"The car you always promised yourself...". Depending on your point of view, the Ford Capri is either an automotive icon or a slightly vulgar blue-collar 'boy-racer' - the wheels of choice for every flash Essex boy in Britain. In short, it looked mean (and vaguely exotic on your average high street), went reasonably fast and, crucially, any working class or lower middle class boy could realistically aspire to owning one - because it was a FORD.

The Ford Motor Company had already succesfully raced a touring car version of the MKI Capri in the early 1970s. These were known as the "Cologne Capris" as they were built, prepared and raced 'in-house' by Ford's Competition Department in Cologne, Germany. They proved to be formidable challengers in the ETC (European Touring Car Championships) and the German national DRM series.

The MKI cars were withdrawn when the MKII was introduced and following the closure of Cologne competition department. This was due in part to cut-backs necessitated by the international fuel crisis in the winter of 1973/1974. The final race for a MKI was on September 28th 1975 with Klaus Ludwig at Hockenheim. In the following years, Ford continued to be represented competitively in both the ETC and DRM by the Zakspeed-built Group 2 and then (from 1977 onwards) Group 5 versions of the MKII Escort.

But in 1977, following the introduction of the MKIII Capri, Ford took a decision to reintroduce the model to racing - allegedly to spur on slow sales in Germany. However, with the specialist Cologne department now closed, Ford were not able to build the cars 'in-house' as before. Thus, after after arriving at an initial concept themselves, the company contracted Erich Zakowski and the Zakspeed team (who, after all, had done a superb job with the Group 5 MKII Escort) to construct the cars.

From 1977, the DRM (Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft or 'German Racing Championship') was split into two divisions - up to 2 litres and over 2 litres - with heavily-modified Group 5 cars now eligible to compete. The Capri initially had a 1.4 litre turbocharged engine based on a production Kent 1.3 unit. This qualified the car for Division Two where it would compete mainly against the Schnitzer-BMW 320. The first race was in July 1978 as a support event for the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring circuit. The car was succesful the following season in winning the Division Two title, yet it failed to win the overall championship due to the total dominance of the Porsche 935 in Division One. To remedy this, Zakspeed upgraded to a 1.7 litre turbocharged engine and attempted to take Porsche head on in Division One.

In the six seasons that it was raced and continually developed, the Zakspeed Capri became most associated with Klaus Ludwig who literally steam-rollered the opposition in 1981 to take the DRM title for Ford. A complete account of the MKIIIs racing history from 1978 to 1983 is given elsewhere within zakcapri.co.uk.

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