RETRO BECAUSE THEY DON'T MAKE EM LIKE THEY USED TO

An identikit Ford Escort to the one that saw Frank Gardner to the British Saloon Championship in 1968? Sign us up...

- OLLIE MARRIAGE

The year is 1968. And if you’re a racing driver in the British Saloon Car Championship and your name’s not Frank Gardner, bad luck. You just lost. Because to be fast that year, only one thing would do: the Alan Mann prepped Ford Escort. Gardner won all but two of the 11 rounds, in a car in its first year of competition.

No car is fast immediately. It takes a while for engineers, mechanics and designers to learn their foibles, extract their potential. Unless you're Alan Mann. An instinctive, innovative engineer, he'd set up by himself in 1962 and two years later he’d won the contract to be Ford’s official racing partner in Europe, running everything from Mustangs and Falcons to Cortinas, GT40s and this legendary Group 5 Escort.

Group 5 was as close as things got to a no limits touring car. This car’s iconic bubble arches were crafted to cope with fatter rubber, all new multi-link rear suspension was designed, the steering column was realigned so it projected at a straighter angle and the steering rack was actually housed inside the engine crossmember. Apparently this car had a fair amount in common with the GT40s Mann also campaigned. Rounding out the radical package was a 1.8-litre Lotus Twin Cam, developing around 230bhp. The result was a small, light, well balanced and fantastically eager racing car. Painted in Mann’s iconic red and gold colours it was as sweet to look at as it was to drive. Few cars look as good in a corner as this one.

Ford supplied Alan Mann with six cars that season. At the end of the following year, four were returned, one had been converted to a different specification, and one - the famous, championship winning XOO 349F - was left with Mann. And there it remained. Alan died in 2012, but his son Henry continues to maintain and campaign the car.