October 2, 2026 - New Ford Rally Effort Could Signal Return of the Escort

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for October 2, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

Ford has announced that as part of its growing motorsport portfolio, it will be returning to the World Rally Championship in 2028 with a full factory team. The headline of the press release reads in part "How Rallying Is Our Road Car Future."

While Ford has pulled back from building cars in the past decade with more of a focus on crossovers and SUVs, executives have recently been hinting that they are planning to bring back more cars in the coming years, and this Rally announcement seems to reinforce that. Ford has a long history of success in rallying, particularly in the early 1970s with the Mk 1 Escort in Europe.  The technical regulations for the WRC are changing starting in 2027, and Ford will compete next year in partnership with M-Sport using a modified Fiesta Rally2 car, but is launching an all-new WRC27 car in 2028. 

What makes this potentially very interesting is that during a visit to Ford's EV development center in Long Beach, California, last spring, while we were in the design studio, there was a Mk 1 Escort parked next to one of several clay models that were still covered up during our visit. The Ford EVDC is responsible for its new Universal EV platform that will launch next year with the compact Fathom pickup, but Ford has indicated there will be several other body styles based on this architecture. In the studio, we saw covered shapes that looked like two- and three-row crossovers, but the one closest to the Escort was decidedly car-shaped. 

While the WRC27 rules no longer mandate the plug-in hybrid drivetrains that were required from 2022 to 2025, manufacturers can use hybrid or even full EV powertrains if they want, as long as it fits within the €345,000 cost cap. Right now, most manufacturers are only planning to use combustion engines with 100% sustainable fuel. Ford hasn't said what it will do with its new car, but it will likely follow this path at first but may have bodywork that looks like whatever the EVDC is cooking up. Since the UEV program is targeted at building lower-cost EVs, we could potentially see an electric WRC27 car from Ford at some future point, but if the new WRC27 car looks something like the road car, it could be a viable promotional tool regardless of the powertrain.  We're in some interesting times in the auto industry, and the return of the Escort badge on both a rally machine and a road car could be an interesting signal of where Ford is heading.

Thanks for listening.