Yesterday, the PDQ TVR got an OMG from 75% of you. That was one of the very few to have snuck through Customs in order to enjoy the pleasures of American macadam, and got itself a hoontastic V8 for its trouble. Today we're going to look at another foreign visitor- one that, like Maugham's banker, decided to stay.

You're no stranger (well, some of you are pretty strange) to the German Capri, in fact Murilee found a '74 Down On The Street just this past Saturday. When the Blue Oval decided to bring over that mini mustang with its European moniker intact, it made sense to give it to the then-vibrant Mercury brand as a little brother to the Cougar, as that car had become a fat cat. However, before that Capri came to America, Ford brought over a limited number of British cars under the same name.

This 1964 Ford Consul Capri is one of the few that did make the transatlantic journey. Ford of Great Britain only built about 20,000 of these coupes before discontinuing them after '64. Out of those, fewer than 1,500 made it to our shores, and estimates are that there are only about 12 still running around here!

Designed by Edsel-penner Roy Brown, the Capri offers a dramatic roofline and vestigial tailfins, both of which give it an odd three-quarter scale American look. Despite that, everything is in proportion and overall it has a quirky hipster vibe. Under the hood, things are also more demitasse than grande with a lightly breathed upon Kent cross-flow. Much like the Falcon begat the Mustang, this little Capri sprang forth from the loins of the Ford Classic, although this car's 1600-cc cross-flow motor and all-synchro four speed are from a later Cortina.

Keeping the familial trend going, this '64 has had a fresh coat of Grabber Blue, looking better here than on its originally intended Maverick. Topping that is some Von Dutch applied to the hood and a tramp stamp above the trunk lock. The wheels look like Cragar mags, which are a little out of place, but do allow for the fitting of some more modern rubber sizes than the original pizza cutter-thin rims. The steering wheel is from a later car, as are the seats, which obviously were a personal decision, but maybe one that will detract from their effort to get asking price for this fascino Ford.

That asking price is $10,000, and there's little point of reference for that. The claim of it being rarer than pullus dentitus in the states works in its favor, but there's lots of things that are rare due to a lack of desirability. Parts - especially trim and any consumables - would be tough to source, and the paint and interior decisions are kind of love-'em or leave-'em, so that would have to be factored into the equation.

Maugham postulated that the isle of Capri was so captivating that a life there, bereft of complication or stress, was the preferable choice. However, that decision was not without cost, and his bohemian banker eventually ended up badly- dying mad and destitute. Do you think that spending ten grand on this Capri would be an idyllic adventure? Or, for that price, would you too end up penniless and insane?

You decide!

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In North America, the Ford Capri was branded simply "Capri" and sold in Mercury dealerships; the later Mustang-clone Fox Capri had Mercury emblems on the car. I think sufficient time has passed since the Early Malaise Era to permit us to call this car a Ford.

This is only the second Alameda DOTS Capri, after this '72; beloved as these cars were (and are) in Europe, they never really hit it big on our side of the Atlantic. You could buy a new 1974 Capri with the 2.8 liter V6 for $3,807. Compare that to the $3,081 price tag on a 5.0 liter V8-powered '74 Grabber Maverick. Sure, the Capri handled better, but less car for more money?

Once again, the amazing Scroggs has come through with some excellent vintage racing footage, and he's also found this highly interesting article about AMG's early racing efforts for us. That's good news, because I'm off judging the Lamest Day 24 Hours Of LeMons in Ohio at the moment and may not have internet access to provide live coverage; this way you still get to see an improbable race car going for the win in a punishing endurance race:

Tech inspections start on Friday at Reno-Fernley Raceway, and racing begins at 11:00 AM Saturday. I'll be there, LeMons Supreme Court Justice Lieberman will be there, some guy from Autoblog will be there, and many of you will be there as well. Let's get a sneak preview of some of the "race cars" we'll have the pleasure of watching shed major engine components on roar around the track:

We're pretty excited about the first-ever Ford/Mercury/whatever Capri to show up to a LeMons event. Our friend Bill, of wrecked MGB-GT fame, is on the team, and their Cologne V6-powered '74 Capri is one of the most unspeakably terrible finest race cars we've ever seen. Not only that, but the team will be racing to raise funds to help a little girl who's battling leukemia. You can sign up to donate a certain amount per lap; we suggest $20 per, because, well, it's a 500-buck Crapi and is nearly certain to might blow up on the track pretty quickly. I don't want to spoil anything here, but word at LeMons HQ is that these dudes are raising the LeMons theme bar with their team costumes.



You know what's wrong with the 24 Hours Of LeMons? No Fauxrraris, that's what! Happily, Team Lemons Vice has butchered the living crap out of tastefully modified their Altamont- and Thunderhill-veteran CRX, and it looks so vile we have no words strong enough great! Here's what the team has to say about their car:

Here's some photos of the current build and the previous themes for the car. It started out as a stock 88' CRX DX with 450K+ showing on the odometer when we bought it. Clean body but had some previous front end damage and cut springs. It had a really bad front end shake which turned out to be lump where one of the front tires was beginning to separate (all were showing steel). The big homemade wing and exhaust tip provided the irony for the little "Team Size Matters" CRX. The before and after shots are from our first race at AMP in Oct 07. The wing actually produced enough down force to bend and then break the supports at the first Thunderhill race. Other than bent fenders and getting the steeing knocked way out of alignment, the only mechanical problem we've had was a 4" gash in the gas tank at AMP last May. Fortunately we'd wired up the exhaust tip that had been dragging the day before.

After three races we rebuilt it as the Slow Santas sleigh. That was our first time using the styrofoam insulation sheets, which we used all over for the current build. The sleigh was high enough to avoid contact, but we'll have to be especially careful this time.

The car is several inches shorter on the left than on the right now, so it was tricky to frame up the "italian" rear end. The body already looks straighter (which isn't saying much) and should look a lot better after this weekend. We're hoping all the foam might provide some impact cushioning should another car experience braking or steering "problems". That seems to happen a lot. The painting (with rollers) will get finished this weekend, and we will have graphics for the "gills" on the sides and the tailights across the back. We just might consider offering a body kit based on this design. A rat took up residence in the engine compartment after the last race, hence the peanuts, snails and turds on the valve cover. Other than that, the motor is totally stock.

How about a really puzzling internet meme as a LeMons car theme? Casadelshawn, formerly of the Faster Farms Chickens (whose Belvedere will be serving as the Goin' For Broken Official Pace Car), and his water-cooled-VW-fanatic henchmen will be racing a 4-door Rabbit known as the Bunny With A Pancake On Its Head.

That's right, they're turning a brutally swiss-cheesed VW Rabbit into a rolling replica of Oolong the Rabbit, complete with fur, ears, and huge foam-rubber pancake on its head. The car isn't quite, you know, done yet, but Casadelshawn assures me that they only have about "nine rats left to kill" on the project, whatever the hell that means.

The car drove under its own power for the first time a couple days ago, and supposedly it made the team members feel like this.




Then we've got the Mustard Yellow Volvo Doing 45 In The Fast Lane, formerly known as the Black Metal V8olvo. I'm not on the team any more, because I tend to make bonehead mistakes on the race track am too busy judging and doing the journalism thing, but I have been retained as the team's Artistic Consultant (and I'm sure they'll come pull out all my toenails with pliers if my innovative wiring job from last year goes up in smoke). Naturally, they'll need to bribe the bejasus out of me in order to avoid the 1,000-lap penalty with which I should hammer them just on general principle, but I'll probably let them slide due to their allowing me to inflict my really annoying theme on them. Yes, any East Bay resident can tell you all about the scourge of the Berkeley Volvo 244, painted that distinctive mustard color (which we've approximated with Caterpillar Yellow train-car paint), covered with dishwater-strength lefty bumper stickers and pootling along in the fast lane with the left blinker on… and that's what will be clogging up the track at Reno-Fernley!

I've put a lot of thought into the bumper stickers, with the vintage Mondale-Ferraro one being the real prize. Can't have anything too hippie, because hippies get high and groove on good tunes and that's too much fun for Berkeley Volvo 244 drivers… and anything too revolutionary is right out, too, because it's all about the tedium, you see. Walter Mondale, however, is about right, and did you ever see one of these cars that didn't have a FREE TIBET sticker?

As for the Eternal Left Blinker, all it took was a couple of yellow bulbs, a Chrysler turn-signal flasher, and a quick repurposing of the wiring that once operated the Yammering Swedish Skulls Of Black Metal Doom:

Trash-talking, parts-swapping, tips on judge-bribing etiquette, junkyard finds, car sales, the works- it's all there on the 24 Hours Of LeMons forums. Hoping to get behind the wheel of a hopeless junker a racin' thoroughbred at the Goin' For Broken race at Reno-Fernley in three weeks? Two teams have had members bail out, which means you'll have the opportunity to abrade the skin off your knuckles in the garage in numerous panic-stricken grimly determined all-night sessions of race-car wrenching prior to the race itself. See you there!

[24 Hours Of LeMons Forums]

What vehicles did the Pinto Engine motivate, other than the Pinto itself? A better question might be: which Ford vehicles didn't get the Pinto Engine? From its introduction in 1970 until the last Pinto-powered Ranger pickup in 2001, this engine was manufactured in displacements ranging from 1.3 to 2.5 liters and was installed in everything from the Cortina to the Aerostar. While many cursed its namesake car, even the most virulent Pinto haters were forced to admit that the engine was actually a pretty reliable powerplant. In turbocharged and intercooled 2.3 liter form, it cranked out 205 horsepower for the Mustang SVO, and those crazies at Cosworth got 224 horsepower out of a 2.0 when selling the RS500 for homologation purposes.
[Wikipedia, image source: Merkurencyclopedia]

this 1954 Lincoln Capri built to full Panamericana specs, a throwback to the era when you could utter the words "Lincoln" and "race car" in the same sentence and not confuse your listeners. A steal at $27,500! You listening, Overlords? [Craigslist Orange County; go here if ad disappears]

• • Opel Manta Rallye with 4-Speed Transmission: $3061.02
  
• • Tinted Windshield: $23.97
  
• • Sunroof: $107.95
  
• • 4-Spoke Sport Wheels: $20.40
  

  Total Price: $3213.34 ($12,479.23 in 2007 dollars)

  
  
  

  1975 Capri 2800

  
  Before you hand the Buick salesman your cash and zoom off to catch some self-indulgent Jimmy Page solos, better walk across the street to the Mercury dealership and scope out the '75 Capri. With the Capri's 2800cc V6, you got 109 horses to the Opel's 81 (and keep in mind that Ford's 302 V8 put out only 129 horsepower in '75), and parts were a lot easier to find. For a few bucks more than you'd pay for the Manta above, here's what you get with the Capri:
  
• • Capri 2800 With 4-Speed Transmission: $3105.00
  
• • Sunroof: $121.82
  
• • Decor Group (includes console, simu-leather interior, map light, etc.): $152.56
  

  Total Price: $3379.38 ($13,124.05 in 2007 dollars)

  
  So make your choice, put on your finest polyester threads, and head straight to the car-stereo place to install an 8-track player (you'll need to listen to "Trampled Underfoot"- which probably cuts off in the middle of the song on 8-track- as you head out to the Zeppelin show).
  
  

Man, Firebirds totally RAWWWK! (repeat several times in your best Cookie Monster voice for strongest effect, and if your coworkers object, why, then just flash the Devil Horns at 'em). Imagine thundering down the boulevard in a menacing 2nd-gen Firebird, complete with all the emblems, flares, tape stripes, and everything! You'll have to imagine pretty hard when this admittedly rough '74 Esprit is your starting point, of course, but look at the price: a righteous 500 dollahs! It has a "bored out" 400 (and, in a statement sure to grate like chalkboard fingernails to anyone who knows Pontiacs, it's a "big block" to boot!). It's got Flowmasters! It's got gigantic "74" emblems on every possible surface! On the minus side... well, it's hideous, plus there are some issues with the registration (the main one being that the seller has no paperwork whatsoever). It runs, though... well, it used to run, at least.

Sure, classic Detroit muscle is really fun, but what if you're more into European-style sporty cars? You know, cars that don't tend to understeer into the nearest oak when you get a little to enthusiastic on the twisties? You can stay nominally American by going with this '73 Capri as your next project. It's $100 more than the Firebird, but it actually runs so you have to pay more. It was once a V6 car, but it's had a 1600cc 4-banger dropped in. Yes, that little demon on your shoulder is hissing "Nooooo... noooo... that car would be worse than eternal damnation!" but that's just because he's unable to look past the junkyard smörgåsbord of mismatched body parts to the inner beauty that lies within. You might have a couple decades months of body work to do, of course, and it's a dead certainty there's a chance that the electrical system will have some problems. But come on- think of the Capri's storied racing history!

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I recall seeing a fair number of these things driving around back in the day, but never really had much to do with them. I had a friend who drove a Buick Skyhawk and considered the early Capri his car's main rival, for reasons presumably having something to do with the V6-ness of both cars; he composed an anti-Capri rap that he would perform any time he could get a couple of us to do the beatbox thing for him:

Drivin' down the street in my Mercury,
It's a bright yellow '73 Capri,
Anti-sway bars in the front and rear,
And a Playboy bunny hangin' from the mirror.


You may have noticed that today's DOTS uses the gallery format. There have been some requests for higher-quality images from some of you (and sometimes a car is just so pretty it hurts to put up tiny 478-pixel images of it; e.g., the MGC-GT), so I'm taking advantage of the holiday Monday to do a test run of the gallery DOTS. It's possible I might try to do some sort of hybrid in the future, when I have extra-purty photos yet still want to gibber on between the images with one of my early-morning tirades. In any case, let me know what you think by voting below.

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In 1981, the year of this ad, the car sold as the "Capri" in the States was a Mercury Fox Mustang clone. Back in the UK, however, the venerable Ford Capri was still available, and it came with a 2.8-liter V6 that gave it a not-too-bad-for-1981 0-60 time of 7.8 seconds. Check out those painfully-80s graphics! – Murilee Martin

Related:
History is Bunk: Fortune Gets Dumb [internal]

The Capri went through the same sort of bewildering rebadging/rebranding meat grinder as the Cougar; first it was a European Ford Capri, then a thinly-disguised Fox Mustang, and finally a Mazda 323-based roadster built in Australia. The '91-94 Capri was actually fairly reliable and not unattractive, but couldn't beat the Miata to the showroom floor and was shunned by American buyers in favor of the hot-selling (and rear-drive) Mazda. Chalk another one up to the marketing geniuses in Dearborn. – Murilee Martin

Mercury Capri [mercurycapri.com]

Related:
Ford CEO Alan Mulally's All About The Mercury Bland [internal]

On American shores, the Capri is one of Ford's underloved marques, although it's had a model history that's spanned Lincoln, Mercury, and its own brand that happened to be sold through Lincoln/Mercury dealerships. But on the continent, and especially in the British Isles, the Capri in Euro-ponycar form had a long and fruitful life. And as our cousin Philip once commented, "The way the bonnet comes down over the headlights makes it look a bit cross, doesn't it?" Angry wheels from a simpler time, non?

Ford Capri [Wikipedia]

Related:
Ford Sold the Renoir and the TV Set: The Reflex [Internal]