Capri 2.0 GL

The Car You Always Promised Yourself was the famous advertising slogan from Ford.

I was once the proud owner of a MKIII 2.0GL Capri that I bought for the princely sum of £150, and what a bargain this car was!. It was used almost daily for three years and I wish I had it now.

And although I also bought a sportier 2.0S in pale metallic green, I did not take it through the MOT test and sold it on straight away.

Naturally I liked the shape of the car being like a poor mans 1974 Aston Martin DBS, if you squinted a bit, well, OK then, a lot!
The colour was a pale blue metallic that incidentally was the same colour as my MKIII Mondeo that I recently part exchanged for a Rover 25.
The inside was very good with the slight bucket seats comfortable to sit in even on long journeys and all the usual controls were within easy reach. And I just loved having the sunroof open on very hot days.
How many cars of this size have a sunroof these days, most are fitted with air conditioning that works best when all the windows are closed.

Any faults I found on first purchase were very minor, a few dents here and there that were easily knocked out, and some light scratches on the paintwork. Inside, a bolt was missing from the base of the drivers seat causing the seat to rock a bit. How the bolt came to be missing remains a mystery.

The car pulled to the left on braking, which was cured after resetting the tracking, cost? absolutely nil.

When going home from work one evening, I was just about to go across a junction on a country lane and heard a 'pop' noise with a sudden loss of power. I knew straight away this was the camshaft timing belt that had just snapped. A good thing about this car is that pistons DO NOT hit the valves in the cylinder head when the belt snaps, so there is not a massive repair bill. A replacement timing belt was only £15, and a couple of hours later after resetting the timing, the car was running again.

These cars have simple mechanics and are so easy to work on if anything needs doing by the owner, not packed with electronic sensors all over the place like todays modern cars.

Very few faults to deal with, even replaced a steering rack one year, that cost a whopping £15 for an exchange unit and a few hours of my time.
Other things were a door not opening from inside, fixed by taping a plastic part over a control rod within the door. Thankfully, the dreaded tin worm (rust) did not make a meal of any major structural areas of the body, so was never a real issue to deal with.

The answer to this is a definite YES, if it was remade tomorrow, wouldn't it be bliss!

Would certainly get another tomorrow if it wasn't for the wife not liking them. Most people do not like the long bonnet (hood) with its bulge in the middle, but you just don't notice it when you are driving 'the car you always promised yourself'.

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