The Ford Escort RS 1700T was a prototype RWD car designed by Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

 in 1980 to compete in Group B

Group B

Group B was a set of regulations introduced in 1982 for competition vehicles in sportscar racing and rallying regulated by the FIA. The Group B regulations fostered some of the quickest, most powerful and sophisticated rally cars ever built. However, a series of major accidents, some fatal, were...

 rallying

Rallying

Rallying, also known as rally racing, is a form of auto racing that takes place on public or private roads with modified production or specially built road-legal cars...

. Prototypes were based on the MKIII Escort and featured a Cosworth

Cosworth

Cosworth is a high performance engineering company founded in London in 1958, specialising in engines and electronics for automobile racing , mainstream automotive and defence industries...

 developed 1.8 litre turbocharged four cylinder engine that produced over 300 bhp maximum power.

Persistent problems during the vehicle's development prompted Ford to drop plans for its production and instead begin work on an all-wheel-drive

Four Wheel Drive

The Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, more often known as Four Wheel Drive or just FWD, was founded in 1909 in Clintonville, Wisconsin, as the Badger Four-Wheel Drive Auto Company by Otto Zachow and William Besserdich.-History:...

 model to beating Audi Quattro

Audi Quattro

The Audi Quattro is a road and rally car, produced by the German automobile manufacturer Audi, now part of the Volkswagen Group. It was first shown at the 1980 Geneva Motor Show on 3 March.The word quattro is derived from the Italian word for "four"...

, designed and built from scratch, resulting in the famous RS200

Ford RS200

The Ford RS200 is a mid-engined, four-wheel drive sports car produced by Ford from 1984 to 1986. The road-going RS200 was based on Ford's Group B rally car and was designed to comply with FIA homologation regulations, which required 200 road legal versions be built...

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