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The Ford Escort Rally Car '98 is a rally car produced by Ford. It first appeared in Gran Turismo 2 and was featured in the subsequent mainline games until Gran Turismo 6.

It appears to be the #7 driven by Juha Kankkunen, who achieved a 4th place finish in the Drivers' Championship of the 1998 WRC season.

In-game description[]

"Taking over for Sainz, Kankkunen became the ace driver for Ford in this car."

The Escort RS Cosworth prototype first appeared at the 1990 Paris Motor Show. Ford's intention was to race this car in the World Rally Championship, but people couldn't believe their eyes when they saw what was under the bonnet instead of the transversely mounted engine of the base RS2000, the engine was mounted longitudinally in the RSCosworth.

Ford decided to mount the engine in this way in order to gain advantage over their strongest rival, the Lancia Delta. Mounting the engine longitudinally allowed the transmission to be placed behind it, helping to improve the forward/rear weight distribution, and lowering the center of gravity. Airflow into the engine bay is also enhanced, giving an advantage in terms of cooling as well.

In its debut year of 1993, the RS Cosworth racked up 5 wins in WRC, and secured a 2nd place overall finish. However, from 1994 on, the team was fraught with troubles. Although the RS Cosworth still show bursts of great speed it failed to translate into victories.

The 1998 Escort was modified based on the WR car regulation introduced in the previous year, and it was driven by Juha Kankkunen and co-driver Bruno Thiry, who took over in the middle of '97. They entered the season with the car's weakest point, the rear suspension improved, but the car was unable to hide its age, and it finished the season without a single victory. Though the Escort finished this season with no wins, Kankkunen drove the car to steady points wins, earning himself 4th place overall in the drivers' title.

Acquisition[]

Game Purchase location Credits Other methods
Gran Turismo 2 --- --- Win the Seattle City Course 100 Miles (1/2 chance)
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec --- --- Win the Tahiti Maze Rally
Gran Turismo 4 --- --- Win the Tour of Tahiti on Medium difficulty
Available from the start in Arcade Mode
Gran Turismo PSP Ford Dealership 750,000 ---
Gran Turismo 5 Used Car Dealership (Lv. 10+) 195,272 ---
Gran Turismo 6 Ford Dealership 200,000 ---

Trivia[]

  • Like many of the rally cars that made their transition from GT3 to GT4, its paint scheme was modified between the two to remove any information about a specific rally:
    I FMC
    • The car that appears in-game is based on the #7 that entered the 1998 Rallye Monte Carlo and driven by Juha Kankkunen. This is identifiable due to the "Lineltex" stickers above the door number, and the rally plaque on the hood.
    • The number plate in GT3 read "1 FMC". From GT4 onwards, this was changed to "R4 FMC", which is what the real car had. Unlike other rally cars, the plates were left uncensored from GT4 onwards instead of being rendered illegible.
    • Also, Finnish flags were added to the rear side windows. These are supposed to represent Juha Kankkunen and his co-driver at the time, Juha Repo.
    • In addition, beginning from GT5, the door numbers were completely removed, though the plate remained, identifying the specific chassis of the Escort Rally Car that was rendered for GT3 yet not the rally.
  • In the early versions of GT2, it was instead the racing modification for the scrapped Escort GTi.
    • As a leftover, the Japanese version of GT2 has this car using the description text for the road-going Escort; other versions of GT2 do not have a description text assigned at all, although the aforementioned description text for the Escort road car was also translated to other languages, albeit unused.[1]
  • It also appears in Gran Turismo Concept as an unplayable CPU car.

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