![]() ![]() ![]() curb weight.Ĭouriers, like most small pickups of that time, weren’t seen as sporty things. That’s exactly what Jon Hagan did, taking the Ford Courier mini truck and installing a Ford SVO 2.3 turbo engine making 450 wheel horsepower at an estimated 2,300 lb. The recipe for hot rodding success: take an undesirable vehicle and mate it with an exciting drivetrain. With a new grille that was more reminiscent of the Ford F-series and a nameplate last used on a 1950s sedan delivery, the Courier quickly found its niche in the market. Part of that investment included importing Mazda’s B-series pickup into the United States to compete with the likes of Toyota and Datsun, whose smaller pickups had proven to be quite popular. Jon Hagan took the simple idea placing the turbocharged 2.3L four-cylinder from a 1980s Mustang SVO into a second-generation Ford Courier, creating the kind of sport truck the early 1980s deserved.Īt the beginning of the 1970s, the time of gas shortages and small-displacement imports, Ford had taken a financial stake in Mazda. A dirt-cheap pickup truck, it never received any special performance or trim when new, long before the term “sport truck” existed. But a decade before those heroes hit the dealer lots, there were trucks like the underappreciated Ford Courier. The early 1990s were the true heyday for factory-built sport trucks, with the Chevrolet 454SS, GMC Syclone (and it's Typhoon SUV twin) and the first-generation Ford Lightning offering up performance with a bed attached. #Ford courier driverYour Deliveroo would reach you faster than ever, and the driver might actually be in a happy mood for once.Factory sport trucks are cool, even if they are super rare. Think what the gig economy could do with one of these. Too much money, too much CO2 on the company balance sheet. Nope, there’s no plan (or sense, really) to offer an ST-engined Transit for customer consumption. And there’s no more sinister benchmark than that. So if it were to venture onto the public road – and it is indeed completely street legal – this thing would mug just about anything. And Ford hasn’t yet got around to changing the livery, or applying ST badges and grilles. This handles more cheekily than it’s got any right to. But there are a fair few hot hatchbacks which can’t keep up with the Fiesta’s cornering tenacity, so that’s fine. So it doesn’t want to tripod around corners like the Fiesta ST and it doesn’t respond to the hyperfast steering with quite the same agility. #Ford courier fullWhich is a kind way of saying it’s spectacular for a van, but it’s not the last word in finesse full stop. It’s tall, it’s hollow, and even with ST wheels, tyres, brakes and suspension acquired, you’ve got to respect the physics. It does, though you’ve got to be mindful of the fact that, despite sounding raucous and feeling very quick, this is a van. And The ST’s quality gearchange has made it into its utilitarian new home unscathed. The Normal, Sport and Track mode settings remain. Proper ST Recaro bucket seats, and yes, the blast furnace-grade heated elements are still toasting. But this thing’s still a work in progress, and all the important bits are there. There’s some glue overspray around the dials. So, the FORD PERFORMANCE plaque under the (non-functioning) heater controls looks like it was cut out from plastic sheet with left-handed scissors. Still, making the oily bits go round and round and up and down is the tricky and pricey bit, which hasn’t left much time for interior window-dressing. It’s folks who love cars and have a ‘what if we tried that?' attitude that gave us secret-squirrel legends like the Lamborghini Miura and VW Golf GTI.Īnd now that same impishness has given us a Transit van that can go from 0-62mph in six seconds. We love sneaky skunkworks silliness like this. This thing is very much an out-of-hours, don’t-tell-the-boss project. Where we’ve got to be kind is in the fit and finish. ![]()
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