Top Gear readers have chosen their favourite Fast Ford

Fast Fords

Previous Question of the Week posts have ended with an overwhelming winner. This week couldn’t be further from that outcome, with plenty of dark horses emerging throughout the totting-up process. But a winner has emerged… sort of.

Before we discuss the victor, let’s have a look at one of the unlikely heroes mentioned and a car considered to be an Aussie legend by many: the Falcon GTHO. Dave Harris described it as “351 cubes of V8 goodness”, while David Hardy added: “My dad had a phase III. When I was seven, he traded in on a Fairlane which was factory-fitted with the then obsolete phase IV running gear.” Both, said Hardy, were fast.

Fast Fords

Naturally, there was healthy appreciation for hot Fiestas, Focuses, and Mondeos. Pikkle, for instance, said: “There’s something a bit special about the Fiesta ST MK 7. We all know that there are few greater pleasures in life than a great hot hatch, and this one ticked all the boxes. And hey, decent used models are priced around £10,000.”

Spot on, Pik. We love a tiny do-it-all vehicle here at TG, and among them, the Fiesta will remain one of the true greats. RIP lil’ fella.

One vehicle we’re glad will remain in production – for the foreseeable future at least – is the Mustang. Despite being such a popular car, there weren’t actually that many votes in its favour, and Al Kim (rightfully) struggles to understand why.

Ford RS200

“Ford is an American company and when you think of fast American cars you think of muscle cars, and when you think of muscle cars it is impossible to ignore the Ford Mustang. Besides pioneering or elaborating on many features that we associate with muscle cars today, the MK I spawned numerous fast variants – Ford sold over 72,000 of the Mach 1 alone. How’s that for a mainstream performance car?”

Ford GT40

And no, we haven’t forgotten about the Escort and Sierra Cosworth models. Both of these two came tantalisingly close to winning, but only just missed out to two homologated motorsport icons: the RS200 and the GT40. We mention both of these because, somehow, we’ve ended up with a tie this week.

Yes, neither of them is realistically attainable, but let’s face it, both are genuine blue-collar, working-class heroes who took the Blue Oval badge to the doorstep of Europe’s finest and gave them a serious pasting. They can’t be discounted simply because they’re ultra-rare. The ethos of underdog-beats-seasoned-warrior rings absolutely true with both, and isn’t that the bread and butter of any great Fast Ford?

We’ll leave the readers to continue arguing their case in the comment section over the weekend. On Monday, we’ll put forth the next Question of the Week, which revolves around arguably the greatest decade for supercars: the Noughties.

Thank you to everyone who took part this week!