Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase.

Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase.

      Iconic Auctioneers

      Professional racing teams utilize advanced sim equipment, featuring top-notch computers, large displays, and comprehensive motion rigs that replicate the forces drivers face on actual tracks. For some enthusiasts (like me), it's less about the immersive experience and more about the ambiance. I would much rather indulge in my fantasies with this 1999 Ford Mondeo British Touring Car, even if it primarily functions as an oversized, expensive controller for a 25-year-old PlayStation game.

      This Mondeo has a genuine racing background, having served as a test vehicle for Ford and Prodrive's BTCC team in 1999. In the following season, while Ford’s Alain Menu was busy winning the drivers’ title, the company repurposed this outdated chassis into a simulator housed in London’s Millennium Dome. According to a listing at Iconic Auctioneers, which estimates the car's sale price to be between $13,000 and $15,500, this setup was intended to run “the PS1 TOCA racing game.” It’s worth noting that Codemasters released three TOCA games for the original PlayStation, so it's likely that this setup is aimed at either TOCA 2 or TOCA World Touring Cars. If the latter's name doesn't ring a bell, it may be better known as Jarrett & Labonte Stock Car Racing.

      The TOCA series was quite popular in its time and was relatively challenging compared to its contemporaries, featuring real tracks and damage modeling. However, it's amusing to consider this Mondeo shell being marketed as a “simulator,” given its pairing with such a basic game. I would be curious to learn how the vehicle's inputs are connected to the console, wherever it may be stored. A mobile monitor extends on an arm above the hood to display the game, while the LCD readout behind the steering wheel appears to be a sticker rather than providing any real data.

      Iconic Auctioneers

      The buyer of this car is likely to keep it as a display item, but if it were mine, I’d love to use it for playing some classic TOCA and much more. I'm not sure how practical that would be; plug-and-play racing wheels that work across many titles weren't common back then. Naturally, one would want to enjoy Gran Turismo 2, and this rig would offer even more enjoyment if it could connect with more advanced games on the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox. This era marked the true rise of sim racing.

      For now, I’ll just admire this Mondeo from a distance. Touring cars from this period were undeniably the coolest. It seemed like every manufacturer offered a model that was essentially a stripped-down, enhanced version of something available in British showrooms, from this Mondeo to the Renault Laguna, Honda Accord, Vauxhall Vectra, and even that Volvo estate from a few years earlier in the ’90s. Time machines aren’t a reality yet, but playing TOCA in this vehicle would certainly give me the feeling of stepping into one.

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Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase. Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase. Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase. Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase. Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase. Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase.

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Ford Transformed This ’90s Touring Car Icon Into a Racing Simulator. It's Now Available for Purchase.

This Ford Mondeo was converted into a sim rig after its time as a test car during the 1999 British Touring Car Championship season.