When I met my wife, Joy, I drove a nondescript Toyota Corona – little did she know I was a closet petrolhead. It wasn’t until after we married that my penchant for all things automotive surfaced as a succession of cars came and went.
As a teenager I’d owned a Mk1 Ford Capri and in 2008 I started looking for another.
I think that turning 40 a few years earlier might have had something to do with this yearning – Joy chided me about the need to return to my youth, a time when all that mattered was earning enough each week to fill the car with gas and buy beers for the weekend.
This Ford Capri II’s refreshed Daytona Yellow paint looks superb
In 2011 I came across a tidy 1977 Capri II 3.0 S that had been in storage for six years.
In original Daytona Yellow with black detail stripes, it had been rustproofed from new, ran on 8Jx15 Superlite alloys and still had the original pushbutton radio. It was quickly christened ‘Lolly’ after the famous Liquorice Allsorts confectionery of a similar colour.
I can’t tell you the joy owning this car has brought me. Early on it lived at the local panel shop, where it was stripped down by an older tradesman who fabricated all-steel patch panels before repainting it in the original colour.
The seats were reupholstered in black with yellow trim, as well as having the original foam replaced and boosted at Joy’s request, after she suffered some very early and painful rides on bumpy roads!
The Ford Capri II’s retrimmed seats with matching piping
After a couple of years of regular running, we moved from New Zealand to Perth, Australia, and couldn’t take Lolly with us – local import laws wouldn’t allow it.
Snuggled away in its Carcoon, back in our garage in NZ, Lolly only ran a few times a year on our infrequent visits home until 2017, when I decided to invest in a full engine rebuild and another stripdown and repaint.
I had been conversing by email with the local garage-owning car guru, and we had decided on the restoration plan.
Not living locally meant I didn’t care how long it took: the key was a quality finish all round. Lolly took up residence in the workshop, where the team worked on it in and around other jobs.
Whenever we returned home I was off to the shop as a priority on our first day back, and Joy soon learned that she’d get no sense out of me until this all-important mission was accomplished.
The V6 in this Ford Capri II 3.0 S has been upgraded
Three years later, Lolly came home and even Joy, a total novice in all things mechanical, could appreciate the transformation.
The engine now has oversized pistons, bigger valves, ported and polished heads, and a fast-road cam, and there are uprated brakes plus a reconditioned ’box and diff.
With exhaust headers and dual big-bore exhausts, the first thing you notice is the noise – that deep, throaty roar of an engine tuned and running to perfection.
It is matched by a paint finish so slick it turns heads wherever we go.
The Ford Capri II 3.0 S near Lake Tikitapu in New Zealand
Taking Lolly for a drive is such a delight.
We get people coming up to us wherever we stop – they all know it’s a Capri, and everyone appears to know a brother/uncle/mate who used to have one.
We’ve also been offered some amazing dollars for it, because these cars are getting pretty rare now, and very few are in such great nick.
Lolly’s going to stay in the family – I’ve gifted her to our niece, Lily, who is another petrolhead. She did an automotive apprenticeship before buying her own engine-reconditioning business at the age of 21.
It’ll be a few years yet before I hand over the keys, but I’ve got another Ford in the garage (a 1996 Falcon XR6 utility) already lined up for the next restoration.
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Factfile
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