M-Sport, the manufacturer and developer of Ford rally cars, this time treated an old Italian small car. What came out of this crazy experiment is beyond imagination.
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M-Sport is already in the process of developing new hybrid-powered Rally1 Cougars for the 2022 WRC season, yet the English team recently took the time to fulfill a special request from a customer who wanted a rally Panda.
Of course, the finished racing car is similar in appearance to the basic 45-horsepower Panda 4×4, in fact its engine and drive are from an R5 Ford Fiesta, which means a nearly 300-horsepower, 450 Nm-torque 1.6 turbo engine drives the four wheels through a five-speed sequential transmission.
To fit modern technology, the Panda’s bodywork had to be widened by 36 inches, and of course the wheel arches had to be widened to replace the 13 panda sausages with wide 18-inch wheels. Unique front and rear differentials have been designed for all-wheel drive, and Panda’s primitive dashboard has been replaced with a digital racing display. FIA-homologous roll-over tubes, racing seats with six-point belts were also fitted, and the spare wheel was placed in place of the rear seats.
“I’m impressed with what we’ve been able to achieve,” said Malcolm Wilson, M-Sport’s director. We are proud of the end result, it was a very interesting project from an engineering point of view, “he added.
With the Panda Rally, M-Sport wanted to draw attention to the opening of its new custom-built automotive division, M-Sport Special Vehicles. A new factory building and a new asphalt test track have also been built for the new department at headquarters near Cockermouth.
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