008 - B200COO - 1.8 - RHD - Current owner known (CB) - UK

[Justin Smith]

My original diggings should me that this car was a FORD demonstrator and it was sold by FORD around July 1987 to (PB)

Mike Moreton writes about this car in his book and names it as "One of the first two production cars”

The chassis number was originally stamped out as SFACXXBJ2CFC00008 but that was removed and replaced and registered with the more commonly found GL VIN. In 1988 JQF supplied a 300 BHP kit for this car. The FC letters go a long way to support my theory on the missing letter in car #007's chassis number and show this car to be built September 1985.

Some checks on public data systems gave me the following info:-

Make: FORD
Model: RS 200 4WD
Transmission & fuel type: PETROL
Body type: SPORTS
Engine no. FC00008
Colour: White
First Registered: 23/10/1985
Year of Manufacture: 1985

It also said, "There are no plate change or colour change records associated with this car" but did show "1 Previous Keeper - Most recent keeper change 01/07/1987" which I guess was the car being sold by FORD to (PB).

In July 2006 - (PA) sent me an image of #008.

Then in 2009 the new owner (CB) got in touch, he has bought her and has promised me some images for here !

"Hi Justin - I came across the RS200 through a friend of mine who has known (P) for some years. He mentioned (P) was thinking of selling the car and did I want to view it. The car had been sheeted down in (P)’s garage minus the rear wheels for security reasons for 22 years. It had never had the engine turned over in all of the time it was stored. When I first viewed the car she looked a bit sorry for her self and we were not able to move the car as the brakes were seized solid so was only able to view the rear and off side. (P) assured me the car drove perfectly well when he parked it up in 1987 and that the 300bhp engine had only covered 500 miles with a new gear box at 7700 miles. The speedo reading around 9500.
On that basis after viewing the boxes of documentation containing the original leather bound manual and some history about the car being used by Ford for demonstration purposes being driven by Mark Lovell and J Taylor ex European Rally Cross Champion hands shook and B200 C00 No 008 had a new owner. After a day freeing the brakes and fitting the wheels we put her on a trailer and took her home. Last weekend sat 13th June with the help of a friend and his friend who is a brilliant engineer we set about getting her running. We drained and replaced the oil, the coolant and the fuel system, we removed the rocker box cover and lathered the brand new looking top end in oil. We removed the plugs and lubricated the cylinders and gently turned her over by hand with no resistance at all. We fitted a new battery and attempted to start her up. It fired initially then went dead. We then traced a fault to one of the fuel pumps. We located a replacement pump from a race shop near Mallory Park and collected it first thing Sunday morning. After fitting the pump we were still not able to get fuel to the cylinders so set about stripping the fuel lines until we found a complete blockage in the pipe from the swirl pot to the main injector pump. Once this had been sorted we tried to fire her up again to find we were only getting an intermittent spark. We removed the distributor cap and found the graphite contact between the king lead and rotor was sheared off and completely missing. We popped to the local scrap yard and soon found a replacement. This was duly fitted and she started on the first turn of the key and ran like a dream. I am unsure at this stage what plans I have for the car but will keep you briefed. I will forward some photographs in due course - Regards, (CB)"

If you find out anything else about this car please drop me an email and i'll update the cars entry !

justin.smith@rs200.org

Images