Rules, by and large, are made to be broken. Limits and lines in the sand seem to exist for the simple purpose of pushing people to go beyond them. It’s not always a bad thing; if nobody had been brave enough to sail a ship to the horizon centuries ago despite all the baseless warnings, we’d all still think that dragons existed where the sky met the water. With auto companies, defying conventional thinking is the high-risk-versus-high-reward gamble many must take.
Ford has been on the winning and losing end of this over the years. “People will never buy a station wagon pumped up to van height, despite the huge interior space.” Ford agreed with that supposed rule and lost big to the Chrysler minivans. “There’s only so slick and aero-looking you can make a family sedan and still find buyers.” The Blue Oval ignored this idiom and hit the jackpot with the Taurus.
Recently, Ford has once again been doing the equivalent of being the first to say “shit” on the radio and not get fined by the FCC. One of the most hallowed names in American cars, Mustang, has always graced two-door coupes with various gasoline engines under their long hoods. The car essentially built a whole genre called “pony cars.” Then, like Galileo risking prison for saying the world was round, Ford placed the Mustang name on an electric car. Actually, it wasn’t even a “car,” but instead a four-door SUV crossover called the Mustang Mach-E. How dare they!
Ultimately, the world did not end. There were no protests or smashing of windows and overturned, burning Mach-Es in dealership lots. Sure, there were complaints, just like people of the 1980s ripping on Ford’s “jelly bean” cars. In the end, the gamble seems to have paid off. It helped that the Mach-E is not a bad EV at all, and the performance it offers at the price is nothing to sneeze at.
Ah, but what do gamblers do? They keep going- double or nothing! Ford wasn’t done with taking on sacred sports coupe cows, and now they were going to do it across the pond.
An Unexpected Move
Once the Mustang broke sales records in America after its 1964 launch, Ford knew there was no reason that the inexpensive, simple sports coupe formula couldn’t work anywhere. The Mustang used the pedestrian Falcon as a basis, so Ford took mechanicals from the Cortina/Taunus bread-and-butter sedans to make their more European-sized sport coupe. Launched in 1968, the Capri replicated the success of the Mustang as the “car you’ve always promised yourself” and could afford. In the first two years alone, Ford sold 400,000 of this first-generation Capri.
A second-generation car in 1974 added a hatchback, smoother lines, and even an automatic transmission option. By the time of the launch of the 1978 Mark III model, sales of the aging Capri were beginning to drop but strong enough for the model to soldier on all the way to 1986 in the UK (unlike Cortinas and Escorts, most Capris were private instead of fleet buys and far more profitable for Ford).
To be honest, most Americans don’t get the Capri in the way Europeans do- particularly the British. North America did get the first two generations for the European Capri; German-built cars sold as a Mercury, but with no branding on the car itself (the US never got the Mark III). At times it was the second best-selling import in America behind the VW Beetle.
Still, it never won the hearts of the US market like the Mustang did, in the same way that the American Pony car just wasn’t right for the UK. Boy, was the Capri right for England, though.
As an American, I only know this since I lived in the UK as a car-crazed young kid at the end of the seventies, and I was aware of the impact it had on the market. Also, I couldn’t help but notice them each week in the 1978-82 British TV drama The Professionals. British law enforcement agents Ray Doyle and William Bodie each were assigned Capris (primarily third generation “S” models) and would often hoon them sideways, showing my childhood self how real men were supposed to drive cars. The crappy Torino in Starsky and Hutch (on television during this same time) just paled in comparison.
Because of this experience, I can fully understand how Brits are up in arms upon hearing that Ford is at it again putting names of fabled cars where they probably shouldn’t go. This time, there’s going to be a new Capri, and it’s not just a four-door EV crossover; it’s based on a Volkswagen platform for Chrissake. What can we do?
Lower! Longer! Well, No, We Can’t
Regardless of what we think or say, this new Capri crossover is happening, and like the Mustang Mach-E maybe it’s simply a natural evolution of the automobile that we have to accept. Still, if you’re going to call something a “Capri,” I think it needs to do justice to the name. Over the years, Ford has slapped the Capri badge onto a Fox Mustang clone in 1979 and later onto a small front-drive convertible, but both were sporty-looking propositions. This new Capri SUV is not.
Making it look more like an original Capri would work not only from a nostalgia point of view but also from the standpoint of creating what appears to be a more aggressive and exciting car. Let’s at least try.
Speaking of nostalgia, that’s always something that’s relative to personal experience, yet I think we couldn’t go wrong with using the Mark III Capri as an inspiration for a rehash of the new EV model. Even if you loved your first-generation car in the UK, you likely lusted after the last version’s squinting eyebrow over the menacing four round headlamps and ribbed taillights that look lifted from a Lotus (I know, they’re Rover SD1 bits). Besides, who wouldn’t want to make like Bodie and Doyle chasing some baddies?
Look, we’re never going to turn a rather squatty-looking crossover into something that looks like a low-slung sports coupe, but Ford seems to have gone out of their way to make it look like the polar opposite. Let’s take the nose- please. Are they trying to make it look as tall as possible? Why? You couldn’t put the headlamps any higher, and all that body color below them just creates the antithesis of the Mark III Capri’s menacing low face. Hell, they look like they even tried to simulate four headlamps with the “lighting signature” on the new car and they didn’t even bother to make them round!
I’ve added a black grille-like band up front with simulated circular four-shot lights, mounted about as low as I could without getting into where the VW MEB platform bumpers likely are. More black trim in the bumper and turn signals similar to the last “real” Capri help continue the look.
On the sides, I’ve tried to carve out as much as possible to break up the visual mass that the new Capri seems to be accentuating. Oddly enough, the soft shadow area looks a bit like the iconic dark-colored “S” decals on the beloved hot Mark III version. I hate fake rear door handles but I do like the Mach-E’s “invisible” buttons and finger tabs built into the black window frame area so I’ve used that trick here as well. Now you can’t tell from a distance if it’s a coupe or a sedan. The beltline is lowered slightly just like it is on the VW ID4, and I’ve reshaped the rear window that seemed as if it was trying to look more like a Polestar than any Capri ever made.
In back, Ford did the same thing as the front by putting the Capri taillights way up high and accentuating the height of the car, even though the generation III Capri had a vast expanse of sheet metal above the low taillights. I’ve changed that and also removed the wraparound parts of the taillights. No “real” European Capri had wraparound lamps; the wraparound lights on the EV model just make the thing look like every other crossover on the road, and Jason has already pointed out that our friends overseas see no interest in the value of side marker lights anyway. The taillamp “signature” is an interpretation of the 1978-86 car as well, and we’ve added a graphic strip to simulate the old spoiler and further break up the space.
Wait Until You See The Corvette-Cross
As much as I’d love to see a new “real” Capri in the idiom of a Toyota 86, we know that the chances of that are slim to nil. Crossovers are the future, and it pains me to say how useful they are as daily driving tools.
Hopefully, this new Capri EV will provide performance as impressive as its Mach-E cousin and gain the at least begrudging acceptance that the Mustang EV now has. It’s just a shame that Ford couldn’t have done just that much more to make the Capri at least look a bit more like a car deserving of the name.
This Is Why People Are Mad About The New Ford ‘Capri’ – The Autopian
The Reborn Ford Capri Is A Volkswagen EV That Looks Like A Polestar – The Autopian
Our Daydreaming Designer Gives Us Some Facts And One Lie About The Mercury Capri – The Autopian