Ford Capri – The Car’s the Star

Driving through cardboard boxes. Rolling over car bonnets. Tail-happy in pursuit of crims. This is the Ford Capri, the king of the roundabout slide, star of The Professionals. The Saturday night show stopper.

Ford’s European Mustang was probably always destined for success. After all, this was ‘the car you always promised yourself.’ There was a Capri for everyone, from the ‘all show, no go’ of the 1.3, to the hairy-chested brawn of the V6s. And yet, without Bodie and Doyle or even Terry from Minder, would we – to quote Mel B – really, really want one?

The makers of The Professionals didn’t choose the Capri. In a way, it chose them. Early editions of the first series featured home-grown British Leyland fodder like the Triumph Dolomite Sprint. You might imagine that supplying vehicles for a car-themed, prime-time show was a perfect free kick for Britain’s much-maligned and definitely ailing homegrown manufacturer. But a couple of distinctly BL-type problems emerged. Firstly, those Dolly Sprints broke down quite a lot. That disrupted filming. Then BL had a habit of selling the film cars to customers, which made edits and re-shoots complicated.

It seems BL didn’t quite grasp the value of potential punters watching exciting programmes featuring their cars being driven exuberantly by desirable people. Quelle surprise.

Lets be thankful for BL’s short-sightedness. Watching an Allegro SS chase down some criminals would have been considerably less exciting for The Professionals’ target audience of hormonal chaps than watching the same task despatched by a Capri. Less exciting, but perhaps more interesting now… That’s a topic for another day.

Ford, always eyeing up an opportunity, spotted one. The firm’s American antecedents meant it knew exactly how well cars could sell if featured in the right TV programmes. Detroit had done rather well out of Bo and Luke Duke’s ditch-jumping Dodge Charger and the various Firebirds and Trans Ams drizzled across Saturday afternoon fayre like Rockford Files and Knight Rider. And let’s not forget Herbie, the run of Disney films that made a star of Volkswagen’s people’s car.

Naturally, then, Ford had already pitched the Capri for small and big screen stardom before it found its niche alongside Bodie and Doyle. Mk1s featured in Department S and The Protectors, but it wasn’t until 1975’s Brannigan, John Wayne’s sole UK film, that things really stepped up Capri-wise. During a hot pursuit of some miscreants in – of course – a Jaguar S-Type, Wayne’s Brannigan jumps London’s Tower Bridge in a yellow MkII Capri. It’s not the most scintillating piece of camerawork ever committed to film, but in the days before CGI an actual Capri did jump the actual Tower Bridge. Although not with John Wayne inside of it.

But lets get back to Bodie and Doyle. Soon all those Triumphs and Austins became Ford Granadas and Capris. It was a perfect match. The Capri was the car for the louche man about town, a man quite possibly overly familiar with a bubble perm, ‘the ladies,’ Brut (the Lynx of the ’70s) and showing not a little chest hair. This was a car for rule breakers, and rule-breaking was Bodie and Doyle’s raison d’etre.

Bodie and Doyle each had a Government-issued Capri. Through five series, Bodie always had a silver Capri while Doyle mostly had a gold one, except for two series mid-period when he seems to have been tempted by the more practical delights of a white RS2000. From this we can perhaps surmise that Bodie was more a man for surety and continuity. A crime-stopper with a dislike of change. Doyle’s RS was more modern – and clearly a bid by Ford to sell more of them – but it was less exciting to watch when bashing boxes or sliding around the Elephant and Castle. And its bonnet was less suited to rolling upon.

When they both had Capris they were always the lusty 3.0S with the burbling Essex V6. The twist for the Capri’s target male customers was that a quick visit to the local Halfords could make any Capri, including the humdrum 1.3, look pretty much like those TV cars. That turbocharged sales of Capris across the range.

ITV liked the Capri. It had a big bonnet to shovel up casually arrayed cardboard boxes and to enable Bodie and also Doyle, when the mood took them, to body roll across its wide, sculptural expanse. It was tail happy too, which made for great visuals as Bodie and/or Doyle ragged the living daylights out of it in pursuit of the crims. That’s the sort of fun telly that couldn’t be made now – think of the Health & Safety issues – but in the ’70s and ’80s we lapped it up. And quite a lot of us subsequently went out and bought Capris.

With the Capris, The Professionals had two extra characters, two four-wheeled reasons to watch that kept ratings high.

Very quickly the old ‘race on Sunday, sell on Monday’ adage became ‘show on Saturday night telly, sell on Monday’ which had less of a ring to it, but was considerably cheaper and more effective. That was great news for Ford, because by the time the Capri featured in The Professionals it was getting long in the tooth. The car’s TV profile is likely a key reason why Capri sales continued in the UK long after they ceased elsewhere in Europe.

But the Capri on telly is not just the story of Bodie and Doyle. There’s Terry McCann. At the same time as it showed The Professionals, ITV was running Minder, another programme starring London, criminals and cars, but with a somewhat more sedate theme.

Minder was ostensibly about Terry, who was bodyguard/confidant to Arthur Daly. Arthur was a dodgy London car dealer who needed a minder because he kept upsetting people through his continuous said dodginess. Arthur drove a Daimler. Terry had a Capri. A white one with a vinyl roof. Terry didn’t really rag the Capri around the mean streets of the capital, but he did exude a similar tousle-haired, macho charm to Bodie and Doyle. He was also a man who took the rules by the scruff of the neck and simply smirked in their face. You could imagine, in a different world, Terry being the third wheel to Bodie and Doyle’s duo.

The Capri may well have woven its way into the culture of a certain corner of Britain without The Professionals. But perhaps it wouldn’t have caught our imaginations quite as brightly without Bodie and/or Doyle. Or Minder. Or even John Wayne and Tower Bridge. It was our Dodge Charger, our Firebird and our Trans Am all rolled into one. In a way, it was also our Herbie too. There is a new Ford car called a Capri. It isn’t a Capri Bodie, Doyle or Terry would recognise. Or anyone else for that matter, so stick to the classics – it’s better here.