1975 DAVID HASSALL talks with Ian Smith, who visited Germany and took a close look at this big budget flier in Ford's Cologne Plant.
IN ITS CAMPAIGN to be top dog of the European Touring Car Championship ball game the Ford Motor Company spent loads of money developing its sporty looking, but mundane-performing, Capri two-door into a racer that could knock off anything anybody else in the world could throw at it.
So the German Capri grew from a 2.6-litre car to a 2.9-litre racer, to 3.1-litres and in its ultimate form to a 3.4-litre 300 kW firebreather. With local motor racing regulations promoting what amounts to an isolationist policy Australian motor racing fans never expected to see one of these super trick Capris (or the equally trick 3.5-litre BMW racers) Down Under - but Allan Moffat changed all that.
Competition on the local sports sedan scene was such that Moff's '69 Mustang was getting hard pressed to contain the opposition and wily Allan figured that a trick Cologne Capri - with some subtle lightening in places would have the performance to stay with "funny cars" like John McCormack's Charger and Bryan Thomson's VW Chev in straight lines but with its sophisticated suspension and superb handling would run all round the heavies in the corners.
His judgment was borne out at the car's first Australian race meeting when Moffat, in his second drive in the car, came from behind to beat Bob Jane and Bryan Thomson at Sandown Park
on a circuit that favors big horsepower cars. Since then he has also taken on what amounted to the ultimate Australian sports sedan - the Laurie O'Neil/Craven Mild Racing Monaro 350 of Big Pete Geoghegan - at Lakeside and emerged the victor after the Australian built car ran into reliability problems during the day.
Moffat took delivery of his Cologne Capri in late February after it had been shipped from South Africa, where it had been raced. But I was able to take a close look at the car a couple of months earlier at Ford's Cologne racing department in Germany.
Design and construction of the car is absolutely superb in its quality and attention to detail, but I was also impressed at the innovation involved. There is nothing in Australia to equal it in this respect.
The responsibility of getting the car ready for the 1974 European season was in the hands of Cologne's chief engineer Thomas Ammerschlaeger, with his backup of engineers taking over development.
Although Germany handles Ford's racing and Britain looks after the company's rallying involvement, the heart of the new Capri actually came from Britain, but not from the Boreham competition centre.
