Vintage Thing No.61.1 - the Ford Sierra XR4x4

Designating my XR4x4 a Vintage Thing the other day reminded me of the reaction casued by the introduction of the Sierra. It was a revolution. The V&A ran an exhibition at the Boilerhouse Project called The Car Programme - 52 months to Job One or How they designed the Ford Sierra.

I visited this exhibition in the first year of my Industrial Design course at Coventry Poly. At the time there were all manner of rumours circulating about the Sierra and its high profile departure from the boxy lines of the Cortina. It was said that all the design staff had been sacked and that Ford would be re-introducing the Cortina following poor sales.

Of course, none of this was true but it's difficult to appreciate the shock of the new that followed the Sierra's introduction. Walter Hayes, Ford of Europe's Vice-Chairman said the introduction of the Sierra and replacement of the Cortina was "the only example in history where a company killed off a brand leader."

However, I bet he was glad he didn't work for British Leyland where the opposite happened.

If anybody disagrees with me on this, maybe they should read Jeff Daniel's book British Leyland - The Truth about The Cars or Johnathan Wood's biography of Alex Issigonis.

Ford had paved the way for the outrageous Sierra with the well received Probe design studies. Probe III gave the most clues to how a new Cortina would look. So far, nobody has taken an early Sierra and turned it into a replica of Probe III. It would still look pretty wild and would out do many of the badly "maxed" hot hatches you see around. The Sierra was a cleaned up version of Probe III and lacked many of its wilder aerodynamic features so "reverse engineering" a Sierra into a Probe III look-a-like wouldn't be difficult. Probe III had a drag co-efficient of 0.25. An XR4i managed a Cd of 0.32, matched only by the Citroen GSA.

The long production run proved the foresight of the designers. The Sierra lasted from 1982 to 1993. A mild facelift occurred in 1987 but this was just as much to do with the original tooling becoming worn as the need to make the car look fresher. Changes were subtle and involved revised lights, bonnet and thinner window pillars. During production, the Sierra often looked more modern than later competitors and even now it looks low and sleek compared to the thickset saloons of today.

So who designed the Sierra?

For many years, Ford made a policy of not naming any individuals as designers of its cars. As eager design students we were told that even if a single design from a single designer was obviously right just as it stood, Ford executives would still deliberately water it down into something more corporate. For instance, FoMoCo had gone on a shopping spree in the sixties and bought Ghia, the Turinese carozerria and what happened to that? Ghia gradually stopped designing cars and became the name of a trim level for well-upholstered fords.

Uwe Bahnsen was Vice-President of Design for Ford of Europe so must take most of the credit for getting management onside. I still have my guide to The Car Programme at the Boilerhouse Project and he's the only named designer in it. Although he probably didn't actually pick up a magic marker himself, he would have guided his design in the right direction and having been involved with the Capri and the Mk3 Escort he could be guaranteed to know what he was talking about. Bahnsen championed the importance of not just aerodynamics but "air-flow management", which included the passage of air through the radiator grille and engine compartment and the effect the ventilation systems could have on drag. The front windscreen was flush fitting and the research into the behaviour of the air around the rear end lead to the

Bahnsen's visions were shared with Bob Lutz, the Swiss-American Ford of Europe chairman, who saw the Sierra as a market grabbing "challenge" car - known within the company as "Project Toni" - and once the Sierra was on the market it was Lutz who pushed and pushed for another version, this time with 4x4 to answer the technological gauntlet thrown down and driven over by the Audi Quattro.

American Ray Everts developed the exterior concept for Bahnsen and lead a team of young designers at Ford's Merkenich studio, near Cologne. Car Styling magazine said in its review of the Sierra design that Ford's corporate management "were completely disorientated in the spring of 1978 when the first models of the Sierra were presented to them. They could neither believe not understand what their European colleagues were unanimously willing to produce."

This was in the very first days of the 52 months to job one.

What brought the senior execs round were design studies by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign. His Ace of Spades design for Isuzu, which entered production in 1979, and his Medusa family saloon concept turned the execs onto the "aero look" and in the end they couldn't get enough of it, endowing the US market Thunderbird and Tempo with similar lines.

Bob Lutz later thanked Giugiaro for his unwitting influence.

Meanwhile, something less radical was being planned for the interior at Ford UK's Design Centre at Dunton in Essex. Our first year lecturer at the poly, Dave Brown, hated the interior and reckoned it was deliberately designed to re-assure drivers once they were behind the wheel. In retrospect, some of Uwe Bahnsen's comments at the time seem to prove Dave right. Bahnsen described the interior as classic and not so advanced as the exterior. The emphasis was deliberately on parallel lines, harking back to the boxy Cortina/Taunus dash.

Ford must have been thinking along these lines with the Probe III. This is the interior of that show car and it isn't so far away in general feel from the Sierra dash. Non XR Sierra's had a truly horrible steering wheel that aspired to the single spoke design of the Probe III but was really a crisis of design confidence. The more sporting steering wheel on my machine is much better.

Whoever chose the seat materials on the production Sierra, though, did a damn fine job. Apart from the inexplicable action of a squirrel, my car's upholstery is still in good condition after 25 years of wear. I don't how this bastard tree rat got in my car but it tried to bury a hazelnut in the back seat and gave up and ate its nut only after nibbling a hole in the seat squab.

There is one other name who played a significant part in the genesis of the Sierra and this was Patrick le Quément. He'd gained a BA Hons. degree in Product Design from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and, after a period as a freelance, returned to England and Ford in 1968 as a designer. He worked on the Ford Cargo truck at around the same time as the Sierra and - in case you didn't already know - recently retired as head of design at Renault where he'd spearheaded a design-lead revolution. Yes, the Sierra was Patrick working up to "shaking that ass" of the bustle rumped Megane.

Top of the early Sierra range was the XR4i but it seemed the Capri was the "personal car" they couldn't kill. The unique 2 door 4 pillar shell, sometimes referred to as the six light shell, came in for a lot of criticism. It couldn't be mistaken for anything else, mind, and it should also be remembered that Ford was openly experimenting with style at this stage so it could be forgiven if what it was doing was not to everyone's taste. The XR4x4 was much more subtle as the Cosworth grabbed all the headlines with another outrageous "nick me" rear spoiler and a cleaner interpretation of the 3 door shell. But gradually the high performance Fords either grew up or became more ordinary looking, depending on your point of view. They certainly didn't attract the attention of the law so much and sales of the more discreet XR4x4 improved.

It was Lutz's enthusiasm that brought about the XR4x4 drivetrain. When a 4x4 prototype was shown at the 1982 Frankfurt Show, there was no intention of offering it for sale but Bob Lutz could see how a high tech drivetrain to rival that of the boxy Quattro would work beautifully with his lovely smooth new body styling. Gradually the product planners came round to his idea. Well, he was the boss.

Lutz made life hell for his engineers because he was such a car nut.

Rod Mansfield's Special Vehicle Engineering department got the job of cramming everything in and Ray Diggins, who was in charge of the work, pioneered the use of viscous coupling limited-slip differentials - one just behind the transfer case and another in the back axle. Ford invested heavily in viscous couplings and their use later spread to the Scorpio range and the front wheel drive Escort RS Turbo. With a 34%/66% torque split between front and rear, there proved to be no need for a viscous coupling in the front axle. Here a conventional diff alongside the engine sump was driven by a shaft running forwards from a chain driven transfer case at the back of the conventional five speed T9 gearbox. A resonant whine arose from early transfer gearbox chains but this was solved by the inspired idea of artificially introducing a deliberate machining crudity to one of the chain wheels, thereby changing the harmonics.

The whole suspension set up was revised and SVE designed a new cast aluminium front sub frame for the driven front axle, which featured drive shafts that passed right through the engine sump.

There were a limited number of 3 door XR4x4s. Only a few hundred were built and they were never sold in the UK. I've never seen one but this combination really appeals to me. The 5 door is a bit too much of a family car for me, although the performance is nothing like that. Of course the four wheel drive estates - not really XR4x4s - are even more domesticated. I'd quite like to see a sedan delivery panel van conversion of one though. With their standard rood bars and curvaceous rear window, this could look quite good.

Early Sierras had a poor reputation for stability in cross winds and, to counteract this, from 1985 small spoilers or strakes were fitted to the rear edge of the rubber seals of the windows on the rearmost D pillar. I can only assume that these cured the problem for in my foursquare Ford I've never noticed any problem with side winds.

Other rumours that the car hid major crash damage also harmed the car's early reputation. This was partly true for the new bumper design sprang back after impact and easily hid major damage.

I also remember a lot of fuss about early corrosion, which was blamed on the use of high tensile steel. Having broken one for spares, I can confirm that the shell is very light, almost to the point of being flimsy. I knew someone with an XR4i who jacked it with a door open up using the factory jack only to discover that he couldn't close the door afterwards as the shell had sagged. In a panic he jacked it down again and - much to his relief - normal service was resumed. Another mate in the trade tells me Ford's of this vintage flexed so much the paint cracked and that caused water ingress and corrosion.

If Bob Lutz wanted an Audi Quattro beater, he didn't quite get it. In competition the XR4x4 was too heavy and the Cologne V6 couldn't breathe properly through its siamesed ports. It puts out 150 bhp at 5,700 rpm in its 2792cc form (93 x 68.5 mm) on a CR of 9.2:1. Maximum torque is 159 lb/ft at 2,800rpm. The Bosch K-Jetronic mechanical fuel injection features quite a restrictive inlet system. As standard manifolds and injection systems had to be retained under Group A Touring Car rules, the most the horsepower whisperers could get out of the XR4x4 was 220bhp. Stig Blomqvist managed 4th in the 1987 Monte Carlo Rally with a facelifted 2.9 litre XR4x4 but the top rank rally cars had been far more specialised for years by then.

It would take the Cosworth Sierra to show how good the Sierra's chassis was.

Graham Robson, the motoring journalist described the XR4x4 as the ideal rally chase car and with affordable Ford running costs the XR4x4 became the best selling four-wheel drive car in Europe at the time.