SPECIAL BREW
THE ORIGINAL DATAPOST RS1600i
In the 1980s Ford was populated by enthusiasts — so when the Escort RS1600i came along as a road car, Ford-Germany Motorsport and Boreham saw it as ideal for the Touring Car Championship. Peter Ashcroft invited Richard Longman to run a pair of cars for him in the British Touring Car Championship in 1983, because in the 1600cc category, the Escorts looked as if they might produce up to 160 bhp, and dominate in their class. Left to his own devices, Longman made the project successful, for although Ford provided the cars, Longman’s company found the power, and trimmed the handling:
‘The rear suspension wasn’t very good at first,’ Richard once told us, ‘so we had to change the pick-up points to cut out a lot of rear-end steer. We did all our own engine development — camshaft, pistons, breathing, the lot — we didn’t have engines from anybody else. At first we found that the CVH was very prone to detonation, but we sorted that.’
In the first season though, it was a private Escort RS1600i driven by Chris Hodgetts (Brooklyn Ford prepared it) which provided most of the competition to the Datapost team. The Escort glory was shared — with Hodgetts winning three times and the Datapost cars three times (Alan Curnow twice, Longman himself only once). Longman then decided that he needed to do much better in 1984 — and did. Having reshelled both his cars and carried out much handling development, he easily outpaced Chris Hodgetts, winning his class in six of the 11 events: no other make of car got a look-in. By consistently scoring so many points, Longman came close to winning the Championship outright — he finished second overall. Even though the Datapost effort was to be split in 1985, the RS1600i success story had further to go. Eight different cars scored points: Chris Hodgett’s car won six classes, Richard Belcher four times, and Alan Curnow’s Datapost car just once.
For Ford, this sort of consistency also helped them to win the Manufacturers’ prize — which made all the efforts worthwhile. One of the 1984 Datapost RS1600is was eventually converted to become the first of the RS Turbos, Alan Curnow’s car was sold off in the UK, and the spare car ended up racing in the Far East.