COSWORTH V6 CAPRI

The story of Keith Harding’s Mk3 is like a fairytale. A passion for Capris has led him to build a race car, and its success and popularity are a dream come true.

Give me Goodwood on a summer’s day, and you can keep the rest.” So said racing hero Roy Salvadori, and it’s a sentiment that’s resonated across the ages. The historic motor circuit transcended its functional roots as an RAF base to become one of the most celebrated racetracks in the post-war period; it closed in 1966, but the spirit of that mid-20th Century era has been vividly rekindled by the Goodwood Revival and, more recently, the Members Meeting. And it’s here among the verdant foliage of West Sussex that we find Ford enthusiast and fledgling racer Keith Harding today, standing proudly beside his sparkling Capri race car.

It’s the perfect machine for him, as he’s been a fan of the model since back when they were new in the showrooms. “I got my first Capri in the 1980s, and I’ve always had them since,” he explains. “I’ve got four of them at the moment, and I always wanted to build myself a Mk1 Capri race car.”

The eagle-eyed will have spotted, of course, that the blue vision gleaming before Ade’s camera today is a Mk3; a full-fat X-Pack brute with a rumbling V6, no less. So how did this happen? “Well, I saw it advertised for sale and it seemed like the ideal car for me to get some track practice in,” he reasons. “I’ve been racing for a year and a half or so now, competing in the Blue Oval Saloon Series (BOSS) series; there are some pretty hairy cars on the grid, and I’m really there to make up the numbers.” Keith is being hugely modest here, as his early efforts in circuit racing have yielded some genuinely impressive results. In his first season he came third in the CTCRC’s all-Ford championship, and his second season saw him finish fourth overall. Given the extraordinary nature of some of the BOSS entrants, this really is impressive stuff.

Shakedown

However, this is far more than a tale of a Capri fan buying a turn-key race car and throwing in some numbers. The Mk3 required rather a lot of work to get it up to snuff before Keith could get out there and compete. “I completed 1000 miles on the road in it first of all, just to give it a proper shakedown,” he says. “It was obvious that the previous owners had chucked a lot of money at it, although the parts weren’t necessarily what I’d want on a track, so I threw a lot of it out!”

Interestingly, the Capri had previously been owned by the son of revered BMW race engine builder, Lester Owen, acting as a sort of apprenticeship project. The work involved is clearly top-notch, including the various bespoke aluminium tanks under the bonnet and so on, and what’s most notable is the furious Cosworth 24-valve V6. This is a full-fat Lester Owen build, enlarged to 3.1-litres and running mighty throttle bodies in a gorgeous bespoke enclosure. “Aside from servicing the engine, I haven’t had to touch it,” Keith assures us. “It just purrs, it’s very reliable — and pretty devastating on the track!”