Brickyard Legends Team present :
FORD Escort 2 RS GR5 & GR5 turbo (1977-1981)

In 1977, as the DRM moved into full group 5 rules Zakspeed updated and improved its Escorts.
Most notably big aero updates that group 5 rules allowed.
Two Zakspeed cars were run all season one for Hans Heyer and one for Armin Hahne.
However BMWs new factory built 320i seemed a better car, more so in the first half of the season when the escort struggled to make minimum weight.
By round 5 of the 10 round season zakspeed had a lightweight tube frame version of the escort for Hans Heyer who did manage to win the race.
Heyer had Several pole positions with this car the rest of the year but frustratingly no other wins.

At the same time the GRAB team ran what on paper was an even more radical Escort.
Converting their car to an independent rear suspension rather than the live axel of the Zakspeed cars and using a Hewland transaxle.
The GRAB escort used engines supplied by Schitzer which did not seem to work as well as the Zakspeed engines and the car was over weight.
In the end for whatever reasons it was never really a competitive package and was abandoned in DRM after the 77 season.


For 1978 the non tube frame Zakspeed escorts seem to have been sold off as customer cars, being used in several 2 liter group 5 events around the would.
Zakspeed started the 78 DRM season with the normally aspirated tube frame escorts for Heyer and Hahne but were working hard on their answer to the new 320i turbos.
When that answer came in the form of the turbo Capri there was only one ready for Heyer so the Escorts finished out the season.
with the ex Heyer car I believe going to Mario Ketterer
With two rounds to go at the norisring the Escorts even got upgraded to the 1.4L turbo engine developed for the Capri.
In that race when the Capri had a mechanical issue the now turbo Escort of Hahne finished a fine 2nd behind Harald Ertl in his BMW 320i turbo.
After the 78 season Zakspeed obviously focused on the Capri, however the Escort turbos continued to be raced in the DRM by Zakspeed customer teams.



from 1979-81 South Africa had a short lived but radical touring car series called the manufacturers challenge.
The series allowing almost unlimited mods and an Escort was built up using parts from Zakspeed for Sarel Van der Merwe.
They fitted a 3.5L Cosworth GAA 4 cam V6 (the engine originally used it the old group2 Capri 3100s).
An online search will lead to a video of the famous (infamous) kyalami race between this car and Ian Scheckter in a big 535i BMW fitted with an M1 engine.






Physics include.
Normally aspirated DRM Div-2 and group 5 cars 1977-81
DRM Div-2 1.4L turbo cars 1977-81
South African manufacturers challenge car 1981.




- the mod is linked to GTC-TC-76 class and the Ford RS2000.

Credits :
- papag21 : 3d, mapping, file structure, skins
- kiwisteve : template, skins
- hkhoy : skins
- jandri : sounds
- greg7 : Physics

Installation instructions:
- extract folder to X:/GTL/

Enjoy