Title Sheet IMSA GTO - Personal web pages for people of Metropolia

J e f f . E l g h a n a y a n
Marco polo
m o t o r s p o r t s
Ford GTO RS 200
J e f f . E l g h a n a y a n
Marco polo
m
o t
o r
s p
o r
t s
Ford GTO RS 200
I would like to explain the distinctions between a Rally/Road spec
car, a Evolution car, and the IMSA GTO car. Below is short outline of
the car's heritage and inventory of parts & equipment as well as a video
The Rally/Road car SNº 00136 was the first one brought into the
USA by the sole Ford importer, Robert Sutherland. He showed the car
at the La Carrera rally in Mexico, where I purchased it it after that event.
The car was gone over by Sutherland and put in new condition and sold
to me as the first owner. The car is an off road vehicle and as such is not
registered for road use and therefor does not have a DMV type title, but
a manufactures statement of origin.
In a nut shell, The Rally car as it left the works was a well balanced
package. The power and dynamics of the car were well matched and
worked harmoniously. If your intention is to collect and use (which is a
rare combination) the most desirable of the Killer B RS 200's then this is the
car for you. It is very serviceable (note John Taylor's dialogue in the Rally
video) and drivable all wheel drive rally car you could ever have on the
road. The engines are still actively used in competition and road cars in
the UK and the parts are readily available from England and now even
more so in the US since Ford has gone to the world car concept. For
instance the glass and lenses for the car are interchangeable with the XR4
TI, and much of the interior trim is also (door seals ect.) Where the car
departs from the standard issue is in the technologically significant issues
of turbocharging, AWD transaxles, monocoque aluminum tub. It still it the
only mid engined all wheel drive car ever made in more than prototype
quantities. The car is very rare even though 200 were made, since so
many were lost to racing and although Ford did have at one time 200 cars,
they promptly disassembled many of the cars to use as spares to support
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the racing effort. Very few of the cars actually made it out in one piece
from the works as this car was since it was the car was used to promote
the marque in North America.
I have driven this car as well as others that I have had abroad on
numerous trips in the US and Europe and had thousands of exhilarating
and memorable trouble free trips with them. There is suitable luggage for
long weekend trips for two as well as a good workshop manual that I
have reduced to travel with the car as well as the factory tool kit which
together with a little common sense has gotten me through any road side
failures that the car has had. The ignition and engine management system
have a fail safe limp home mode that protects against electrical failures, the
fuel system has dual modular pumps, there are dual fuel injectors, dual
shocks and sufficient overkill in all the design of the car that you drive
through any situation on half of the car's potential and still outperform
most of the cars on the road. On the trip back to NY from CA when I
bought the car, I took a detour across Bear Pass from Steamboat Springs
Colorado to Cheyenne Wyoming passing all the tricked out incredulous
purpose built racing pickups which were on this off road track without
any trouble and totally to their amazement. At the lunch stop in Wyoming
where they finally caught up with me at the car wash these guys still could
not fathom why they could not catch this sports car. Back on the road, in
the middle of the night while cruising in the draft of a big Mercedes at
125mph on the California interstate, I am stopped along with the Mercedes
for speeding. I am let go with a ticket for 90 and a story about how the
Mercedes is going to be impounded because it was a gray market car. The
officer looked this car over, all the ford decals and DOT glass on it and
said good thing I was not in that fellows shoes.
Getting back to the distinctions between the Rally car and the
Evolution then IMSA car...
As soon as power was added to the road use car, the limits of the
understeering set up built in to the rally car becomes a problem. That is
why I went on to build the IMSA car with different chassis geometry to
optimize the car for road use. I would say that the Evolution cars were,
aside from the longer bore centers, basically only limited to hot rodding
the original design of the rally car and were therefore limited to the
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physical boundaries of those components. The Evolution cars could only
do so much to mask the shortcomings of the understeering brick which
quickly became short fused when pushed to these limits. It was limited to
5 minute rally crosses in it's final state. The IMSA car on the other hand
was bound only by all the original creator's imaginations to draw up fresh
parts derivative of the original design that still kept faith with 'Beast of
Boerham' look that made the RS200 the Killer of the 'Killer B's'.
Consequently, the IMSA car had its performance cake and the pleasure of
eating it too! The development of the IMSA car was the fulfillment of John
Taylor's & John Wheeler's vision & talents to make the car right for high
speed road racing from all that was learned from running the E cars.
Indeed the IMSA car is a much larger step in the evolution of the RS200
than the original Evolution cars were from the Rally spec cars. John
Wheeler penned the parameters the car needed to meet in order to make
a significant impact over the E car. He established the chassis design, ride
height, suspension design, wheel size, drive train and power output that
the rest of the engineering team worked to.
Starting with the basic car which at the higher speeds the IMSA car
is capable of lifted where it should have pressed, it dragged where it
should have slipped and it pocketed hot air where cool air was needed.
The first thing done by Mike Philbean and David Fox, who were
respectively the original aerodynamic engineers and body fabricators,
was to make up a full scale model over the original development mule
provided by Ford to test various body designs optimizing the wider and
lower profile racing tire size and lowered ride height. Mike had
developed various schemes to cure the ill manners of the basic car. After
many hours at MIRA College wind tunnel in the Midlands, Mike settled
on a design that achieved maximum down force with the least drag and
provided fresh clean air for cooling the radiators, intercooler, brakes,
alternator, engine and driver and most significantly cured a lot of the
understeer and throttle understeer that the car was crippled by. As the
power went up in an E car, it magnified this negative characteristic and
there was nothing that could be done within the confines of an basic
package to cure it. The IMSA car was not bound by this dilemma. Fox
then made the molds and produced a Kevlar body and spares.
Simultaneously, the other packages of the car as well as the chassis were
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engineered and fabricated. The basic tub was cut up and the suspension
pick ups repositioned, the drivetrain lowered (to limit the angularity at the
drive shaft CV joints, as well as lowering the cg) and a stronger all
encompassing roll cage fitted. Countless custom tanks & brackets were
fabricated with traditional British finesse that gave the car a show like
quality.
The engine was under development constantly throughout the life of the
car, since the success in controlling understeer and lift raised dramatically
the ceiling on maximum power. The car ultimately evolved from the Brian
Hart Bosch EMU car a much more stable higher output economical car
fitted with an Electomotive EMU. An Evolution car was temperamental
and short lived at 600hp so most people ran them at 450hp which was the
useful operational limit of the engine for anything beyond a 5 minute
sprint. The Bosch system is E Prom based with no sensor and mapping
adjustment for actual boost and detonation. This leads to too many
guesses, approximations and compromises to make reliable high output
without constantly blowing up motors. Other shortcomings of the system
are small throttle body and limit to fuel flow on the map scale. A Ford
Developer, Pectel Electronics, tried to address the boost mapping issue
by installing in series an electronic boost map boost tap which would vary
the mixture for boost. This was unreliable and unsuccessful and was
abandoned although David Lancaster was continuing the development of
this item. The Electromotive System solved all this and more. It had its
own data log so it freed up 8 channels on the Stack data log for chassis
dynamics logging and the engine map could be changed in seconds to
adapt to local conditions. In short, it allowed for much faster development
of the car. The adaptation of the Electromotive system from its larger
throttle body straight through to the Garretson intercooler brought the
power right up to 800hp. For IMSA where economy was as much a factor
as speed as well as longevity, I backed off the power to up to 750hp for
racing. The car managed to double the mileage of the E cars at a 200 to
300hp margin over the E cars to boot! The metal work on this installation
is impeccable. The smooth intercooler end caps and turbo inlet still air box
in polished aluminum while high pressure connections brought reliability
and consistent high output over a one hour + race that could never be
dreamed of with the Evolution parts.
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When the original car was ready, John Wheeler and John Taylor
took it for its maiden voyage at Boerham and came back with ear to ear
grins. The car was well mannered and fast. It was everything they had
hoped and planned for. The many time world rally champion and Ford
test driver Stig Blumquist was brought in to further develop the car on the
track. I had the pleasure of driving the car at that time and we tested
various combinations of aero parts and differential VC calibration with
Mike Philbean & FFD at the track and brought the understeer to where
we wanted it. The next tubular chassis was so rigid and balanced that less
than a quarter turn on a spring perch would transfer 100#. Engine tuning
was also carried out and testing at various tracks in the UK like Brands
Hatch and Snetterton were carried out before the car was shipped to the
US where further testing and racing was carried out at Mead, Mid Ohio,
Pocono, Bridgehampton, West Palm, Lime Rock, Long Beach and Del Mar
by Joe Varde (Numerous IMSA class champ), Wayne Cerbo (Northeast
SCCA Atlantic Champ) and myself (Marco Polo). At no time during this
period did anyone ever mention a comparison to an E car, the two simply
are not in the same realm. Most of the IMSA competitors compared it to a
GTP car.
All during this time, various developments further improved the car.
I always kept all the previous iterations as well as the failures with the
exception of the Bosch EMU since that had no redeeming value. Any RS
200 based around that system for racing is doomed or not serious.
This is the list of spares for the Rally car, if you are interested in the
IMSA spares I can enclose those also.
The rally car has a fine Ford grey paint with Red highlights, Recaro leather
red reclining seats, concealed front and rear radar, and excellent CD
sound system, rear TV camera and on board monitor for rear view