Can we talk about the Capri in the latest issue?

I just got my hands on the latest issue of GRM and it's a great mag as usual.  What I wanted to talk about here, in a light-hearted yet all-knowing/annoying fashion, was the article on the '74 Capri.  This is a cool car!  But I'm confused; they call it a Ford, which it really was all along, but it's here in America.  Fine okay but the '74 Capri we were sold in the USA was still a mk1.  The car shown is a mk2; it's got the mk2 grill and doesn't have a trunk.  Hatchback Capri's were mk2's and mk3's.  So what's that all about?

Also the front suspension wasn't really described and there's funny things going on there; the article says that the sway bars are removed, but Capri front suspension requires that the front sway bar take longitudinal forces on from the lower control arm or else the arms can move a lot back and forth (some might say they do anyway but this would be way worse).  Also the hubs have five bolts instead of four, so, something happened there.  The rear has coil-overs shown and I don't remember reading much else about the rear suspension.  I did see a panhard rod installed on the rear axle; how is the axle located fore & aft?  Group 4 and 5 Capri's ran what I believe amounted to a really weak leaf spring + coil-overs on the rear; perhaps that's what's going on here?

Good article overall that I think would have been great with a bit more information on all of the mods done to the car.  I understand that there may not have been a lot of that provided by the owner.

My guess is that the swaybar removal required adding radius arms to take over the role of locating the LCAs. I think Nonack just did the same thing on his Merkur rally car. 

I'll direct Mike Hurst to this thread, maybe he'll want to answer your questions.

In so I can find this thread after I get my magazine.

I took a glance at the article you referred to after seeing your post.  The article is short on details other then the list of mods done to the car but nothing to show what or how things were done.  A stock Capre front suspension is pure Macpherson strut right out off the early 60's Ford Escort sold in Europe.

There were mods that Ford tuners came up with that removed the front sway bar from suspension location duties by swapping the lower control arms side-to-side and adding a pair of compression struts behind the front arms and attached to the uni-body.

As for the hubs, I would guess that the car has custom hubs and custom struts, not that hard to do really. The rear is a Ford 9 inch per the article so front hubs to match makes sense.

And the use of very soft rear springs with coil over shocks and alternate suspension links with a parhard bar was also period correct for these cars.

Just an FYI. 

I have owned and worked on some 5 Capri Mk I's and 1 Mk II. I'm currently working on a friends '74 Capri for the street. It will be a mildly modified car with a hopped up V6 and a T5 five speed.

In 1979 my wife, then a Senior in high school bought a used 1970 Capri 4-speed for her first car for $1500. She was also saving to leave Illinois and her parents after graduation and move to 'bama.  Then her muffler system fell off and it took a chunk of her savings to have a new one installed. 

So she never moved south and then I met her 5 months later.

I never showed her the article.  Forty years later she has no interest.  

I bought a 74 Capri v6 new. Definitely not a hatchback. 

another one from my past... I've owned 3 Mk1s over time...   2 2.6, one 2.8.   Wish I could find a decent shell these days... but they are hard to come by... AND they have climbed a lot in value... 

In reply to oldeskewltoy :

I have been looking for several years for the right Mk1 project... sounds like we've had the same results... prices sky high on junk, when you can find one at all!

I know where there's one lurking in a driveway that hasn't moved in months.  I may have to go knock on a door...

For Capri car hunters.  They do come up for sale on various "for sale" sites. You just have to constantly look for one and then pounce when you can.

The Mk II's while fewer in number also seem to command less money. I passed on one a couple of years ago that was a running and driving car in good condition for less than $4K. The problem was the owner had purchased this '76' Capri II from Colorado. It was missing  the required emission equipment which he couldn't find so couldn't license it in Cali. Anything newer there than 1975 has to have all of that intact and working from what he told me.

Finally got my issue, and I was really disappointed with the lack of details in the article.  The car in the photos is definitely not outwardly a 1974 (Mk1), but the article does state it was 'rebodied' after a rollover at some point.  If memory serves, Capris are unibody, so it seems unlikely that it would have been 'rebodied' as a MkII.

I would love to see an online article with more pics and details of the suspension and drivetrain mods.

In reply to Rodan :

Maybe it's like the Brits do, they treat a "reshell" like they put on a new bumper. It's the old "Yes, it's my grandfather's axe. It's on its 3rd handle and 2nd head".

Right, I was thinking the same thing; they found a roller mk2 and put good parts from the previous car into the second body.  So was the first car a USA mk1 '74 Mercury Capri?  Were they both mk2's?  I think very little changed between the mk1 and mk2 (and mk3!) that would make it hard for someone that did all of the other fab work to move things between a mk1 and mk2. 

I feel like I need to find a mk1 sooner rather than later before they all dissolve or become so expensive that the whole thing is not worth considering.  And I have nowhere to put one or work on it.

What I think everyone here is getting hung up on is that the car is listed as a '74.  Here in the states that would be a Mk I but in Europe they were already selling the Mk II's as '74's so that may be where this confusion started. 

I liked the duratec cosworth engine. Neat idea. 

In reply to jimbbski :

Thanks.  I was not aware that the MkII was a '74 model outside the US... I had a '74 Mk1 and always thought the MKII hit in '75.

pretty sure in the US, that mkI's lasted through 1975, the mkII debuted in 76.

In reply to oldeskewltoy :

Actually there were no Capris sold as "75"s. Dealers were still trying to unload their stash of "74 Mk I's so Ford held off on bringing in any Mk II's. They did later as "76's and then stopped in '77 as the dollar/mark valuation became such that the average  price of a Capri went from $3K in '72 to $6K+ by '76. When you double the price of a car in just 4 years it tends to hurt sales a bit!