BLCKBOX ~ BTCC 1993 Ford Mondeo S1

Ford campaigned various iterations of the Mondeo in the British Touring Car Championship throughout most of the 1990s. This was a particularly competitive and popular era of the BTCC with the cars built to the relative liberal Super Touring regulations and by some of motorsport's finest organisations like Williams and TWR. Ahead of the 1999 season, Ford stepped up its efforts and entrusted the development and construction of the latest batch of Mondeos to Prodrive, while signing Alain Menu and Anthony Reid to drive.

Using a stripped out Mondeo road car shell as the basis, Prodrive engineers George Howard-Chappell and David Lapworth created one of the most sophisticated touring cars ever built. Mounted as far back and down as possible was a production based V6 engine. In fact, it was installed so low that the drive shafts ran over the crankcase between the two cylinder banks. Modifications to the exterior to the front splitter and the single-piece rear wing.

As mentioned earlier, the V6 was based on the production Duratec engine found in the high performance Mondeo ST and Mondeo ST200 models. Its displacement was reduced from the road car's 2.5 litre to just under 2 litre as per the regulations. Used from 1993, it produced an impressive 305 bhp by 1999. It was mated to an XTrac 306 sequential gearbox and installed transversely, virtually underneath the dashboard. Thanks to the extensive use of lightweight materials throughout the car, Prodrive's Super Touring Mondeo tipped the scales at well under 1,000 kg.