Ford has revived the Capri nameplate after a 38-year absence for a rakish, electric, saloon-shaped SUV with Focus ST levels of performance and nearly 400 miles of range.
Far removed from its low-slung, two-door 1970s namesake, the electric Capri is derived from the Ford Explorer crossover and will enter production alongside that car in Cologne, Germany, in the coming weeks.
Ford Europe design boss Amko Leenarts, who has led the Capri’s reinvention, indicated the project was on the table as far back as 2019. “Who would not want to bring back the Capri as a design?” he said, when asked about badging and which models from the past could be used to inspire his design team.
“We’d love it. But it’s got to be in the zeitgeist and has to fit [in with the wider line-up], not just exist as something for a designer to bring back an old car.”
Bringing back familiar nameplates is part of Ford’s strategy to leverage its storied past as a point of differentiation in the electric car era, when technical superiority is harder to achieve and the market is being turned on its head by the arrival of countless new EV start-ups from China and elsewhere.
Asked more recently how using names like Explorer and Mustang helps to carve a competitive edge in this context, Leenarts told Autocar: “The public loves that we’re bringing nameplates to new territories” because they tap into a “unique perspective that nobody else has”.
From a personal standpoint, he said he revels in “the tension between something that’s got the equity of an older name and the new interpretation”.
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I find the bold design of the new electric Ford Capri quite striking, and it is the kind of modern aesthetic that would look fantastic parked next to the clean, structural lines of the retaining walls hamilton homeowners are using to landscape their properties.
I’m fascinated by how Ford is blending nostalgia with modern electric power in the new Capri, a strategy that would certainly require a sophisticated social media marketing china campaign to resonate with tech-savvy drivers in such a competitive digital landscape.
wow, hideous, is nothing sacred. As if having to look at those awful Ford Puma crossover things is not enough now we have the vomit version of the capri. Ugh