day, and he kindly drives us to his farm to see this highly interesting build. It’s safe to say Michael is one of the friendliest chaps we’ve ever met in the car scene, and we’re soon chatting about his build in great depth and talking about the local car culture. “The car scene here in Northern Ireland is massive,” he says, “with a huge leaning towards Japanese imports, turbo and rearwheel-drive drift machines. So I admit I have…

Show-and-go is a desirable fusion. It’s not for everyone; some people like to make gleaming show-stoppers out of relatively underpowered bases, on the grounds that they’re built for cruising – if you’re going too fast, nobody will see you. Others build outright performance machines without paying much heed to the aesthetics – nobody will see you anyway because you’re going so fast. But the sweet spot for people like Liam Stolton lies in the centre of the Venn diagram: cars that are as fabulous to behold as they are breath-taking to drive. His previous masterpiece demonstrated this ethos perfectly: a Mk2 Fiesta with extreme aero and a supercharged Zetec, gleaming like a concours sweetheart. “I’ve always been into my old Fords, from a young age,” he explains, “and following in…

We could fill a whole magazine (and more) with in-depth info on how to detail every single part of your car – but you’re busy, you’re excited about the show season, you just want to cover the basics so you can get out there and enjoy it, right? So we’ve picked the brains of Gtechniq’s Dom Berry to bring you a ten-step guide to getting your ride show-ready… 1 USE AN IRON AND FALLOUT REMOVER… There’s a big difference between these and general-use wheel cleaners. The idea of an iron and fallout remover is to chemically dissolve metal particles that will be harmful to your wheels and paintwork. These are some of the harshest contaminants your car comes into contact with on the road, and you’ll find plenty of these…

For all you motorsport fans out there, we all have bucket list events that can seem just a little too far out of reach to experience. WRC on the whole is a rather exclusive form of motorsport, often being held in far-away locations and with only a handful of days in each, and this can make attending the WRC a little tricky for most. This year though, I had the opportunity to attend Rally Sweden 2023 and I wanted to share with you my experience spectating one of the most coveted array of rally stages held and what to expect, all while keeping things in a reasonable budget! Rally Sweden for the last few years has been held in Umeå, around 700km north of Stockholm. This is a long way…

MK 7.5 FIESTA One of the questions we always ask feature car owners is this: do you prefer a track day or a show-and-shine? And Dylan Filmer’s answer was instant and without hesitation – “Track day, all day, every day.” Bit of an odd choice of car to put in our Show Car Special then…? Well, no, actually. Because while this car has been built with a laser-focus on getting faster and more powerful, and being entertaining on the track, this has always been a pursuit that’s gone hand-in-hand with having a tiptop finish. Dylan’s Fiesta has sort of morphed into a show car by accident, but there’s no denying that this is precisely the type of build you’d want to see at a meet or a carsand-coffee – because…

Photos JON CASS ESCORT X R3 TF Everyone’s heard of the XR3. That’s a gimme, isn’t it? It wasn’t just a hot hatch, it was a cultural icon; a bullish riposte to that upstart Volkswagen, this was Ford’s effort to turn a shopper hatch into a balls-to-the-wall street terror, and it was wildly popular. We know that the carb-fed original was badged XR3. We know that the later fuel-injected version was the XR3i, and that evolved through the Mk4, Mk5 and beyond. But just what the heck is an XR3 TF? Well, we’ll forgive you for not having heard of it. This was a very limited run South African model, and it’s not particularly well-known over there either. Launched to coincide with the box-fresh RS1700T rally car and bask in…

F ormula 1 has seen its popularity massively increase in recent years. This is down to a variety of factors, including the popular Netflix series Drive to Survive, and the snowball effect of Max Verstappen’s ever-growing orange army. All of this has given Ford bigwigs the nudge to re-enter the sport, and this is very exciting news indeed. After all, thanks to the legendary DFV engine, Fords have been linked to some of the most thrilling and visceral racing in F1 history; the marque can boast 176 wins, 13 drivers’ and 10 constructors’ titles – although the company hasn’t been involved in F1 since 2004, and the last Ford-powered championship win was way back in 1981. We’ll see Ford return to top-tier racing in 2026, as a technical partner to Red…

One of the big worries when buying a used car is knowing what kind of owner had it before. Previous keepers are important to confirm your new prized possession has been well-cared for in its past, but that wasn’t so much of an issue for Billy Read. When it came to his Mk2 Focus ST, he knew for certain the car had been in safe hands as it was previously owned by someone he knew well. “It was my dad’s car until he bought a Mk1 Focus RS and decided he didn’t need both, so I bought it from him,” says Billy. “Although I added the majority of the modifications since owning it, and completely changed the style of it.” Obviously Fords run in the family, so it will be…

Progress on the Ranger King Cab is really on a roll now as we start thinking about the 2023 show season. We’ll, we’ve got to be positive about what we can achieve, right? You’ll have seen last month that we reached a really significant milestone in the project, having transitioned from the stage at which we’re pulling things apart into the infinitely more exciting one where we’re putting things back together. Of course, it was never going to be anywhere near that simple – with the amount of fabrication work and lateral thinking that’s going into reinventing this truck into something ridiculously low and aggressive, we’re not exactly talking step-by-step Lego instructions here. Still, Phil at The Install Company has it all in hand: he has now worked his way…

The iconic NAPA branding has been refreshed for 2023, featuring more of the vibrant yellow and chevron elements along with a range of new sponsors. And NAPA Racing UK has released their hugely anticipated plans ahead of the 2023 British Touring Car Championship. Off the back of an incredible maiden season last year, NAPA Racing UK became Teams Champions and runners-up in the Drivers’ Championship; this year, they are taking it up a gear with an impressive four-car line up on the BTCC grid with the Motorbase Performance-run team. With their multi-year deal, three-time BTCC champion Ash Sutton and three-time Porsche Carrera Cup Champion Dan Cammish will return with their eyes firmly on the prize. Despite a lot of learning, adjustments, and development during the early part of the 2022…

Photos FAST FORD ARCHIVE There are few cars that evoke such emotion among fast Ford fans as the Escort Cosworth. The flared arches, chunky styling, motorsport heritage, and of course that iconic whale tail, are enough to make even the most hardened of Blue Oval buffs go weak at the knees. But while 227bhp may have been enough to keep even the hairiest-chested drivers on their toes in the mid-nineties, today that sort of power is easy to come by – athree-cylinder Fiesta with a simple Stage 1 remap makes more than that… and dare we say it, drives better too! The later T25-equipped ‘Small Turbo’ addressed some of the issues, and without the constraints of having to meet motorsport homologation rules, this uncompromising road car may have had around…