You can still buy a Focus if you just want a standard car. You can still buy a Mustang if you want a silly car.

Other than models based on motorsports, I'm not sure Ford ever produced anything very interesting. Certainly from the 80s onwards, they were just the dullest mainstream cars. Again, yes, there were Cosworths and RS200s but Capris were considered a joke at the time and the Escort XR3s and RS Turbos were garbage.

Such a sad end to a firm that built some brilliant affordable cars. They’ve slashed their offering to a few overpriced SUV’s and culled their dealer network, our local dealer has gone from being a large glitzy showroom with huge lot to being a tiny shop sized backstreet effort with 2 cars in it. Old Henry Ford must be rolling in his grave. Rumours that Ford are thinking of ending car sales in Europe are likely to come true.

Seems like quite a number of long-established manufacturers are 'pulling back' to their home markets or slowly disappearing altogether. A shame, given how much of the car market now is made up of barely different unit with as much style as a cardboard box.

I'm also amazed at how, supposedly with the drive towards much greater efficiency, cars are actually getting less, not more aerodynamic via their SUV / boxy styling, plus larger and heavier with each new generation.

Like a lot of 'modern' things, innovation and risk-taking has taken a proverbial back seat to staid copy 'n' paste jobs of whatever your rivals are doing, which mostly isn't that much either.

our local dealer has gone from being a large glitzy showroom with huge lot to being a tiny shop sized backstreet effort with 2 cars in it.

People on here are always complaining about huge dealers and their glass palaces - this should them happy!

Edited by alan1302 on 12/07/2024 at 22:41

Presumably one of the trim levels will be called the 'Pants'...

Higher or lower spec than the 'Sun'?

Fords were always a favourite with working class blokes because you could fix the things on the roadside with a fairly normal toolkit.

Older blokes will recall if your engine or rwd gearbox went kaput you could sling pretty well any used engine or gearbox from any of the range in, 1600 Capri engine gone west stick a 2 litre in it, half a days job at home...clutch slipping? whip the gearbox out, 1 hour, nip the driven plate over to the lads at the reline shop they'd rivet new linings on while you waited, £10 cash job done.

clutch slipping? whip the gearbox out, 1 hour, nip the driven plate over to the lads at the reline shop they'd rivet new linings on while you waited, £10 cash job done.

I remember doing just that with a mate called dougie in 1977. Cortina 1600 in a car park. Box off, clutch round to be relined, back on. gearbox in. on axle stands and ramps too....couple of hours at best.

So there you are sitting at the lights in your new Capri. And alongside comes a Skoda Enyaq more practical and cheaper but essentially the same car. How peed off would you be? Or a Audi Q summat, Cupra Born, VW ID whatever and so on.

It's only Unique Selling Point is it has a Capri badge. What a sad world we have now.

So there you are sitting at the lights in your new Capri. And alongside comes a Skoda Enyaq more practical and cheaper but essentially the same car. How peed off would you be? Or a Audi Q summat, Cupra Born, VW ID whatever and so on.

I imagine that most would not be in the slightest "peed off".

All it seems they care about is "new", theirs is newest and thus best.

I agree, the vast majority will neither know nor care that the new Capri is VAG under the skin.

The Ford at the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb is interesting,

A 2,000bhp Transit EV.

I trust it was more successful than the (equally powerful) Lotus Evija?

I've owned over 45 cars, the last ford I owned was a 3 litre Capri back in the 1980s.

Says it all really :)

Well it doesn't actually say much to anyone other than you, because nobody else knows why you haven't owned a Ford since then. For example the Capri might have been very unreliable, putting you right off Ford's?. Or you may simply have become a badge snob and decided Ford's were beneath you?.

The last Ford car we had was a Fusion in 2005 and that was a fantastic wee car. But the last Ford I had was a 2005 Transit Connect van I bought for my work in 2010 and only replaced in Dec 2018 following an incident on a wintery road. It was a great van though, better designed and more comfortable than the 2009 VW Caddy which I got next.

Edited by badbusdriver on 14/07/2024 at 13:02

Reliability. I've owned more Japs than you could shake a stick at, Datsun, Nissan, Toyota, Daihatsu (micro van) Honda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Suzuki. Never owned a Mazda though.

After that many cars it sounds as if you changed them due to boredom, as they wouldn't have had time to become unreliable ?

I don't understand their decision to pull their range of small to medium ICE cars so hastily, I have read that they planned to go fully electric and upmarket with collaboration with vag in Europe by 2030 but are rethinking based on slower than predicted sales of EVs. Perhaps there wasn't enough profit in that market. The new Capri is going to be over £50k! And as mentioned is a rebadged VW. The original Capri was a slightly naff poor man's coupe, but with a bit of style and performance thrown in on the higher models. There was even a 1.3 version which was hopelessly slow. They had notoriously poor grip and lethal in the wet, however ford sold bucket loads of them in the 70s as they were such good value.

Ford c*** ri....

Why?

I find it quite strange that Ford has pulled the Fiesta from sale. While VAG still seems to be able to sell 4 cars in this segment (Ibiza, Fabia, Polo & A1).

Same story with the Focus, which they are about to pull from sale too. VAG is still able to sell in this segment too (Leon, Octavia, Golf, A3, Scala).

I think you may have inadvertently included the explanation(!) in your statement and it comes down to economies of scale. The Fiesta and Focus platforms are not shared with any other manufacturers, so Ford and Ford alone has to foot the entire bill for developing new platforms.

With VAG, not only is the bill for a new platform split between the budget of four separate manufacturers, but the combined total sales for all four cars will make it much more financially viable to do so.

But also worth bearing in mind that just because the A1, Ibiza, Fabia and Polo are currently sold, that don't mean the situation will be the same at the end of each current respective models lifespan. Ford may have simply got ahead of the game.

I do wonder if it's due to the bad reputation Ford has for the 1.0 Ecoboost engines and therefore frightening potential customers away. Virtually all Fords in these 2 segments have this engine.

I don't think so. We surely know from numerous posts on the forum over the years that most people are completely oblivious to any "known issues", because most people simply don't bother (or aren't interested enough) to do some research and find out.

I don't get why they launched the new Capri, it looks nothing like a Capri. BMW and Fiat showed how to do retro cars with the new (launched in 2000) Mini & 500.

Each to their own, but I don't see this (modern cars made to look like old ones) as being a good thing. Both BMW and Fiat have painted themselves into a stylistic corner with no means to escape or move forward. Fiat have avoided the issue by basically keeping it the same, but with every new version, the Mini seems to be evolving into an ever more ridiculous looking caricature of itself. The front end of the most recent models remind me of those anti-stress toys where squeezing them makes the face mouth and eyes pop out grotesquely!.

I don't really have any problem with Ford resurrecting the Capri name. And while I don't particularly like the car, it does make some kind of sense seeing as the new Capri is a "coupe" version of the new Explorer. Also, the simple fact is it's been 38 years since the Capri was last on sale in the UK* (more than twice as long as its lifespan), maybe time to take off those rose tinted spectacles and move on..............

*It was actually withdrawn from everywhere other than the UK two years earlier.

Edited by badbusdriver on 15/07/2024 at 17:24