Group N Giant Killer Comes to Market.
Most competition cars are sold on what they are. This one sells on what it did, and on how little about it has changed since.
It is a Ford Sierra RS Cosworth, built to Group N specifcation, and it won the Italian championship twice.
The Car
Its first registered owner was Ford Italia. Preparation and maintenance were handled by Repetto, one of the leading specialists working in Italian rallying at the time, and the Repetto strut brace still sits across the engine bay above the red Cosworth cam cover.
It was campaigned through the 1988 and 1989 Italian Rally Championship by Gianfranco “Franco” Cunico with Max Sghedoni alongside him. 1988 was the first year of Cunico's works relationship with Ford, which would run for a decade. The pairing took the Group N title in both seasons, and also notched an impressive 7th place overall in the 1989 Tour de Corse.
Racing Provenance
1988 — Italian Rally Champion, Group N
72nd Targa Florio (Rally di Sicilia): 3rd overall, 1st in Group N, finishing behind only the factory Group A entries of Zanussi and Blomqvist
Rally 1000 Miglia: 3rd overall
1989 — Italian Rally Champion, Group N
11th Rally di Messina: 1st overall, an outright win for a production-based car
The car later took part in Rallylegend.
Why Messina Matters
Group N is the production class. The cars start as showroom stock and the rulebook keeps them close to it: no wholesale re-engineering, no purpose-built competition shell, far less freedom than Group A. The class exists to be beaten by the cars above it.
Winning a national championship round outright in one is not supposed to happen. At Messina it did. At the Targa Florio the same car finished third overall and was beaten only by two factory Group A machines. That is the whole argument for this car in two results.
Originality
This is the part that is difficult to replace, and the reason a documented car is worth more than a restored one.
Original period registration plates and documentation still present
Original period-specification equipment and seats retained
Still carries the competition numbers and plates from its last rally
Documentation
The history is straightforward and unusually well papered. Period newspaper and magazine coverage survives from the seasons themselves, and the car has been the subject of later features, including a Gentlemen Drivers cover with Cunico in October 2008 and a Grace Classic & Sport Cars cover story in April 2010. Cunico also carried out tests and road evaluations of the car some years after his championship seasons in it.
Enquiries
The car is located in Italy, and priced at €95K.
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