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Ford dealers in the 60's

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:44 pm
by Michael
After seeing pictures and reading about the new Capri in the early 60's My wife and I went to the San Jose, Ca. Ford dealer to check them out.
There they were very interested in selling us a new car-- The Falcon and regaled me with the soon to come Mustang. We had an Anglia with a 1500 GT engine etc and I was racing a Lotus 7 Ford so I was interested in the CAPRI!
Although they had one, it wasn't the GT and they wern't very interested in getting one to show me, THEY WANTED TO SELL ME A NEW MUSTANG!!
Later I found out that they'd make a much bigger commission with American cars and had little interest in the "little limeys"
I've since researched this extensively and found that EnFo had given up on the early Capri in that it had taken them so long to bring it up to reasonable performance with the Cosworth modified engine late in 1963 and that in a three year old body that they just wanted to sell what they had left over and get on with the Cortina and GT and it's brother the Lotus Cortina.
I later bought a used Capri GT but found that the SCCA haden't put them in their list of "approved" cars allowed to race.
My guess is that this was probably at the behest of EnFo as was the Capri's exclusion of mention in many of the sportscar magazines. The Capri and it's sister saloon the Classic was much more expensive to build than the Cortina and EnFo didnn't want anything whipping up enthusiasm in them.

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:50 pm
by IFHP
Interesting story Michael. Thanks for posting it.

Michael

My pleasure michael

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:01 pm
by Michael
I'll post pics when I make some more, My Hard disk destructed! so lost EVERYTHING!
cheers!