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FORD CAPRI HISTORY
It all started, like many things, with the Ford Mustang. Ford gambled correctly that the idea of a simple, stylish and inexpensive sports coupe would work as well in Europe as it had done in America, where the Mustang is still the fastest selling car of all time.
Yet the Ford Capri that emerged from Ford's Project Colt programme was not a slavish copy of the Mustang. It was a distinctly European take on a proven formula. It was sporty but not a sports car, easy to personalise with endless options and inexpensive. Like the Mustang, it was a just-about-achievable sports car for the family man. As numerous competitors demonstrated, this simple formula is remarkably easy to get wrong. Yet the Ford Capri successfully repeated the Mustang's success in the European market, remained a sales success for 20 years and became a real automative icon.
The Ford Capri was launched in 1969 and became an instant success. Ford's UK factories struggled to make enough cars, the public wowed by the evocative styling, attractive price and huge array of trim levels and options. There really was a Capri for everyone and suburban Britain revelled in the rivalry of L, X, XL and giddy GXL nomenclature. Compared to the dowdy offerings from British Leyland and Vauxhall, Ford's Capri was truly exciting. Here was a car with a whiff of exciting transatlantic glamour that looked like a Jensen Interceptor or Aston Martin yet cost barely more than a Ford Escort.
Ford continued to develop the Ford Capri Mk1 by adding more powerful V4 and V6 engines. These more powerful cars helped the Capri improve its sales performance in Europe, where buyers were less enamoured of the US-influenced styling. Ford also entered the car for racing and rallying in a bid to improve the Capri's image. It worked.
In 1974 Ford replaced the original Ford Capri MK1 with the Capri Mark 2. The new car featured a hatchback - radical for the time - and smoother styling, but without losing the distinctive Ford Capri profile. The Ford Capri Mk2 lasted just three years but has the distinction of introducing the Ghia badge to a status-hungry public. The brand of the once-illustrious Italian styling house graced top-spec versions of all Fords from the mid 1970s and heralded in a new era of one-up-manship that had begun with the Ford Cortina 'E' trim. It worked miracles for Ford sales.
The Ford Capri Mark 3 was launched in 1977. Clearly evolved from the Mk1 and Mark 2 Capris, the Ford Capri Mark 3 was altogether more sophisticated and grown up. The Ford marketing machine did a remarkable job of keeping what was by now a very old and dated design at the top of the sales charts, particularly in Britain. Chief amongst its coups was TV exposure in The Professionals, Bodie and Doyle regularly busting criminals and cardboard boxes across London every Saturday evening. Ford's coup was at British Leyland's expense - the British company passed up the opportunity to see Bodie and Doyle executing handbrake turns in Triumph Dolomites because of the expense.
Ford capitalised on this new bad-boy image by creating the Capri S, a high-performance Recaro-seated version of the car with evocative side stripes. Rarely had a mass-market coupe looked quite so good.
Throughout the 1980s Ford continued to develop the Ford Capri, creating numerous special editions such as the Ford Capri Calypso, Laser and Cabaret. As the decade wore on these began to look increasingly desperate until Ford enlisted the help of its Special Vehicle Engineering (SVE). Right at the end of the car's remarkable life, when it was really only selling well in the UK, the SVE makeover created the ultimate Ford Capri. Dropping the 2.8 litre V6 'Cologne' engine into the car and fiddling with the chassis created the Ford Capri 2.8i and subsequently the limited edition Ford Capri 280 'Brooklands'. These were true sub-10 seconds performance cars for the masses that out-shone rivals such as the Opel Manta.
The Ford Capri was phased out in 1986. Despite its late-life flourish, by the end the Ford Capri had become an anacroynism in an era of small family hot hatches. Where the VW Golf GTI and Ford's own XR3 and XR4 were hip, happening cars for the young, the Ford Capri seemed like the product of another era. All good things come to an end of course and thankfully Ford stopped production when the car had never been better.
Ford effectively exited the mid-size coupe market when it axed the Ford Capri. It has filled the niche with other generally excellent family performance cars including the Ford Escort XR3, Ford Sierra XR4 and Cosworth and lately the fine Ford Focus ST. There have been doomed attempts to reintroduce a Ford Capri for the masses but the unfortunately named Ford Probe and ungainly Ford Cougar, both excellent cars, never caught on. Now, 23 years after the last Ford Capri left the factory and with interest in these cars growing, perhaps the time is ripe for another Ford Capri.
A large part of what made the Ford Capri so successful was advertising. The Capri marketing campaign is one of the first and best examples of American advertising theory being imported into Europe on a major scale. The Ford Capri was 'the car you always promised yourself', a strapline that at once implied a car that was simultaneously within reach but almost unattainable.
