"The first Ford Capri wasn’t a Capri. Not as you know it. The first Ford Capri was actually a a sleek, two door streamliner version of the odd looking Consul. it was, as Billy Bragg suggested to us a "
Ford Consul Capri
It might have looked like a spaceship
– particularly when compared to Ford UK’s standard issue cars of the time like the Anglia – but this first edition of a Ford car to carry the Capri moniker was as down-to-earth as any Dagenham dustbin.
The Consul Capri was even designed at Dagenham – by Ford artist Colin Neale. And though its drivetrain was constructed at the Essex plant – the rest of its pressed steel curves were wrought at Hailwood.
And what lovely curves they were.
This is the project that was supposed to bridge the Sputnik – obsessed late fifties and push the company’s aesthetic into the decade that swung. As it turned out the rather out-there lines and costs of production meant that when the MK 1 Capri proper emerged at the end of the sixties – it looked much more conventional – having taken its cues from the Mustang rather than various episodes of the Jetsons.
The Consul Capri was, then a bit of a design cul-de-sac – but it certainly set the aspirational tone for the upper end of the Ford UK market.
Rare as hen’s teeth these days – and something over which to ponder.
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