OLD meets new to celebrate 40 years of Ford motorsport success at the Goodwood Festival of Speed next month.
Taking centre stage will be the victorious Ford Escort driven by Gunnar Palm and Hannu Mikkola in the 1970 London– Mexico rally.
Starting from Wembley Stadium, where England won the 1966 World Cup, the race finished 16,000 miles later in Mexico City, host to the 1970 World Cup.
Now, as the England soccer team seeks to repeat 1966, Ford will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Escort's triumph by taking on the Festival's famous 1.16 mile hill climb.
It was the Escort success in 1970 - taking first, third, fifth, sixth and eighth places - that led directly to Ford launching the iconic Escort Mexico.
And to demonstrate the continued link between production and motorsport cars will be the new limited-edition Ford Focus RS500.
With a production run of just 500 cars across Europe, the high performance model features a 350PS upgraded engine and hand-applied matt black foil finish.
In May, the Focus WRC of Jari-Matti Latvala and Miikka Anttila won Rally New Zealand, providing the company with its 75th win and making Ford the most successful manufacturer in the history of the FIA World Rally Championship.
Ford's motorsport manager Gerard Quinn said: "There is a direct customer benefit that results from motorsport development helping to advance production car engineering.
“This was evident from the early days of the Ford Escort and with the Focus WRC now in its final season it is appropriate that the lessons learnt have helped to create a new icon for the road in the shape of the Focus RS500."
Both the Escort and Focus RS500 will be driven by guest drivers throughout the Goodwood Festival of Speed taking place from July 2-4.