"[gallery link="file"] Any reader of a certain vintage will hold numerous ideas about the Ford Capri in their minds. If you were of the age that they were marketed in their original guise, you will think of them as "
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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