Please Stop: Ford Capri Becomes Unrecognizable

While the Mercury Capri never quite matched the Ford Mustang on the domestic market, the former became a performance icon in Europe. Chasing the success of the Cortina’s numerous sporting variants, Blue Oval thought the region might want a coupe to fill a niche similar to the Mustang’s. The gamble worked and the feisty little fastback went on to be a big success in Europe.

Absent from the market for decades, Ford has opted to revive the model. Sadly, the resulting product represents its predecessor in no way. Rather than being a sprightly lightweight coupe wearing the blue badge, it’s another electrified crossover.

Younger readers likely won’t remember the Capri. But it was always a two-door coupe and eventually morphed into a rebadged version of the Mustang by the 1980s until it was replaced by the Probe/Cougar. Now, it’s an electric crossover wearing a Ford badge that utilizes Volkswagen’s MEB platform. Ironically, this is the only aspect of the vehicle that’s kind of true to form.

While the Capri wasn’t exclusively assembled in Germany, that was the only location to have manufactured the vehicle throughout its entire history. Like the original, the car will be built in Cologne, alongside the Ford Explorer EV. The duo are effectively identical from a mechanical standpoint, with the Capri adopting the swept-back style that reduces rear headroom. They’re likewise closely related to the Volkswagen ID.4.

The base version of the Capri crossover is said to sport a 282-horsepower single-motor driving the rear wheels and offers 390 miles of range based upon Europe's very generous WLTP testing protocols. The 77-kWh battery it comes with is claimed to be capable of going from a 10-to-80 percent state of charge in 28 minutes, provided you have access to the applicable hardware.

Premium trims are all-wheel drive thanks to the addition of a second electric motor. Combined, they’re supposed to offer 335 horsepower. However, range doesn’t improve since the battery is only slightly larger at 79 kWh. That’s enough to help offset the extra weight and power usage of the second motor. But not enough to improve range, leaving the model with an operating area of just 368 miles.

Fortunately, charging times are said to be quicker since the Premium trim increases the maximum charging threshold to 185 kW. This shaves off a couple minutes when charging, though is again only possible when you have access to the right kind of charger. Realistically, that’s not going to be much of a help on longer road trips. But the assumption is that people would buy the higher trim due to it boasting more features and a little more power.

Acceleration to 100 kph (62 mph) is decent. The base trim is said to take 6.4 seconds, with the Premium model pulling off the same in 5.3 seconds. But this is also where EV performance is at its best, as they tend to lose some steam at higher speeds and are often electronically limited to 100 mph.

Premium trims predictably play host to more standard features as well. Ford has it set up with larger 20-inch wheels, more interior lighting options, a hands-free tailgate, upgraded sound system, and more. Both models are fairly expensive. Converted to dollars, the base model retails above $61,000 and the Premium comes in at roughly $67,000 before any options are added.

But the core issue isn’t that they’re expensive. All cars seem overpriced these days with EVs tending to come in well above their combustion counterparts. The problem is that this is another example of leveraging an iconic name to sell an uninspired product. Ford could have given the electrified crossover any name it wanted and chose to use the Capri moniker because it has cultural cachet in Europe.

We’ve seen this happen frequently in recent years. In America, Ford couldn’t help but call the Mach-E a Mustang despite the only overlap between the two being some exterior styling cues and the horse badge. Mitsubishi, once famous for producing affordable performance vehicles, similarly revived the beloved Eclipse as a vanilla crossover vehicle.

There are certainly less-egregious examples of this, too. Take the Chevrolet Blazer. The original was a rugged body-on-frame SUV designed to take abuse. But the current model is another unibody crossover. Ford, which seems to be the worst offender, also took the Maverick name and used it on its littlest pickup. What was once a compact car is now a compact truck.

While nobody is suggesting that automakers shouldn’t do what they want with their vehicles, the above trend is being conducted in varying degrees of bad taste. It serves to underscore just how little the industry seems to care about automotive enthusiasts at present. Affordable fun cars are starting to become hard to find and past examples are being revived as soulless crossover vehicles to be sold to people that just want a commuter car.

This may be presumptive of me, but I just don’t think the person that buys a crossover based entirely off their weekly routine is going to care that it’s named after a completely different model that was beloved by enthusiasts.

The only plausible exception is that they once caught wind of someone praising the nameplate in the past and subconsciously associate that with the new model. But clever marketing isn’t sound engineering or quality design and the industry is ultimately running the risk of tainting these classic nameplates by associating them with humdrum models. Some of this is indeed the result of how vehicles are changing. But a lot of it is down to a lack of imagination and leveraging nostalgia to boost sales.

It has always been this way. It just hasn't ever been quite this bad.

[Images: Ford Motor Co.]

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