Who Knew? Ford Courier Pickup Racing
I was on Jalopnik’s “Truck Yeah” sub not too long ago and came across a story on Ford Fiesta Pickup Racing in Brazil. Naturally I was curious as, 1, I didn’t know about the Fiesta Pickup, and, 2, am a sucker for weird racing.
So, naturally I went to find out more and here is what I dug up!
Turns out these “Fiesta Pickups” are actually the Brazilian Ford Courier pickup (2002 model above) which was based on the Ford Fiesta and its 1.6-liter engine.
These little front-wheel-drive trucks were in 3 different racing series for six years known as DTM Pick-Up, Formula Truck, then CTC Pick-Up and lasted from 2001 to mid-2007.
However, this should be taken with a grain of salt as this was machine translated from a Brazilian page.
It looks like fun when it lasted but the series appears to be defunct at this point. Last thing I can find on it is when it became part of Stock Car Brazil and where based on actual pickups instead of the Courier.
It did make me think of a modern equivalent with the Volkswagen Caddy as there was a racing version of it offered but it was in van form.
I wonder if someone here in the U.S. would be crazy enough to build a new “Courier” (2014 model above) but with the new EcoBoost 2.0L. I think that would be fun.
Should Ford bring the Courier back to the U.S.? Let us know in the forum.>>
Check out some Ford Courier racing videos from 2004 and 2005 here. See what a Ford Courier looked like in the early ’80s in the U.S. here.
