Sure, we can argue about it, but we’re probably going to end up agreeing that the Ford Capri was the definitive car of the 1970s, in the UK, at least. The dates match; first sold in ’69, the Capri’s sales started to slump in the late seventies, though it struggled on to 1986 in the UK, two years after it has been killed off elsewhere. It had the right looks for the decade that taste forgot; the curvy, Coke-bottle styling was straight from Detroit. The Capri was intended to copy the sales success Detroit was having with the Mustang too, and create a pony car for Europe.

But the timing was way off. Just as the Capri was going on sale here, recession and spiralling oil prices were killing the US muscle car stone dead. But this just made the Capri yet more representative of its time; under that long, glam-rock bonnet, the engines and transmissions were the automotive equivalent of the three-day week. Mechanically, the Capri shared much with the Ford Cortina, described by CAR magazine as ‘a calculated attempt to sell the public ordinariness’ and ‘one of the least exciting automobiles a major British manufacturer has had the courage to launch since the middle fifties.’

The Capri didn’t improve on it much over its three generations. Depending on where and when you bought it, your Capri might have had as little as 70bhp and no more than 138bhp until 1981, when the range-topping three-litre Essex V6 was replaced with a fuel-injected, 160bhp lump. Ironically, it was even sent to the States where it sold tolerably well for while in straightened times despite – or perhaps because of — its pencil-neck engines. Leaf springs meant the ride and handling wasn’t much better, but at least it was light; seventies austerity standard equipment and a laissez-faire attitude to safety meant your Capri probably didn’t weigh much more than a tonne, flyweight by today’s standards.

A few were brave enough to give road-going Capris the go to match the show. The South Africans gave it the V8 it deserved, dropping in the 5.0-litre V8 used in the Mustang to create the sadly little-known, low-volume Perana . In the UK, in its final days, the Tickford Turbo coaxed 205bhp from the 2.8-litre V8.

But if the standard cars were so terrible, why did we love them so much? Some smart TV product placement deals helped, as did the fact that it made a wicked looking race car which drew some famous names. Hill and Surtees raced a beautiful RS2600; Lauda and Mass campaigned a RS3100 in which the latter won the ’72 European Touring Car Championship, and the Zakspeed cars based on the MkIII were all wings, skirts and scoops, looked sharp enough to draw blood and won the predecessor to the DTM in 1981.

But ultimately, we loved the Capri because it did capture a bit of the Mustang’s mojo: while it might have been less than stellar to drive, it was still a desirable, affordable blue-collar hero, and that was about all you could expect at the time.

If you count the finned and chromed Consul GT version of the Capri, our favourite Ford has had four evolutions across a life-span of some 25 years. That’s if you don’t count, of course, the various stateside Fords that have borne the noble moniker. And though there have been subtle but certain changes in design, there’s a unity too. That unity is the marketing space that the Capri has occupied. More than anything else the Capri has represented that achievable, practical desirability to which the working man is able to aspire. We dig out some gems of the visual culture of the Capri.

Consul Capri GT 1961–64

All chrome, rake, fin and Americana, the Consul Capri was a glamorous if short-lived precursor to the full-blooded Capris. Doomed to be eclipsed by the similar, toned down Mk1 versions of Ford’s mass market star the Cortina, it was slow, heavy and a little overstyled for Dagenham. Its rakishness, however, hinted at the future.

MK1 Capri 1969–73

When the first Capri was launched in 1969 at the Brussels Motor Show it was received with enthusiasm. Not wanting to exclude the mass European public, Ford covered the bases with a massive range of specs and engines, from lowly 1.3 everyman to vinyl and chrome clad GXL versions for the middle manager type. It was the GT version, however that would come closest to the aesthetic of its beefy American cousin. The ads reflected that urbane panache. You could almost smell the Brut 33.

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MK2 Capri 1973–78

By the mid-seventies the Capri had won a hardy and loyal following. Capri 2 consolidated this success and added a hatchback, a stubbier bonnet and other innovations such as reclining seats. An even broader range of spec was introduced too — as well as the cult hit the JPS special, which referred to the successful Lotus JPS F1 team. And what’s more, they harnessed the sales acumen of Jackie Stewart (and his wife) to hawk the new Capri. “Beautiful”.

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MK3 Capri 1978–87

Although the MK 3 was more of an extensive facelift rather than a fresh model, the eighties Capri was given a new lease of life in 1981 with the racy 2.8i. This was Thatcher’s Capri, even more overtly aspirational and evocative, with its contemporary signage and design details, of the decade when greed was good. Bodie helped keep the aging lotharia in front of the testosterone wracked portion of the UK public meanwhile, and various special editions helped work the Capri’s profile into the latter reaches of the decade. Though it never quite occupied the perennial place it should have done in UK car culture, there’s never been a racy, everyman GT to grace our roads. We think time just might be right to address this gaping omission.

Mk3

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Photography: Influx/Magneto

“I couldn’t afford a Mustang”, says 26-year-old Capri owner Pete Wallwork from Truro, Cornwall. I had asked the bike mechanic, BMX rider, barber and photographer the obvious question. Why would a young gun be attracted to a Dagenham bred pastiche of American Muscle from the eighties?

“I am actually really into American muscle cars, but there’s something unique about the Capri that is just as interesting, for me at least. There’s nothing like it in terms of British cars. There’s something about its shape, it’s attitude that just appeals to me.”

For a young man, Pete has surprising experience of the hero of stylish blue-collar motoring. “I bought my first Capri for £200 when I was 17. It was a 2.0 litre S and it was just rotting in someone’s front garden so I took it off his hands.” Like many young lovers of old cars, the lust for a particular flavour of steel and grease came through the family thread. “My granddad always had Fords, and was always tinkering away with bits and pieces in his yard. So it’s not surprising that I would go for something like a Capri in the end.”

Pet’s current ride, a 1986 Mk 3, has its own character in itself. Its various modifications and stylistic tweaks produce a suitably badass aspect. “ I’ve never had so many people turn their heads and take notice. When I drive through town we get a lot of attention.“

The exhaust note probably has something to do with it. “The engine is actually a ‘Pinto’ two-litre bored out to 2.1. It’s got twin 45 Webers and an upgraded ‘beast’ exhaust, too.” The result of these wholly appropriate modifications is a car that sounds properly strong and heavy, rather than all mouth-no trousers bark.

“She drives really nicely, with the combination of the engine and the rear axle from a 2.8i”. So what you see is genuine rarity in the big picture of British motoring. A mini GT that feels as if it’s meant to be driven over long distances, with real enthusiasm.

And the styling of this car reflects the visceral nature of its guts. Flared arches, clean black paintjob and slot mags complete the picture perfectly. “The car was actually originally a laser in white,”, Pete goes on, “ it came with the RS x-pack, factory produced fibreglass arches. They wed to the steel beautifully.” That grille is from an earlier version of the car too,. Pete thinks it’s from a late MK1, but can’t be sure. Opinions anyone?

But whatever the hotch-potch of the car’s elements, it retains its pure bred DNA, that of a aspirational hang-dog, an Essex reared mongrel that pops its collar and never hides its light beneath a bushel. And that’s why we like Pete’s Capri.

There are plenty of people who think that Laurie Johnson’s instantly recognisable, utterly seventies, wah-wah and brass theme tune for The Professionals was the best thing about it, and that every episode went rapidly downhill from there. But the title sequence left you in no doubt about two things. First, there was going to be action. And second, from the moment a MkI Granada — completely inexplicably — comes smashing through a plate glass window, you know the Ford Motor Company owns this show.

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I think I might have seen every episode of The Professionals. First shown between ’78 and ’83, I was just about old enough to watch the repeats in the late ‘80s before Martin Shaw, now seeing himself as a serious ac-tor, refused to let ITV show any more. Its comeback on the now-defunct Granada Plus cable channel in the late nineties unfortunately coincided with the start of my career as a freelance writer in my early twenties: it was the perfect work-displacement activity and meant a lot of missed deadlines.

But I’ve never thought it was any good. In tv-speak, The Professionals ‘jumped the shark’ in series 1, episode 1. It was always a parody of itself; you didn’t watch it for the scripts or the acting, but for the hilarious, high-camp, brain-out action. And for the Fords: Cowley’s grown-up Granada (with a telephone in it! A phone! In a car!), Doyle’s white Escort RS2000, and most of all, for the Capris.

The impressive but worryingly detailed fan site mark-1.co.uk has tracked down all the significant cars to feature in The Professionals. It records the brief dalliance with British Leyland vehicles, before the unreliability of both the cars and the company got them the boot, and that a couple of MkII Capris featured in the show’s early days, including a very cool, very rare body-kitted example on Ronal alloys.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But it’s the silver and bronze, quad-headlamp MkIIIs that CI5 agents Bodie and Doyle are most associated with, and which sealed the Capri’s reputation as the blue-collar bloke’s transport of choice. The image the Capri ended up with was a world away from the one Ford probably hoped for when it named its new coupe after a dolce vita Italian seaside resort. Bodie and Doyle epitomised an era when men were men, women were birds, bathing was optional and moisturiser unheard of. They thought nothing of spending all afternoon in the boozer before roaring off to the next cheaply-staged action scene in a Capri. The cars got plenty of camera time and spent much of it sideways, though that could only be achieved with the gratuitous use of the handbrake as even the top-spec, Essex V6–powered 3.0S mustered only 138bhp.

But it worked for Ford. The Professionals followed neatly on from The Sweeney, which finished in ’78 and which Ford had also dominated, featuring its Granadas and Cortinas. Five years of prime-time exposure kept the Capri’s sales up in the UK when they were slumping elsewhere. It was finally offed in 1984 in the other European markets but lived on for another two years here. Not only did Bodie and Doyle save the UK from Russian agents, nuclear disaster and various sniper madmen, but they saved our favourite coupe too, and for that we can almost forgive Martin Shaw’s terrible cardigans and bubble perm. Almost.

photography: James Lipman

If you’re died in the wool Capri perv you won’t need to be told the following. For you the burly MK1 homologation special will occupy that special place in your psyche representative of all things Ford that float your proletarian boat.

If on the other hand, you’re not particularly of the persuasion, here are the basics, by way of introduction to James Lipman’s lovely images of what must be the most famous Capri to roll off the lines.

The RS2600 was MK1 with a V6 2.6 litre engine. It was a homologation special and so only a round fifty were made — launched at the Swiss motor show in 1970.

It was light. The exterior shell consisted of fibreglass and thin gauge steel. Some of the windows were perspex and apparently even the paint was of a thinner mix to help shave off the ounces. Those distinctive extra flared front arches were an afterthought, included to deal with a wider front track and rubber.

The stripped down nature of the thing meant that it tipped the scales at a little under a metric tonne. It was fuel injected (a first for a production Ford) and they were relatively quick, topping out at a little over 120MPH.

They weren’t around for long because the group they were homologated for soon became a three litre class. You guessed it — enter the RS3100!

There’s loads of other fine, reductive detail that can be gleaned elsewhere, particularly the RS owners club sites etc.

Every little bit of mimicry and simulacra have been attempted, the sum of which has made originals of these cars very desirable, if not infused with a particular kind of Dagenham mysticism.

Whatever your relationship with the Ford brand and all it has represented over the years, we think you’ll agree that this is a pretty attractive-looking car.

When it comes down to it, this is about as close Britain ever came to a full-blown muscle car. It might have only produced the sort of horsepower that you entry level 2011 Golf pumps out, but hey. For a forty two year old, it’s looking sleek and sexy. Middle age can be a beautiful time.

Barry Lee, charismatic king of the UK Rallycross scene of the 1970s, used to own the garage around the corner from where I lived in East London as a kid.

There was something so completely of the time about our Barry. He was like a cross between Barry Sheene and James Hunt — but with a greasier, prole-ish edge.

He represented all that was cool and Ford-like for everyone populating either side of the A13. And this was a mile or so down the road from Dagenham — Ground zero, of course, for all things Ford.

The only surprising thing was that he never got a Brut 33 campaign like the other Barry or our ‘Henry– those other working class media heroes of the age.

Except it wasn’t that surprising really.

Because Rallycross, for all it’s wheel to wheel racing and spectacular shunts; for all its accessibility and the all round driving ability you needed to master it, never captured the glamour of the seventies in the same way as the higher end of motorsport.

Shame. because there was something uniquely appealing about a formula that pitched stripped down cars that you were used to seeing on the streets spanking around tarmac and dirt combo short track — with regular comings together and outrageous overtakes — was something that inspired boy racers from the esturine marshes of Essex to the high roads of Scotland.

But Barry Lee was a true advocate of road safety too. He came and drove his black Ford RS 2000 round our school playground to demonstrate the effectiveness of smooth driving over the screech-and-burn, Halford stick-ons style of those aforementioned boy racers.

It’s not all over for Rallycross. There’s a nascent scene all over the UK and in parts of Europe that continues to entertain and inspire — it’s just that at the moment it’s drowned out by the cacophony of other forms.

Power to its elbow.

It was an obvious choice — the definitive fast ford, one that will always be remembered as the Ferrari and Porsche-slaying slab of automotive sinew and muscle that rode to glory. And we’ll never get tired of posting onboard footage like the clip below from Le Mans, 1969.

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The thing is about the GT40 is that it looked every bit as exotic and purposeful as anything circling the Circuit De Sarthe, but that it bore the Ford badge — and as such represented the brand that more people could identify with than any other on the planet. In having such great racing success Ford made sure that motorsport was not perceived as being confined to the rarified upper stratosphere of car consumption.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Ford made a bold entrance as a works team into F1? Can you imagine the support it would inspire?

All photos Influx/Dom Romney

You can never underestimate the power of Hollywood in its ability to hijack our automotive imaginations. It must be something to do with those McQueen inspired celluloid memories.

The Mustang has always played the role of the getaway ride for anti-heroes — the primer coated maverick patrolling the dusty blacktops of America, or a shiny coated, vengeful beast, a lethal weapon in the hands of the transgressor.

And it’s perfect casting. There’s never been a ‘good’ reason to own a Mustang. These are cars with which you get down with your bad self. In a Mustang you’re meant to make like a Hollywood antihero from another time and place.

This sort of beautifully irresponsible pastiche is the latest generation of the Ford Mustangs’ entire ethos. And when you let your imagination run riot and hand it over to dedicated cowboy from Roush and Cervini’s these cars are downright decadent. They’re just the sort of motor, in other words that we love to play with.

If you’re a wool-dyed classicist it may all seem a little bit corny. But if you’re looking for ‘correctness’ then go tell it at the concours contest. If fun, on the other hand, is your thing, then come take a walk with us.

Probably the most complete conversion in the UK at the moment, this car oozes the sort of authenticity wrought on the back lots of universal studios. But don’t be fooled. This is not something dreamt up by a load of haircuts in a pitch meeting. This is all car.

Once you’ve been through the lengthy start-up sequence the box engages with a mechanically satisfying clunk. That’ll be the 5 speed short shift manual, which is augmented by an uprated flywheel and the Stage 2 clutch from Zoom. This thing bites like a mad thing and is prone to release a pleasingly controllable fishtail in each firey upshift.

The Roush supercharger generates 5psi of boost, which adds around 145 horses to the team. Then there’s an additional cold air induction system that drags even more boost into the machine, adding roughly another 17. That brings the total to around the 450–470 BHP mark, though we didn’t get her on a dyno and there was a misfire or two apparent in the upper rev range.

Remember why this car was named the Mustang in the first place? Well, this thing sounds just how we imagine the talismanic P-51 Mustang fighter sounded when it roared into a strafing run above the fields of Normandy. It barks and growls with a terrifying reverberation with all manner of blower wheeze and rumble.

Those booming sidewinder pipes responsible for the death metal howl are Cat-functional tubes from Cervini’s (the same people who make the lumps and bumps of the ‘Eleanor’ body kit).

Hidden from view meanwhile there’s a complete handling pack from Roush which includes anti-roll bars, control arm, differential torque strap and brace.

If like me, you enjoy these these arcane syllables as poetry then go nuts. But however well they trip off the tongue, on our cosy airfield we were able to flick this behemoth around with the speed and fleetfootedness of a much smaller car.

At time of writing this very car is for sale at £34,000. That’s a lot of car for the price. While I can’t imagine making a consumer decision that would bring such drama to a daily drive, if it’s a third car you’re after, one that represents no holds barred indulgence then I doubt there’s a better deal going.

You’ll never be able to convince the naysayers that buying a genuinely ridiculous Mustang like this. Just like you’ll never convince a junky that heroin isn’t a great thing to get involved in, or that the salt stoked surfer should go and move inland to improve his career prospects.

But know this. Buying into the Mustang thing is just something you do when you dare to dream Hollywood dreams.

Thanks to Martin Lilwall at Dad’s Speed Shop. If you like cars and bikes, you’ll love the coolest little shop in Worcester.

Image via Lotus

The legendary Ford Cosworth DFV (Double Four Valve) V8 engine is, by a mile, the most successful F1 racing engine of all time.

Cosworth was founded in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth to build racing engines. They started by making versions of the Ford Kent engine for use in Formula Junior but the DFV story began when new 3-litre regulations were written for F1 beginning in 1966.

Lotus boss Colin Chapman persuaded Ford’s Walter Hayes to bankroll Cosworth’s V8 development programme to the tune of £100,000 and the engine made a winning debut at the ’67 Dutch GP at Zandvoort in Jim Clark’s hands. It changed the face of F1 and, said Ken Tyrrell, was the reason the sport developed in the way that it did.

Ken wasn’t involved in F1 in ’67 but was weighing it up and became an instant DFV fan when he was flown out to that Dutch race. “It was clear that the DFV was the only engine in the race,” Tyrrell said. “Everything else was old-fashioned rubbish. You had to have one.”

Chapman fought tooth and nail to retain Cosworth’s exclusive use for Lotus but that, of course, made no commercial sense to Cosworth, or Ford, and it was a battle Chapman lost. The engine was made available to anyone who happened to drive to Cosworth’s Northampton base with a cheque for £7500 in his pocket.

“You could come away with an engine that would win you the next Grand Prix in the right hands, which was fantastic,” said Tyrrell.

The engine was introduced too late in 1967 to stop Denny Hulme winning the championship with his Brabham-Repco but from 1968 to 1982 inclusive, the DFV would be responsible for 12 of the next 15 world champions! From Clark’s Zandvoort win until 1983, when Michele Alboreto’s Tyrrell scored the DFV’s last success in Detroit, the engine won 155 grands prix.

The championship success story over those 15 years reads like a roll call of the great and the good of the sport. Graham Hill (’68), Jackie Stewart (’69) Jochen Rindt, posthumously (’70), Stewart (’71), Emerson Fittipaldi (’72), Stewart (’73), Fittipaldi (’74), James Hunt (’76), Mario Andretti (’78), Alan Jones (’80), Nelson Piquet (’81), Keke Rosberg (’82).

Fascinating BBC footage of a DFV assembly below

Click here to view the embedded video.

As for the constructors, in order, they were: Lotus, Matra, Lotus, Tyrrell, Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren, McLaren, Lotus, Williams, Brabham, Williams. The only engine to spoil the party and avert a clean sweep of the entire 15 years was Ferrari’ flat-12 that took Niki Lauda to world titles in 1975–7 and Jody Scheckter to the crown in 1979.

Many times the doom mongers forecast the end of the road for the DFV. For some, it was as early as 1970 when Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari proved quicker than Rindt’s Lotus at certain venues. Lauda’s success in the mid seventies, which would have been a hat-trick but for his fiery shunt at Nurburgring in ’76, again had so-called experts stating that a 12-cylinder was de rigueur.

Image via Ford

They might have been right had it not been for Lotus pioneering the use of ground effect. To maximise impressive downforce generated by venturi tunnels in each sidepod, you needed a narrow engine and suddenly the 90-degree Ford Cosworth V8 was a much better bet than the wider flat-12 Ferrari.

Scheckter’s ’79 triumph for Ferrari was, as much as anything, the result of a strong start, a strange best four from each half of the season championship scoring system that year and the late introduction of the superb Williams FW07, which exploited the ground effects phenomenon even better than Chapman’s Lotuses.

Renault, meanwhile, had arrived in F1 in 1977 with a turbocharged 1.5-litre V6, the equivalency formula back then. Duckworth was scathing about turbos, not considering them ‘proper’ engines but the writing was on the wall and in 1983, the year Alboreto scored that last DFV win, Nelson Piquet won the first turbocharged world title with a Brabham-BMW, pipping Alain Prost’s Renault at
the very last race.

When Cosworth started his company, he said: “We thought it must be possible to make an interesting living messing about with racing cars and engines…” With Ford’s support, he certainly wasn’t wrong!