In an attempt to mesh European styling and handling with a 2.3-liter powertrain sourced from the Mustang SVO, the infamous Merkur XR4TI was born.
This particular example, driven by The Smoking Tire’s Matt Farah, has been restored and modified to deliver more boost and an extra 50 HP or so, according to the owner. Otherwise, this is a mostly stock XR4TI.
Despite struggling a bit with the gimmicky transmission, Farah didn’t exactly go on to hate it, even though he started out the review by bashing it for the way it was marketed back when it first came out.
The Merkur XR4TI pretty much failed as a project. It was sold only from 1985 up until 1989 and after that it was discontinued due to poor sales mostly. Of course, European readers will instantly recognize this thing as a Ford Sierra, which was an extremely popular car.
Overall, there are some negatives to owning an old XR4TI if you like spirited driving (like body roll), although this one in particular was sufficiently quick and in very good condition.