Ford Escort RS Cosworth

The long version

Underneath the Escort badges and the enormous rear wing sits almost no Escort at all — Ford lengthened the Sierra Cosworth 4x4's platform, kept its AWD driveline and 2.0-liter YB turbo four nearly unchanged, and wrapped the result in bodywork that shared little more than the name with the shopping-trolley Escort sitting next to it in dealer lots. The wing wasn't styling; wind-tunnel work showed the car needed the downforce at speed, and it's still the most recognized silhouette to come out of Ford's Special Vehicle Engineering department. It arrived to reclaim the World Rally Championship after Lancia's Integrale had dominated for years, and on the street it inherited the Sierra Cosworth's exact reputation problem: cheap to insure it wasn't, easy to steal it was, and the cars that survived the 90s intact are the minority. That scarcity is now the whole story — a car that traded for used-hatchback money through the 2000s has climbed past six figures for the best Lux-spec survivors, with the most expensive recorded sale clearing £130,000. What's left splits the same way the Sierra does: genuine drivers who never stopped using theirs, and a newer generation of buyers unwilling to put miles on a car this expensive to replace.