The Ford Escort RS Cosworth had a good five-year run from 1992 to 1996, with 7,145 units having been produced, after the car had initially been developed for the World Rally Championship. If you live in the US, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of it, though, as the car never left Europe. At least, it never officially left Europe, and it’s a damn shame because this wild little hot hatch was punching well above its weight class.

These things are available in the US, as the twenty-five-year rule is up, and besides, some of them managed to sneak through via the “gray market,” meaning they were imported and sold legally, but not necessarily with approval from Ford. Even so, their scarcity has made them a bit pricey for American buyers. In any event, it’s worth knowing what made this hatch so special, whether you want one for yourself or you just want to know what all the fuss was about.

The following is based primarily on information published by Ford, and by American automotive regulating bodies including the NHTSA and the EPA. Any opinions offered thereupon are those of the author unless otherwise attributed.

A Look At The Ford Escort RS Cosworth

The Escort RS Cosworth was sort of an odd Frankencar. It wasn’t built directly from an existing Escort, rather, it was built on the chassis and internals of the Ford Sierra Cosworth, a high-performance version of the Ford family coupe. Ford took the skeleton and mechanicals of the Sierra Cosworth and decked it out in Escort-like body panels to make it look like a Mk 5.

In fact, even calling it an Escort is somewhat misleading, as most of the body panels were custom-made for the Escort RS Cosworth, with only the front doors and roof being interchangeable with a standard Escort. Add to that a bold whale-tail style spoiler, and you’ve got a Ford hatchback that’s closer to a brand-new model than it is to a decked-out Escort.

Under the hood, you have a 2.0-liter Cosworth turbo-four paired to a five-speed manual transmission and configured in full-time four-wheel drive with a 34/66 front/rear power distribution. The production models started rolling along the assembly line in February 1992, and quickly set about pushing the envelope when it came to the kind of power you could get out of a commercially available hot hatch, easily rivaling or outrunning rivals like the Nissan 300ZX and the Toyota Supra.

Part of the appeal of the 2.0-liter Cosworth engine was its tunability. While the stock engine cleared 60 mph in just over six seconds, it’s not hard to find tuners shaving seconds off of that time, like this 512-bhp “Cossie” getting there in 4.5 seconds.

You Can’t Keep Americans Away From This Monster Forever

Getting your hands on Ford’s most impressive hot hatch was almost a matter of national pride for a handful of enthusiasts when this car was released. It almost seemed like a cruel joke not to release it in the States, so it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that there was a small, but thriving market for gray market imports. The legality of importing a car that hasn’t been approved by the NHTSA has to do with taking it on the street. If you stick to rally tracks and private property, there’s no reason you couldn’t import any hot hatch you like.

The Car Was Actually Approved For Import By The NHTSA

Here’s where the story gets kind of weird: the NHTSA had actually approved the Escort RS Cosworth for import as of June 1995, according to a document available on govinfo.gov. The document states that the car complies “with all applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standards.”

EPA and CARB compliance is another matter, as you have to pass both safety and emissions checks to sell an import in the US. Ford may have figured that it wasn’t worth the headaches to jump through these hoops for a vehicle with relatively limited market appeal, but models sold in the US around that time typically come with California smog tags and assurance that the car has been modified to meet US emissions regulation. If some third-party importers could make these cars highway-legal without issue, you have to wonder what the hangup was at Ford Motors.

Maybe marketing the car would have been too much work, maybe they didn’t see much profit opportunity in selling the car to Americans, or maybe someone just didn’t want to go through all that damn paperwork. Whatever the reason, it didn’t stop the rally car community from sneaking a few across the pond.

What Will A Ford Escort RS Cosworth Cost You In 2025?

Digging through the auction websites to see what a Ford Escort RS Cosworth should cost you nowadays, here’s what we turned up on Bring a Trailer:

• A 77,000-mile 1996 model sold for $75,023 in early 2025.
• A 41,000-mile 1995 model, first imported back when the car was new, sold for $50,500 in late 2024.
• A 28,000-mile 1993 reached a bid of $45,250 in early 2023, but failed to reach the Canadian seller’s reserve.

These prices are… frustrating, because they fall right outside what most of us would be comfortable spending on a thirty-year-old rally car, even one as cool and rare as this. Fifty, sixty, seventy grand may be chump change for high-profile collectors like Jeremy Clarkson, who’s been known to drive the car as one of his dailies. For the working Joes and Janes of the world, that’s the price of a brand-new BMW X5 or a Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road, and it’s hard to justify spending that kind of money on a dirt racer we’ll only take out on weekends.

Sources: Gov Info, Ford, EPA, NHTSA, Bring a Trailer.