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Bertie Fishers ToughMac+Russell Brooks Texaco R-E-D Sierra E28JWK

52K views 94 replies 35 participants last post by  Karl Jones 
#1 ·
This is a car i remember from back in the day,any black motorsport cosworth looked the bizzo and there was somthing special about them.

R-E-D built E28JWK and Russell Brooks won the Manx International in the car back in 1990,then it left sunny Widnes and travelled over to Ireland to become a ToughMac car and win Bertie the 91 Rally of the Lakes and the 91 Ulster.

I have asked a few times on this site as to the whereabouts of this special Group A RS Cosworth and after the mid 90's the car seems to have disapeered,well not any more !!!!!!!!

i had a bloke contact me about his Cosworth rally car collection and a few of the cars he had which were built by well known Rally preparation firms but used abroad on European events or on Cherished numbers that are not on the cars now, in conversation he mentioned he had a Texaco Cosworth and i instantly thought i wonder if its E28 and thats when he told me about the car and where it was at the moment being restored back to original spec.

Now i bet your wondering where the car is ?? theres only 1 place to restore to Group A R-E-D Sierra imo and thats
































so here it is E28JWK the Texaco and ToughMac Group A Sierra Cosworth








hope this post is in the right place ?

i thought there would be a few of you lads who would like to see the car and its the original thing for sure as the same blokes who built it originally are restoring it 22 years later !!!
 
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#8 ·
well this is the interesting bit !! like i said the bloke who owns E28 used to win rallys in cosworths back in the day and still rallys nowadays.
he has had some amazing cosworths like the boland yellow wrc,a sainz repsol escort that was considered by all who had seen it to be better than the one ford owns and a few more 3dr's and escorts to boot.
he has told me its gonna get rallied but if i'm honest if a man with fat pockets made the right offer i could see the car being sold,so yes its part of a collection but the owners a buisness man and you know what they are like :laugh:

the car is being put back to original spec and that includes using the same people who supplied the car with parts bitd,the carbon floors were remade using the same mould used in 1990 for example !!
 
#13 · (Edited)
yeh tommy likes that dodgy turquoise colour on the rocker cover,i know geoff fielding used terry hoyle motors back in the early days and Hoyles still going doing the occasional bda but he's a ferrari man nowadays.

i'll ask permission off the fella who owns E28 now if its ok to mention him,tbh he was absolutely fine about me asking the fellas at R-E-D to take some pics so i went in there and mentioned a few of the fellas i know who worked there plus i had been speaking to the owner of E28 and that opened the door no probs and they were ok with it.
i suppose i'll update this post when the cars all fitted up and finished,they told me the firm who made the rally chairs and did all the decals are going to redo them.
when i was at R-E-D i spotted a well known face who worked on many of the very best cosworth rally cars for sure,see if yer can recognise him on the left below ??????

 
#17 ·
when i was there the workshops were packed with rallycars,there was also 2 bare escort cosworth shells one of them used plus a brand new shell and 2 sierra cosworth shells and one of them was brand spanking new still in ford primer with all the ford stickers intact.

yes they are busy and its nice they are prepared to rebuild the old stuff still.

now heres a question for the older members here,did Bertie only rally E28 as a white car or did he ever drive it as a black one ?? i seem to remember also it had different ToughMac decals fitted at some point.
 
#23 ·
#54 ·
nice pic this is........ http://www.rallyretro.com/detailedview.asp?PicID=18169&Event=Manx International Rally&Year=1990

if me memorys right there might of been a hoo haa at some point but that never stopped russell winning,funny story about russell is the r-e-d boys used to have to carry potatoes in the transit barges for him,can you guess why ??
To be sure that was one of the famous Manx's...

Bertie was leading that year with just a couple of stages to go, but encountered a service barge doing a three point turn across the road on a road section between stages, just around a blind bend...he had no choice but to put the car off the road, and smashed a wheel in a pretty big impact along with suspension damage.

They limped the car to the arrival of the next stage, looking to change the wheel in dead time to try and keep the lead, which they were given permission to do.
Brookes arrived next on the road and refused to start the stage until Bertie had, so he would know if he had in fact continued...however the stage commander instructed Stumpy to start the stage regardless (and under FIA regs he had to obey the instruction), but he again refused.

In the end Bertie proceeded after changing the wheel, but lost the rally to Brookes due to the damage done.
However Brookes was then excluded while in the line for the podium for failing to start the stage when instructed.


He protested the decision (think it was Neil Wilson on the notes who may have been a solicitor?)...the protest rumbled on and on as everyone gathered for the presentation at Summerland at 9pm…
...it eventually started sometime after 11pm with Brookes being booed off the stage when announced as winner while Bertie received a standing ovation for second place.


It was why 'Rallycourse' that year invented the phrase of the 'Manx tifosi' and it was when Tony Pond famously put an arm round Bertie's shoulder and told him how special the Manx was and how 'its not easy won Bertie'.

Astonishingly, between them Bertie, Billy Coleman, Kenny McKinstry and Austin MacHale never recorded a single Manx International win, despite the number of times they led the event probably being 20+ in total!

It was one of my proudest moments in all my time following rallying to shake Bertie's hand as he came off the stage that night. He accepted the decision as a perfect gentleman, despite it costing him his best chance of taking the one that always got away…

 
#25 ·
for sure !! with E28 Russell could not drive with the heated front screen no matter what as it ****** up his vision when it was clear,now i have a heated front screen in my cosworth and i got used to it but hey i'm not a british champion so Russell got his potatoes out and would rub them all over the front windows :laugh:
 
#27 · (Edited)
neale dougan is a customer of r-e-d's btw aswell as a mate of the mcraes.

the last cosworth i remember him in was a black wrc escort, R-E-D a few yrs ago rebuilt a Tony Pond Russell Brooks Safety Devices gp4 chevette to full 1981 Manx International spec for Dougan that was in hiding for many many years and not known about,wonder if Dougan had E28 all that time tucked away too,i'll have to ask....
 
#28 ·
A bit off topic but.......

Is there any word on how Neale Dougan is keeping these days, I seem to recall him having a stroke or something a few years back ?

I'm pretty sure it was a red (in colour !!) WRC Escort Cosworth he had before moving onto the Subaru.

Cheers,
David

neale dougan is a customer of r-e-d's btw aswell as a mate of the mcraes.

the last cosworth i remember him in was a black wrc escort, R-E-D did a Tony Pond Russell Brooks Safety Devices gp4 chevette for Dougan that was in hiding for many many years,wonder if Dougan had E28 all that time tucked away too,i'll have to ask....
 
#35 ·
yes the other R-E-D Texaco sierra g289 belongs to my mate phil jones who painted and repaired cars for R-E-D,that car was black originally and then was painted white plus its Colin McRaes old car too which he did the RAC Rally in,Phil looked after it for Hugh Hunter and then bought it off him.

i had a word with the owner of E28 who is Blackpool business man Graham Butler and asked where the car came from and he said it come from Cheshire so that narrows it down a bit :laugh:
 
#51 ·
#42 ·
For sure Jon............

i forgot to mention so i will now that Graham also owns D773SVW which was Berties 3dr Sierra RS Cosworth Alumac car,thats going to R-E-D too.

D773 was a popular old Cosworth rally car,does anyone remember the other very well known driver who rallied it ??
 
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