Added: 5 years ago
From: kimosaaaabe
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  • there shit cortinas are better

  • like the front end of this particular sierra,cars like this should be put back into production

  • The 1.3 was sold in the UK from around 1982 to 1985 around the same time they axed the 3-door which I believe was sold in South America right up to the end in 1993.

  • It was the UK's 2nd best selling car in 1983, first full year on sale, over 150,000 sales much more than the Cavalier but the Cavalier outsold it in 1984 and 1985.

  • 4-9k... bloody hell!

  • Truly groundbreaking styling which still looks good today. Massively influential, although it took a while for everybody to get used to it. If I remember correctly, it sold a lot worse than the Cortina at first, and many people switched to the more conservative Vauxhall Cavalier.

  • Who thought 'WTF' when these first came out? It was such a radical shape to previous Ford's. I still prefer the Capri though !

  • @sofasport Right you are indeed. Still see the odd sierra being used as a daily driver, to be fair if you keep on top of the bodywork, they are still good for a daily car.

  • The Price!!!! Between £4-£9 K!!! What brand new, 4 door salon could you buy for that now?? And I doubt it costs that much more to make (excluding air con sat nav etc)

  • @FuggyBoards Count in inflation and you probably can buy alot more for the same money.

  • Crikey, I've not seen that advert for donkeys years!

    I've still got an old Ford Range brochure from 1983 with these in.

    Never owned one myself but always liked their styling, especially the XR4i and the RS500 of course :-D

  • You do see more sierra's than cav's. There is a Y-reg sierra biege 1.6 in my town great nick the owners had it from new.

  • "When you hear the air attack warning, you and your family must take cover..."

  • the original xr4i was the best,my uncle bought one new on a A plate,had it for 10 years and traded it in with 183,00 on it,very reliable

  • "Dar" New Ford Sierra LOL

  • a common misconception from the sort of grunting thickos who say "robin reliant" and call Rover's late '70s luxury car an "sdi" is that sierras were re-bodied cortinas. totally wrong. they used the same basic pinto engine but there the similarity ended.

    IFS, IRS, 5 speed box, none of which was on the cortina

  • "Test track"

  • It might have been aerodynamic, but it wasn't very economic, apart from the 1.6 models.

  • @Skoda130 You must have forgotten the 1.3 model? Or do you just have no knowlege on sierras because you're too busy with your skodas?

  • @cosworthben88 The 1,3 was never sold over here, so I didn't know about them. Probably a basic version for the domestic market?

  • Very clever marketing. Then futuristic styling and interior, hiding cheap and cheerful mechanicals dating back to the 1960's. Good cars though. I've had two of them.

  • i was driving one of these, best cars ever!

  • I don`t know why they sold it as a drivers car with those engines.

  • Holy shit! £4,783 to £9,034?! You can't buy a new Fiesta now for less than £11K. I know that there's been big inflation since 1982, but not on that kind of scale.

  • My first company car was a Sierra Estate in dog nob red and non electric windows.

  • @sofasport I see a Y reg Ford Cortina 1.6 GL in Red around Southport now and again, I also see a 1969/70 H reg Ford Cortina 1600E in gold around here as well.

  • Sierras rule I had 1986 1.6 lazer

  • @richardmaudsley77 Next gen Mustang is RWD is going to be 3-series size and is coming to Britain.

  • Start's around £4,500, I can see why.

  • If you had a Sierra in the 80's you were seen as pretty posh

  • the early sierras were really classy a couple of years later the quality seemed to drop

  • NAMED ONE OF MY RABBITS AFTER THIS CAR BACK IN 82 WAS MY DREAM CAR AS A KID

  • Futuristic? Hmmm. Methinks Citroen got there first 27 and 12 years before, really. :)

  • Wow, when this came out, people probably thought they would be living in space by 1985! XD

  • £9,000 would be about £25,000 today, about the same as a v6 ghia mondeo now, but consider the mondeo has a lot more than the sierra

  • 4-9k LOL, back in those days that was a heck of a lot of money. The equivalent to say... 30k today?

  • Gorgeous graphics... very futuristic

  • OH! My first car. My dad gave me his white 1.3 A' reg sierra in 1995 when i past my driving test. It blew smoke broke down every few miles, boiled like a kettle and if you wasn't careful the gas struts would fail on the 'dangerously heavy' rear hatch and would bite you in half like a fucking shark! Aha, Memory's!

  • these car look a bit like a jelly mould.

  • it this the guy off the x factor ???!!!!!

  • I had two Sierras, and both were pretty crap. This was Ford's dodgy period.

  • @whonut I have sierra 86' and that car is still going :)

  • @MoToRiStA88 Good Stuff mate!! Maybe I was unlucky.

  • ford took a gamble ni replacing a its compact sadan model in Brazil North America and Europepe with a liftback in the fall of 1982 for the firs month it semed like a bad idea but it got an audience and thrived and in all 11 years the only cahanges that were made is complimenting the range with a sadan the saphire in 1987

  • what i recall about the car it was launched in the late 70s and it was a 8os favorite the mondeo never had the prowess of the sierra whann they first came out the mondeos a good car now but the sierra was good when it came out

  • the cortina was made until 82 so the sierra wasnt launched until 82 83ish. your right tho it was a good car right from day 1 even tho sales were slow to start with.

  • this was the first ever advert, this is when it was launched mate. 1982

  • the first airbags s were fitted two the ford mondeos in 1993 this car was launched long before then

  • cant believethis cars 30 yers old

  • 24 years

  • A lovely looking car,but like all fords they don't age well.

  • It was way ahead of its time when it came out and are very relible cars they do drink quiet a bit but when the i4 and cvh engine came out it wasent as bad and better performance!

    i personaly think the sierra is one of best cars ever made! relible easy to fix! fast dont rust as near as much as cortinas capris ect..

  • i disagree with that the pinto was vastly superior to the cvh, its not a bad engine but they werent good enough for the sierra, especialy the carb version it was slow used lots of petrol and used to need the valve stem seals doing regualy. the twinkcam engine was another good 1 especialy on the motorways real lazy efortless cruiser.

  • Never driven a standard sierra, are they good? I've driven a cosworth and used to own an Xr4i

  • They are actually, the only problem I have found with the Sierra is they seem a bit 'under rubbered' and with slightly wider tyres handle nice.

  • I remember the Ford Sierra

    XR4x4i in Ford's attempt to make a high performance 4 wheel drive version of the car. Remarkably quick off the mark it had many cheaper so called hi performance cars licked!

  • I don't ever recall the Sierra ever having an Airbag fitted and I'm sure I would've know coz my dad had an 1993 'Azura' model which was one of the last ones ever made in the UK. Not unless you mean they were fitted in other markets?

    As for poeple going-on about the Sierra being a rust bucket, when my dad traded-in his Azura in 1999 there wasn't a single spot of corrorsion on it, in fact after the trade-in it was put on the forecourt the next day for the price of £4000!

  • i was also thinking they never had airbags in the uk market, i've had several sierras i still drive an xr4x4 and its utter crap that there rust buckets ALL cars rust if there not looked after the sierra is no worse than any other car, mine is 20 years old with 140tho on the clock and has no rust. if you dont like that car thats your choice but when you clearly know nothing about it why not keep your negative coments to yourselves?

  • They never had airbags at all in the UK or Europe at the time it was made.

  • What I remember about the Sierra whe it came out was how different it seemed (I was 10 at the time) but I remember being fascinated at the shape. I didn't have any appreciation of how crap it was underneath.

  • Rust buckets that would fall apart if you farted in one

  • in its day compared to other cars it was safe... and even had an airbag.

  • Isn't the voice over Patrick Allen of 'REEVES AND MORTIMER' fame?

  • death trap

  • the sierra is a death trap? dont talk stupid back when they were new they were 1 of the safest cars of the day, and i speak from experiance i was hit by a 7.5tonn lorry doing 50mph and got out without a scratch.

  • You were lucky, that car's design didnt save you thats for sure. they were built to a strict budget constructed of the cheapest available materials and through concept to manufacture this was the ethos. Traction, cornering athesion, power, rigidity were horrifying , i am a vehicletech with 19 yrs exp ...i know my job, i dont feel i was wrong in calling them 'death traps' its my opinion as a professional. They were designed to satisfy 'basic needs' for transportation nothing more.

  • que fierraso el sierra.... felicitaciones a los poseedores de esta nave

  • You seem to have ignored the 10 other models I also slagged off, which I would hardly consider a 'stock response'.

    Looks-wise I think the Allegro was ugly and I disagree that it holds up. Maybe it looked OK the way Bache penned it, but the way it was productionized was terrible.

    I would give the Maxi some props: I think the high waistline on that and the six-light glasshouse probably set more of a precedent than the Allegro ever did.

    And the Allegro wasn't a hatchback.

  • I went to the 1981 Earl's Court Motor Show (or was it 1980?) and saw the Probe concept car, a strong hint at the Sierra that would follow. These were groundbreaking cars in terms of their aerodynamic styling - this commercial seems so funny now but it is not a huge exaggeration considering what was on the market circa 1982. Ford took a huge risk and it paid off for them in Europe (much like the Taurus in the US).

    Time marches on, and by the late 1980s the Sierra had been passed by better cars.

  • the price at the end makes me laugh

  • Comment removed

  • Mamma mia, il sierrone era troppo grezzo.

  • I never liked these having been weened on cortinas- until I actually drove one. I still own one today. one of those cars that just feels "right" as soon as you sit in it

  • so that's where Mazda stole it from.....

    "Man and car in perfect harmony"...was something they said about the MX5 or 6 i think...

  • As a child of the 80s, I thought the Sierra was a work of beauty.

  • I agree - I remember Cortinas and other "square" relics of the 1970s and when the Sierra came out, it was like something from "the future".

    Like it or hate it, the Sierra was in many ways the shape of things to come. For their time (a key phrase), they were standard, if not decent, cars. A far cry from today's Mondeos yes, the Sierra was an equally far cry from the four generations of Cortinas that preceded it.

  • You must be joking! The Sierra was where the rot set in. it's when computers designed cars instead of men & we started with the hideous jellymould shape. Butt ugly! Seventies cars were the best, design-wise.

  • I don't agree at all. Computers "design" and largely engineer all modern cars and they are far better than the hack jobs of the 60s and 70s. OK, there are few notable exceptions but Ford really turned around their image in the 1980s. In Europe, it started with the Sierra and in the USA it began with the Taurus. I'm not going to argue taste but I will say that, generally speaking, 80s cars were much better than the 70s cars as far as efficiency, comfort, reliability, safety, and economy.

  • I'm not talking efficiency, comfort etc, I'm talking style. Modern cars are ALL ugly with their bulbous safety spec bumbers, scoops, humps & the awful jellymould shape. 70s cars were far more elegant, undersated & rakish. Compare the Triumph Stag with the Subaru Impreza or the Alfetta GTV with the hideous BMW Mini.

  • I think every decade has its duffers and I would hardly call these elegant or understated: Princess, Triumph TR7, Austin Allegro, Toyota Cressida, Nissan Bluebird U, Ford LTD II, Lincoln Continental Mark V, Renault 14, Rolls-Royce Camargue, Austin-Healey Sprite IV, MGB Series IV. Granted, the ones you cite are nice and the Italians did superbly that decade, but I think you're ignoring some of the horrid motors that came out in the 1970s.

  • I can't think of one beautiful modern car. But I can name endless 60s/70s cars that are pure sculpture. Jensen Interceptor, Fiat Coupe, Lancia Gamma, Lamborghini Muira etc. Look at the simple elegant lines & balance on a Lancia Monte Carlo. Today's cars are all about gaudy wings, skirts & excess. There's no finesse or delicacy.

  • @Perranporth heh he me too, I was obsessed with it for years! It still looks pretty good from some angles I think :)

  • @Perranporth As a child of 1992, i think the same to this day.

  • im surpeised people thought this was ugly, what did they think the late cortina was? If you look at cars of the 90s they all looked like sierras

  • 'it was honed by the wind' so they mean they left it in the wind to be eroded into the right shape. I havnt seen one of these on the road for years, but see many cars that are a lot older.

  • lol, epic

  • Wish I could buy a new Sierra today for those prices.

  • This was a revolutionary car in it's time. It promised to totaly change our lives and raise our standards of living. Bringing the best technology and automobilic engineering to the masses. Makinng quality motoring a reality for the 'man in the street'the Mr & Mrs Joe Bloggs & 2.4 kids family etc. Giving great performance and ergonomic style. Packed with inovations, such as a computerised dash board and clear air filteration in the cabin. It was a window into the future for British Motoring

  • My first company car was a k reg silver sierra, think it was the last year they made them, just before the mondeo. It was a decent car.

  • yay

    big up the sierra!

  • It's funny,but these were not a popular car when first introduced, the nation had a love affair with the cortina. A decent and reliable motorway muncher, nonetheless. I'm keeping mine forever

  • you're right - they were called the 'jelly mould' and were considered pretty ugly

  • Designer's dream ... but the nightmare if you want to go on a holiday as the boot was really small of it. I liked the design of the Mk1 more than of the Mk2.

  • starting from £4,783 lol

  • Sierra cosworth all the way!!!

  • A Good car.They could have sold the Telstar as a Sedan and Hatch in Australia and brought in the Sierra as their Wagon like they did over in New Zealand.

  • ugly BUT aerodynamic !!!!

  • Sierra was a good car, more of these about than MK2 Cavs!

  • Audi 100 beat Sierra to car of the year award for Europe, that was a good car too

  • These sierras are so rare nowadays thank God!!!

  • Too right mate! lol

    Look at the ugly damn thing! Err :P

  • aerodynamic?? aerodynamic my ass!

  • When it launched, it had a drag coefficient of 0.32 - only the Audi 100, launched a few months later, bettered it.

  • ...

  • Be thankful Ford Australia went to Mazda for it's Cortina replacement.This shape would have looked way out of place in Australia at the time

  • Ford have owned mazda for decades, a lot of southern hemisphere cars shared parts and factories as it was cheaper.

  • New Zealander's didn't think so - the Sierra wagon (no Telstar wagon available) was introduced here in 1984 and proved incredibly successful, to the point that for part of 1987, the Sierra wagon was New Zealand's top selling car range...

  • Excellent point, Joh. I always thought it was ironic that Ford NZ ignored the Sierra other than the wagon, and to have a single model (well, 2.0 manual and auto) in 1987 beat the entire Telstar range!

  • When this arrived, it was like the car of the future. Ford really tapped in to what people were thinking, maybe a year or two early, but better than being a year or two behind as it is today.

  • It was at the front of the pack, I agree but I hated it then & hate it now. It's ugly. I much prefered the Cortina's crisp lines

  • I didnt like these at the time, being a long time cortina fan. I remember most of the big fleets who had cortinas went over to cavaliers instead. sierras were ok, but you needed a 2.0 version for reasonable performance. cant believe I am saying this, but I always found the later montego a better driver's car

  • Good point, mrspivvy: people pooh-pooh the Austins now but Austin Rover sorted out a lot of things with the Montego toward the end of its life. Horrid looking car, but it had its up sides.

    The lack of a booted saloon hurt Sierra, I reckon. Fleets didn't know where to put the fish paste samples, hence Ascona or Cavalier did well.

  • rubbish

  • A great replacement for the Cortina and one that lasted

  • people did'nt like the rounded jelly mould shape and tended to preffer the make 2 cavalier over it at the time which is a shame but also quite ironic as theres hardly any mk2 cavs left but still plenty of sierra's

  • i had a 1986 model black in colour a great car never let me down. sadly had 2 go to the breakers yard :(

  • Hahaha it's great to see these old car ads, makes you wonder what today's cars will look like in 25 years time. Mind you, today's Fords already look shit.

  • i like 1985-1991 models.1982-1988 models.and 1982-1989

    models

  • Umm, apart from a 1987 facelift, the Sierra didn't change much in its 1982-1993 production life...

  • Isn't that all of them?

  • YES....BUT MY FAVS ARE COSWORTHS TOO

  • "designer's dream? he tried to say NIGHTMARE, I think"

    How does that work out? You cretin

  • For something that was intended to be a Ford Cortina replacement in 1982 that car must have been one hell of a revelation!!!

  • It was exactly that. The press pulled it to pieces. Most people thought it was a terrible design. Way ahead of it's time desig wise. She truly was a beautiful car.

  • Exactly - everyone rubbished the concept... and then copied it... copying is the sincerest form of flattery LOL!

  • This car was quite cheap to design because the wind didn't ask for any wages.

  • I always liked the 3-door but that is a rare thing now.

  • I've got a mint 3 door that I'm converting to 2.9 24v Cosworth with 4x4 for use on the track.

  • I remember this advert when it was first shown. God, I feel old...

  • You feel old cause you're old

  • Never seen this before. Great

  • See, Ford Sierras are F-in cool. :)

  • One of my earliest memories. Been searching for this for years. Thanks for posting!

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