2.8 Litres of Muscle

Talk about a photoshoot that's been a long time coming.  This is my friend Dave's Ford Capri; 2.8 litres of fuel injected-fury that his twin brother Mike restored back in the winter of 2008.  I've mentioned Dave and his mean motor on here before (The Car Whisperers), and have been hanging out for over a year now since that last shoot for us to get the thing sideways with the tyres screaming in front of my camera.  The problem was that just after the last shoot that we did, on his way to a classic car show, some moron managed to reverse their camper van along the entire length of the passenger door and rear wing in a pitiful attempt at reverse parking.  The Capri spent the spring and summer having it's near-side panels knocked out and resprayed to restore it to it's former glory, and is now back on the road....and up for sale.  Dave's selling his pride and joy to fund his motorsport project, so a couple of weekends ago I agreed to take some photographs for advertising purposes if we also got to have some fun with the car.  You can't have a massive muscle car with a bulge on the bonnet (to accomodate the huge engine) and which looks like it should be in a 1970's cop-car chase, and not want to wheel-spin away from a standing start.  Every single time.    

We headed up to a nearby disused airfield on a damp Sunday afternoon and opened the Capri up for a few goes along the runway, and Dave pushed the rear-wheel drive Ford hard around a few corners.

Kicking up some spray exiting a fast corner

Dab of oppo' at the end of the runway

I don't think my car's ever seen a chamois leather, but then my car doesn't look like it belongs in a 1970's detective film.

The Capri is for sale on carandclassic and pistonheads, click through to view the adverts if you're in the market for a styling set of wheels.  It's one well looked after car and needs a home as good as the one that it's leaving.

The Car Whisperers

Dave, throttling.

Engine block.

Mikey got hold of this old Ford Capri one winter a few years ago. He took it back to his Dad's garage in North Wales and set to work doing it up in order to sell it on. When he pulled back into town the following spring we could all hear him coming, the sound of the throaty 2.8 V6 engine preceeding the view we got of the sleek black machine; reborn.

What an amazing car it had become. Mikey went to put the car up for sale but his twin brother Dave, who is just as much of a rev-head as Mikey, couldn't bear to see it leave the family so ponied up his winter's wages to buy it from his brother. Both of the Jones brothers are crazy car whisperers, able to listen to a crook vehicle and make an instant diagnosis. The Capri has been their labour of love and I spent an evening with Dave in their garage a few weeks ago to get some shots of him spannering on the car, part of a 1950's style greaser set of images that we wanted to produce. This was the first shoot, as Dave prepared the car for a classic car show that weekend. On the way to that show some clown reversed into the side of the Capri in a supermarket car park, stoving in the passenger door and the wing and effectively writing it off in the eyes of the insurance company. Both brothers are now hard at work, spending all of their spare time trying to nurse it back to health and keep their baby on the road. Once they're done, we'll get some images of their machine going sideways in a cloud of tyre smoke up at the old airfield... I for one can't wait to see that thing on the road again.

A workshop wall to envy.

Tight for space; The Viva, Dave and the Capri.

Check Dave's motor racing and Caterham 7 blog out at www.rawkusracing.com.