Archives

We love the English Pony…

9 Replies

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.

The Evolution of the Capri

8 Replies

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.

YouTube Preview Image

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".
YouTube Preview Image

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 YouTube Preview Image

Modern Classic: Ford Capri

7 Replies

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.

The Professionals

2 Replies

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.

YouTube Preview Image

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.

YouTube Preview Image

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.