By: IOL Motoring Staff
Long Beach, California - Ken Block has gone retro again for his first rear-wheel drive gymkhana car.
It's based on a 1978 Ford Escort MkII RS rally car, rebuilt and retuned specifically for one purpose - to shred tyres around a gymkhana layout.
“This Escort MkII is special to me,” explained Block. “I bought it in 2008; it was actually my first Ford rally car. It was designed for tarmac rallies, but those are few and far between now in the United States.
“So, rather than converting it into a gravel rally machine, we extended its tarmac capabilities even further, to make it the ultimate rear-wheel drive gymkhana car.”
The rolling chassis retains the best bits of the WRC-spec tarmac rally body-shell, with a specialised gymkhana suspension set-up.
Under the bonnet however, is where the magic happens, with a 2.5-litre, Millington-tuned naturally-aspirated four that delivers a quoted 245kW at a howling 9000rpm, driving the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox.
WIDEBODY KIT
The car was built by Escort guru Graham Quick of Quick Engineering in the UK, but when it was done the custom-made two-piece 15/52 rims, shod with Pirelli rubber, protruded way beyond the original RS body.
So Block called in Kei Miura, founder of Japanese widebody specialist Rocket Bunny, to update the Escort so it wouldn't look out of place next to Block's rally-cross Fiestas, as well as the notorious Mustang-based Hoonicorn RTR V8.
Miura actually went to the Hoonigan Racing workshop in Park City, Utah, to take a digital scan of the body-shell, before designing the neat bolt-on body kit you see here - bolt-on, so that any component that gets bashed against something hard can be quickly replaced without interfering with the suspension set-up.
“I've been working slowly on this car for a long time now,” said Block. “I'm stoke with how the whole thing turned out.
“I've only been able to do two days' testing in the car, but I can tell you it absolutely rips, especially at 9000 revs!”