A 1987 Ford Sierra RS Cosworth has smashed through its auction estimate to sell for almost £600,000 – a world record price.

Going under the hammer on Saturday (February 25), the Cosworth – one of just 500 ‘RS500’ models converted by Aston Martin Tickford – went for £596,250, including fees. This was almost triple the auction estimate of £150,000 to £180,000, and also 30 times higher than the original £19,950 showroom price in 1987.

Sold by Silverstone Auctions at its Race Retro sale, held at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire, the company said the RS500 was ‘believed to be the best example of the ultimate 1980s Fast Ford’.

Silverstone Auctions said the high price was the ‘result of a bidding war between an online bidder in Dubai and one in the UK’.

Derived from ‘Group A’ Touring Car racing, Ford initially had to build the Sierra RS Cosworth for homologation purposes, but could then produce an upgraded ‘evolution’ model, the RS500.

This example was owned by its previous keeper for 14 years and has covered just 5,192 miles. It was also sold with a number of new, unused but original parts, with Silverstone Auctions describing the previous owner’s attention to detail as ‘forensic’. It was also given a full ‘re-commissioning’ service in 2023’.Though 400 of them are thought to still be in existence, many of them are now in collections abroad. This record figure is also significantly more than the previous record price of 132,750 paid for an RS500 Cosworth, which was paid in 2022 at another Silverstone Auctions sale.

Other noteworthy sales at the weekend included a 2010 Land Rover Defender, previously used by the late Duke of Edinburgh, which sold for £123,750, well in excess of its £50,000-£70,000 guide price.