Ford Sierra Azura 1.6 LX

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When Jaguar replaced the E-Type with the XJS the new car met with a wall of silence. When Ford replaced the Cortina with the Sierra there was rioting in the streets.

Killing off Britain’s best-loved saloon was never going to be easy but Ford took a giant risk as it tried to leapfrog the competition with a radically different car. Out went the familiar straight-back-and-sides of the Cortina, in came the shocking organic blob of the Sierra. While its creators called it an aeroback, a bewildered public immediately dubbed it a jellymould, the radical sloping front and bulbous hatchback rear proving too much to stomach.

Publicly Ford Europe was proud of its cutting-edge aerodynamic design, but behind closed doors management heads were rolling. Sales plummeted and Ford’s American top brass were furious that their idiot European cousins had just flushed $1.2bn down the corporate toilet.

Ford’s PR machine went into overdrive, taking out four-page ads in the national press, plastering billboards across the land, flooding toy shops with 1:36 scale Corgi models and bombarding TV viewers with 60 second ads reassuring them that the Sierra was ‘Man and Machine in Perfect Harmony’.

Slowly it all began to work, and as motoring journalists piled up the miles on the new Ford, the ugly duckling gradually transformed into a swan. ‘SIERRA SHOCK! It really is a good car’ said the cover of Car magazine in October 1982, and it certainly didn’t hurt when the V&A museum put one on display as an exemplar of modern design.

Dating from the penultimate year of production, this Sierra Azura 1.6 LX benefits from all the improvements that were made to the model over its 11-year lifespan including a 5-speed gearbox, sleeker front end styling, bigger side windows and a modernised interior. Supplied new by Bristol Street Motors of Cheltenham in August 1992, it has had just four keepers to date, the current since 2005.

All 10 slots in the service book have been stamped, the last at 96,552 miles in February 2016 when the cambelt and water pump were also renewed. Seven old MOTs further warrant the mileage of 103,724, the last having expired in February 2017 with no advisories recorded, nor has the car had any advisories in the last 10 years.

Supplied with all its original handbooks in the original Ford wallet, this is an unusually tidy and unmolested example of what is fast becoming a very rare car. Grab it while you can!