Ford RS200: The Fastest Failure in Racing History

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7In the Ford RS200, the engine sits behind the driver—but the gearbox sits ahead of him, down by his knees. Power travels the entire length of the car to the front, then turns around and comes back again.Ford built it this way to create the most perfectly balanced rally car possible. It spent more than £10 million developing it, produced barely enough cars to satisfy the rulebook, and arrived just as the championship it was designed to win was being outlawed.The RS200 raced in the World Rally Championship for a single season and never won an event. Yet after Group B disappeared, it became one of the most dominant rallycross cars ever built—and eventually the fastest-accelerating production car in the world.So was the RS200 a catastrophic failure, or simply a brilliant machine built for the wrong moment?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK “History Written by Losers” — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the complete story of the Ford RS200: the clean-sheet Group B rally car born from the failure of the abandoned Escort RS1700T programme.From its bizarre forward-and-back drivetrain and Formula One-inspired chassis to disputed homologation numbers, fatal crashes and its extraordinary second life in rallycross, this is the story of a car that arrived too late to fulfil its original purpose—but became legendary after the rulebook that created it disappeared.What’s inside:The Rally Car Ford Threw Away:How Ford abandoned its championship-winning rear-wheel-drive Escort, spent years developing the obsolete RS1700T, and was forced to begin again after the Audi Quattro changed rallying forever.The Rally Car Built Backwards:Why Ford placed the engine behind the driver, the gearbox ahead of his feet, and sent the power forwards before sending it back to the rear wheels.The Questionable 200-Car Homologation:How FIA inspectors counted two hundred RS200s, despite factory records suggesting that only around 144 to 148 complete cars were actually finished.One Season in Group B:The RS200’s promising podium debut, the tragedy in Portugal, the fatal Rallye Hessen crash, and the chain of events that brought the most extreme era of rallying to an end.The Failure That Became the Fastest:How the RS200 found its true home in rallycross, produced as much as 800 horsepower, and later set a 0–60 mph record that stood for twelve years.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies, and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#FordRS200 #GroupB #Rally #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #FordMotorsport #RallyHistory #MotorsportHistory #Cosworth #TheCarNerd