- Classic Fords
- Ford Focus RS
- Great Lamborghinis
- Landmark cars
- Powerful Porsches

Fast Fords occupy a special place in the heart of the motoring public. Maybe it's due to folk memories of Roger Clark sliding his way around Welsh forests in the Ford Escort or maybe it was The Professionals TV series with the Capri 3 litre, but the affection still lingers. Amazingly, when Ford introduces a new RS model across Europe, it normally expects 80% - 90% of them to be bought in the UK.

So why are we still in love with anything fast wearing a Blue Oval? It all started in the 1960s, when Ford got serious about motorsport. It simultaneously involved Lola to build it the Le Mans-winning GT40, and Lotus to engineer the circuit-racing Lotus Cortina.

At the time both racing series were huge - BBC News would carry hourly updates on Le Mans (after victories in the fifties by Jaguar and Aston Martin, it was seen as a domestic race that was accidentally held in France). Meanwhile, Formula One drivers like Jim Clark would race saloon cars in front of huge crowds - it would be hard to imagine Lewis Hamilton in a BTCC Vectra today. Then Ford went rallying with spectacular success. The Escort cleaned up on the RAC Rally year after year, and the RAC was the biggest spectator event in the UK at the time.

So Ford, a company that did not actually make a road-going sports car (apart from a handful of converted GT 40s), became synonymous with racing and rallying. Of course, all that was so long ago that it seems strange there should still be any benefit today. In fact, Ford benefits from the '30 year' rule of classic cars. People buy the classic cars they dreamed about in the youth - but it takes them 30 years to be rich enough to be able to do so. Hence kids who grew up seeing rallying Escorts in the seventies can now afford to pay amazing prices for mint RS 1800 examples - would you believe it is possible to pay over £20,000 for a mint 1970s Escort RS? As for ones with a rallying history, don't ask - an ex-Hannu Mikkola car would be well into six figures.

Not that Ford was thinking about future classic cars all those years ago. What is was doing was building a ladder for each model which led upwards to ever-more desirable versions. In the original Escort range, there was the basic (in the true sense of the word) 1100, then the 1300, then the 1300 GT (with just a hint of sporting possibilities), the Mexico and finally the fire-breathing RS 1600. Every version benefitted from the fairy-dust sprinkled by the RS 1600, as they all looked fairly similar apart from wider wheels and different front bumpers. In fact the RS 1600 was built using a specially strengthened bodyshell in an entirely different factory, but that was not the point: everyone thought they were buying into a rally-winning pedigree.

Ford also built the Capri - 'the car you always promised yourself' according to the cheesy, but hugely successful advertising slogan. The Capri was hardly a genuine Grand Tourer - its chassis was a collection of bits from the Escort and Cortina, but it looked a million dollars.

When fitted with the 3.0 V6 it also went pretty well: 120 mph in the early 70s was considered serious performance. With models like the Capri, Ford became the quintessential British car company despite its American roots. Its cars were less sophisticated than those tricksy Alfa Romeos and Lancias, but they were tough, no-nonsense products that could actually show those Continentals a thing or two - pretty much how British people thought of themselves at the time.

Ford has been careful never to lose that performance pedigree so assiduously built up in the 60s and 70s. Whether it was the Sierra Cosworth of the 1980s or the Escort Cosworth of the 1990s, there has usually been one Ford to get small boys excited and grown men reaching for their wallets. And in case you thought that hedonistic era had finally come to an end, fear not. The 2009 Focus RS is said by the few insiders who have driven it to be easily the best fast Ford yet. Small boys will be putting pictures of it on their walls and making it a very expensive classic sometime around 2040...