5 Of The Most Tuner-Friendly Ford Models Ever Built
Sometimes stock isn't enough. You want to pop open the hood and see how much performance you can really get out of a vehicle. However, vehicle choice is just as important as picking the right parts when it comes to tuning. The more obscure a car, the harder time you'll have trying to find the correct parts. Older cars also require manual adjustments, while tinkering with software can have a huge impact on a modern vehicle.
Luckily for Ford fans, the Detroit-based company has a long history of producing powerful models that are very easy to work on. The list we've compiled contains a bunch of vehicles with either large engine bays or high-tech tuning options. Of course, they all include easy access to aftermarket parts too. You'll have hatchbacks, rally legends, offroaders, and even a muscle car to choose from when browsing through the more tunable vehicles in Ford's lineup. Here are five of the best.
Ford Bronco
The Ford Bronco is in the midst of somewhat of a renaissance, and for the most part that's down to popular actress Sydney Sweeney. On her TikTok channel, and subsequently a good chunk of Ford's promotional materials, Sweeney can be seen working on her 1969 Bronco and demonstrating just how accessible and tunable the classic utility vehicle is. It's the exact opposite of the time a famous former sportsman drove the vehicle's reputation into the ground in the mid-90s.
While she may have propelled it into mainstream culture, Sweeney isn't the first to show how repairable, customizable, and tunable the Bronco is. However, the consensus seems to be that, like Sweeney, you should opt for a classic rather than a recent model should you want one to work with. The increased simplicity of older vehicles aside, classic Broncos tend to have a more involved feeling when you're offroading in them.
Being in the spotlight has its downsides — and the price of classic Broncos has understandably increased since one got a high-profile celebrity tune-up, with some in the hundreds of thousands. However, the new models are nearing a $40,000 price point too. This is balanced out by a vastly increased supply of aftermarket parts due to the bump in interest. The Bronco was never short of aftermarket parts, so you should be truly spoiled for choice these days.
Focus ST
If you're looking for an easily tunable hot hatch with plenty of power as standard and a bit of rally pedigree to boot, then the Ford Focus ST may be just what you're looking for. It's larger than its sibling the Fiesta, and performs similarly well. So what makes it so tunable? The wide availability of aftermarket parts and kits makes it possible to do many things with the Focus ST, both powerful and silly. There are examples of people getting as much as 600 hp out of a finely tuned Ford Focus ST — though you're going to spend a lot of time in the repair shop if you want to push things that far.
Unfortunately, the Focus has been discontinued. But so has nearly every other vehicle on this list. Luckily, the second-hand market has been the go-to for tunable motors forever anyway. Kelley Blue Book puts the price of a used 2015 Ford Focus ST at just under $12,000 on average. So it may not be the cheapest thing on the market, but it's still coming in at half of the car's original MSRP and the upwards potential is phenomenal if you're happy to put the work in.
Ford Escort RS Cosworth
If you have the money for an import, then you may be able to get your hands on one of the most tunable Fords ever built. The Ford Escort RS Cosworth is a beast out of the box, with a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four engine pumping out 224 hp as standard. It doesn't take a lot of effort to get that to 400 hp, and it's also possible to push it far beyond that. There are several examples of tuners getting as much as 800 hp from a "Cossie," though this requires extensive work and is likely to cost far more than you'd spend shipping one of the classic vehicles over. As a bonus, you'll get plenty of history included with yours. Data from Bring A Trailer shows prices for these hovering around $40k.
The RS in its name stands for "Rally Sport," and alludes to the vehicle's original purpose — dominating on the rally stage. The Escort name has had more success, with the Ford Escort RS1800 nabbing World Rally Championship awards across the 1970s, amongst its many other accolades.
Fiesta ST
Tuning too often focuses on getting the maximum horsepower and torque out of an engine without too much thought about what that engine will be moving around. If you want to get the most from your efforts there, you'll want a vehicle that is small and light, while still being easily modified. If you're into Fords, that vehicle is the Fiesta ST. It's wildly popular, and agile both on and off a racetrack. Like many of its siblings, the Fiesta ST benefits from a large aftermarket scene. So you can easily get your hands on the performance parts needed to push it to its limits. It also offers a more accessible option if you don't want to strip out nearly everything stock and cram in a new intercooler, exhaust system, and just about everything else.
The Fiesta ST benefits from flash tuning, which provides adjustment for things like the throttle response, fuel delivery, and various timings. This is a simple way to make your Fiesta perform a lot better without much effort or technical know-how. There is one catch though, some of the tunings on offer may be illegal on the street. So if you want to push your Fiesta ST to the limits, you might have to find some stretches of private road or a track to play on. As the car has only recently been retired from production, relatively recent years are still available and for reasonable price points.
The Fox Body Mustang
Despite its cult status, there are some bad things to say about the Fox Body Mustang. The vehicles, which were built between 1979 and 1993, rolled off the line during a dark period in American automotive manufacturing. Emissions rules, coupled with American engineering of the time, resulted in one of the most uninspiring 'Stangs in terms of performance. They're also absolutely hideous, presenting like a coupe version of the most average 1980s sedan you can imagine.
What you can't knock the Fox Body for is its tunability, however. Its uninspiring V8 engine can be turned into something truly special with a bit of effort. The engine bay in which it sits is generously sized, so you can work on it without skinning your knuckles down to the bone or pulling off some otherworldly contortions to reach a part. There's also a huge aftermarket for the Fox Body, so parts are easy to come by, and your choices are incredibly vast. All Mustangs are inherently tunable, but this is one of the most accessible of the lot. Turn it into a dragster, a track star, or a drift car, the only limit is your imagination and, of course, local traffic laws.
Unfortunately, not everything is as it used to be. The Fox Body Mustang was dirt cheap a while back, and you'll see plenty of stories of someone nabbing one in decent condition for under $1,000. Those days are long gone, and may never return, but it is still one of the cheaper used Mustangs on the market either way.