The new Ford Capri had you thinking that the original was good
The use of the Capri name for Ford's electric SUV had everyone up in arms, but their memories of the original are rose tinted
You might have noticed (or tried to forget) that the Ford Capri is back. Except it isn’t, not as we remember. The Capri most people recall was a no-nonsense coupe powered by a slogging great V6, its manners as hairy as the driver’s chest, its whole bearing the metallic manifestation of steak ‘n’ chips with a chaser of cheap Scotch. If ever a car had a smell, the Capri’s was fags and Brut and petrol with extra lead in it.
But the reborn Capri is… not that at all. It’s an electric SUV in the inexplicably fashionable slant-backed ‘coupe’ style and sister to the Euro-market Explorer, itself a Ford adaptation of the underdone underparts from the Volkswagen ID family. When Ford announced the new Capri, world events in the same week – minor stuff like England reaching the Euro 2024 final and the attempted assassination of a former US president – took a back seat as car people thundered across the internet to express their fury at the decision to use such a sacred name on such an inappropriate car.
But I’m not so sure. The big beef seems to be that the new Capri isn’t a coupe, but there’s a very simple reason for this: no one wants coupes any more. Remember when car showrooms were crawling with two- and three-door cars built to a sleek and sporty brief? Calibra, Celica, Cougar, Corrado, Civic coupe... and that’s just the ones that started with a C. They’re all dead now.
Coupés were fashion items and fashion has moved on, largely to SUVs. Which is why the new Capri is one. You can wail at Ford but ask yourself this: if the new Capri had been a petrol-powered coupe, would you have bought one? The mythical modern Capri coupe is like the Church of England and opera; a lot of people like the idea that it exists without wanting to put any of their own money into it. And for a car maker, that’s not good business.
Outside of posho German companies, only the Japanese car makers persist with coupes, but the latest Z-car doesn’t come to Europe, the GR86 and Supra are finally dead, the BMW 2-series is barely clinging on and Honda isn't planning for new Prelude sales beyond four figures in Europe. Our continent has fallen out of love with the coupe and Ford isn’t going to spend hundreds of millions tooling up for a car of a type that no one buys any more.
Let’s not get carried away with this sacred status that’s been suddenly conferred on the old Capri either, because for much of its life the Capri was, frankly, crap. We remember it now as a barrel-chested 2.8 injection or 3.0S, but throughout its three-generation lifespan a great many more Capris ran grumbly fours in 2.0, 1.6 and, worst of all, 1.3-litre capacities. And they were fitted to an adapted Cortina chassis with a leaf-sprung rear axle.
For a time the Capri offset its path-of-least-expense engineering by looking groovy, but this power wore off and by the 1980s it was increasingly seen as an embarrassment. In fact, by late 1984 left-hand-drive production had ceased and for the last two years of its life the sad, unfashionable coupe was made only as a right-hooker, exclusively for a shrinking band of buyers in the UK and Ireland. The runout 280 model was meant to be called the Capri 500 after the total production number, but Ford misread the room, built over 1000, and found itself still trying to get rid of the damn things at a discount over a year after production ended.
Don’t get me wrong, I find a late model Brooklands Green 2.8i an appealing thing, but let’s not pretend the Capri in its day triggered raw lust and admiration. Thing is, questionable image or not, people do recognise and remember the Capri name. Which means, whatever the car it’s stuck to these days, Ford can get a ton of free publicity for it. And if you think it’s all bad publicity, looking outside of the car-o-sphere at the time would have revealed how the real world treated this news.
Oh wow, it said without rancour, the Ford Capri is back. Companies pay millions for that kind of cut-through. Ford got it for nowt with some clever recycling of a badge from its history, even if, as it turns out, that didn’t translate to enough sales to keep the factory running at capacity.
History is the best weapon the Euro car makers have to fend off the growing might of the Chinese companies. BYD does not have a back catalogue of recognisable names and shapes stretching back to the 1960s. Renault does, which is why the 4 and 5 are back. BMW does, which is why its next-generation model range is called the Neue Klasse, just as it was 60 years ago. And Ford does, starting with an easily recognisable household name like Capri. Besides, it’s their badge and they can do with it as they damn well please.
