The Ford Sierra is a large family car built by Ford Europe from 1982 until 1993. It was designed by Uwe Bahnsen, Robert Lutz and Patrick le Quément. The code used during development was "Project Toni".
Released on 21 September 1982, it replaced the Ford Cortina and Ford Taunus. Its aerodynamic styling was ahead of its time but many conservative buyers did not take fondly to the styling.
Possibly for this reason (and the fact that the smaller Escort was enjoying an increase in sales during the early 1980s), and the early lack of a saloon variant, it was mainly manufactured in Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, although Sierras were also assembled in Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, and New Zealand.
Styling
The first Ford vehicle to have the bold new "aero" look styling was the 1981 Ford Probe III concept car. The good reception this received encouraged Ford management to go ahead with a production car with styling almost as challenging. This "aero" look influenced Fords worldwide; the 1983 Ford Thunderbird in North America introduced similar rounded, flowing lines, and some other new Fords of the time adopted the look. The aerodynamic features of the Sierra were developed from those first seen in the Escort Mark III — the "Aeroback" bootlid stump was proved to reduce the drag coefficient of the bodyshell significantly, which was a class leading 0.34 at its launch,[2] though not as good as the 0.22 of the visually similar Ford Probe III concept car of the previous year.
The aerodynamic styling of the Sierra would later be seen in North America's equally revolutionary Ford Taurus.
At first, many found the design blob-like and difficult to accept after being used to the sharp-edged, straight-line styling of the Cortina, and it picked up nicknames such as "Jellymould" and "The Salesman's Spaceship" (the latter thanks to its status as a popular fleet car in the United Kingdom). Sales were slow at first. It was later in the Sierra's life that the styling began to pay off; ten years after its introduction, the Sierra's styling was not nearly as outdated as its contemporaries, even though all major competitors were newer designs, although the Sierra had been tweaked on several occasions. The most notable changes came at the start of 1987, with a major facelift the addition of a Sapphire saloon. As other manufacturers adopted similar aerodynamic styling, the Sierra looked more normal.
The revolutionary design and new name of the Cortina replacement attracted notable criticism on television from comedian Alexi Sayle, who blasted the Sierra for "not speaking English volumes" the way the Cortina had.[citation needed]
Early versions suffered from crosswind stability problems, which were addressed in 1985 with the addition of "strakes" (small spoilers), on the rear edge of the rubber seals of the rear most side windows. These shortcomings saw a lot of press attention, and contributed to early slow sales. Other rumours that the car hid major crash damage (in part true, as the new bumper design sprung back after minor impact and couldn't be "read" to interpret major damage) also harmed the car's reputation. This reached near-hysterical heights at one point with UK press making a report that Ford would reintroduce the previous Cortina model out of desperation. However, these reports were swiftly denied by Ford's overheads.
At its launch some of the Sierra's external styling differed depending on the specification. In place of the model's regular 2-bar grille, which was unpainted on the lowest specification model, the Ghia featured a narrower blanked-off grille between wider, but still inset, headlights while the front bumper was also restyled and featured combined indicator/foglight units compared to the lower specification model's slimmer but wider indicator units. The XR4i had an identical front end to the Ghia, bar the bumper which was slightly different. The rear lights of the Ghia were the same shape and layout as other models, but featured tiny horiziontals strakes on the lenses to give the impression that they were smoked. A couple of years later all the lower spec models adopting the Ghia and XR4i's front grille and headlight treatment.
1987 Facelift
In 1987 the Sierra was facelifted. The front end was completely revised, with the biggest difference seeing the indicators now positioned above the bumper and to the side of a new headlight design, and while the grille again remained blanked-off UK versions of the newly introduced saloon bodystyle, badged Sierra Sapphire, featured a unique shallow black grille between the headlights. That apart, all specifications of the Sierra now shared a common front end, compared to the car's original styling. The rear lights were slightly altered.
The XR4x4 was now based on the 5 door hatchback bodystyle and featured different front and rear body-coloured bumper styling, along with wider side rubbing strips. The RS Cosworth was now based on the newly introduced saloon bodystyle and featured another style of front bumper as well as the black grille which was only found on UK versions of the saloon bodystyle.
It was narrowly beaten to the European Car of the Year award by the Audi 100.[3]
The Sierra was Ford's answer to the similar-sized Opel Ascona, which had been launched a year earlier with front-wheel drive and a hatchback bodystyle. Unusually in its sector by that time, the Sierra was still rear-wheel drive. It was a strong competitor for other rivals of the early 1980s, including the Talbot Alpine, Peugeot 505 and Morris Ital and the Citroen BX, but later in its life it had to compete with the Austin Montego (1984), Peugeot 405 (1987) and Opel Vectra (1988).
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