Motoring’s Coupé des Grace | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

With a post-war record low number of such two-door body styles available, new car buyers have never had fewer sporting coupés and convertibles to choose from as they have now. Thankfully, my faith and sinking enthusiasm for current ‘mainstream’ cars went someway to being restored earlier in July, when not one, but two potential brand new two-door coupé models from volume vehicle producers were announced within 24 hours of one another.

Scanning the final entry list for this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard pre-event revealed this pair of promising new sporting machines, in addition to a host of as yet unknown new brands and cars with names that would guarantee a high score in a game of Scrabble.

The first of this new sporting pair on the advanced Festival of Speed entry list was the revival of the Honda Prelude coupé, the original incarnation of which was launched a quarter of a century ago back in 1979. My mother had an original first-generation Accord-based Prelude, and she really summed up the typical buyer of this stylish coupé: a respectable, middle-aged female that wanted to be seen in the ‘right’ sort of stylish car as part of the hair salon set.

Inevitably now only available in EV form, the all-new sixth-generation Prelude made its world debut at the Festival of Speed as part of First Glance presented by heycar, alongside a 1979 original. Although slightly generic and nondescript in its styling, the brand new electric Prelude nevertheless looked appealing and true to its quarter-century ancestry of sporting, low-set coupés.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of the other new ‘sporting’ machine, the new Ford Capri. Cleverly previewed ahead of its global debut here at Goodwood with a fun and imaginative ‘countdown’ teaser campaign – the Capri name stencilled into a parking bay, ‘New Capri’ sprayed onto the rear window of a Capri II, and so on, expectation levels were high for the revival of this much-loved model. In reality however, the brand new Capri is as close to being a ‘real’ Ford Capri coupé as a Volkswagen ID.5 – the German EV on which the new Ford’s platform is based.

As we should have come to expect by now, Ford is not averse to capitalising on its sporting coupé heritage by recycling popular old model names for larger five-door electric crossovers, as per the current Puma and Mustang semi-SUVs. It has now just done it again with the sacred Capri name. It would have been far less emotive if Ford had settled on another name from its extensive back catalogue, such as Consul or Corsair, but Capri? Really…!

Sure, the new 2024 EV model has a few design cues taken from the 1969 Capri coupé original, such as the ‘dog bone’ profiled front grille, long bonnet and distinctive upward curved rear side windows, but there the relationship seems to end as its design is more generically Polestar than Ford Capri. Having seen the new Ford quietly tackle the celebrated hillclimb at the Festival of Speed, I then took a moment to take a closer look at the car in the metal on the busy Ford exhibition stand. Tucked away in a dedicated glass display box on a corner of the stand, the yellow New Capri was certainly generating much interest.

I felt for the smiley Ford-branded representative looking after the car though, as the reaction of the majority of 40+ visitors that grew up with the original Capri (star of TV’s The Professionals, Minder, etc.) either shook their heads in disbelief or vocalised something less than flattering along the lines of “that’s not a real Capri!” And that’s before they were told the steep £48,000 starting price. To its credit (and possibly in anticipation of a negative reaction to naming the new car after such a hallowed model), Ford had the sense and humour to hang a pair of bright yellow furry dice from the display car’s rear view mirror, a la Del Boy’s famed Capreee Ghia of Only Fools and Horses fame! Most amusing.

Through its three previous incarnations (which should only be two really, as the final 1978-86 Capri III was only simply a facelift of the second-generation three-door Capri II of 1974), the Ford Capri was the most popular of the many mid-size family saloon-based sporting coupés of the 1960s-80s by some margin. Initially based on the Cortina 2, the Capri was successfully marketed as ‘The Car You Always Promised Yourself’ when first revealed in 1969, sharing the saloon’s humble four-cylinder 1300 and 1600 engines, plus more potent 2- and 3-litre V4 and V6 motors (with a differing range of power units available in mainland Europe for German-built models).

Deriving its name from the sun kissed Italian island in the Gulf of Naples, the Capri nomenclature was first used by Ford way back in 1952 by its prestige American Lincoln division for the two-door coupé derivative of the Lincoln Cosmopolitan. Ford GB later adopted the Capri title in 1962 for the svelte, pillarless coupé version of hideous Dagenham-made Consul Classic saloon range, with Ford of Europe reviving the Capri name in 1969 for the more familiar and popular coupé range. Ford of Australia briefly reintroduced the Capri name badge again in 1991 for the short-lived Mazda 323-based front-drive 2+2 convertible, the majority of which were sold in North America as the Mercury Capri. 

Beyond a few often ill-proportioned saloon-derived two-door coupé models still sold today by a handful of the German premium car makers (Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz), the great era of sporting coupés based on the mechanicals of more humble mid-size family saloons has sadly now passed, unlikely ever to return. Coupés – many now regarded as collectable classics such as the Opel Manta (Ascona-based), Vauxhall Calibra (Cavalier II-based), Alfa Romeo Sprint and GT/GTV (Giulietta, Sud, Giulia, and Alfetta),  Volkswagen Scirocco (Golf), Lancia Fulvia, Beta, and Fiat 124, 850 and 128 Coupés (all derived from their family saloon equivalents), Toyota Celica (Carina), Ford Mustang (Falcon), the Renault 15/17 (12) and Fuego (18), Rover 200 ‘Tomcat’, and so on, are now all increasingly distant memories.

Only time will tell if current crossover SUVs with a sportier pretention, such as the new Ford Capri, will ever achieve collectable classic status, but as a lover of ‘real’ cars, I have my doubts.  I salute Honda for returning a ‘proper’ coupé to the new car market with its new Prelude, and wish Ford well with its new Capri. As a warning to prospective new Capri buyers though, they’d best be prepared to see lots of heads shaking and be pointed and sneered at by disapproving 40+ fellow road users.