Reader’s restoration:

When David Challenger took on the restoration of his Grandad’s 1972 Capri, he expected it to be straightforward, but that was before he decided to make it perfect.

David Challenger has genuine love for this 1972 Capri 1600XL. Not only because he’s spent the past five years extensively restoring it, but also since the Capri belongs to his Dad and was bought new by his grandfather. “Grandad registered the Capri on September 12, 1972,” explains David, “but sadly died of cancer in 1980 when I was four. My dad then inherited the car; he polished it and started it up, but rarely drove it. In 1990 he took it for an MoT that it failed, so the Capri then just sat on our driveway.”

“I’d grown up tinkering with the car; I remember changing the plugs and the distributor when I was about 12, so I had a look and decided it probably wasn’t hard to repair. After new sills and a steering rack it was back on the road. I left school in 1992 and became a mechanic, I even learned to drive in the Capri. Dad was using it to drive to work but then it started smoking badly so he returned it to the garage.”

Forward to 1995, where David and his brother have a plan. “We were forbidden to ever touch the car,” laughs David, “but Dad went out to work at 6 am and we knew he wouldn’t be back for 5 hours, so we dropped in another Crossflow and had the Capri running before he came home at 11 am.” David’s Dad still used his car sparingly, not wanting to put miles on the Capri, although he continued to MoT it every year. “In 2002 the garage started leaking, the Capri had been dry stored all its life so it got moved into my garage for the next 10 years, then into heated storage. In 2014 we started the restoration.”

The original engine had been kept in a corner and was found to be full of nuts and paper. “We’d left the plugs out and clearly something had built a nest,” remembers David. “Once unseized we gave it a complete rebuild — pistons, unleaded head, reground crank and a mild cam — virtually the only part that’s not original factory specification. In 2015 we started on the rest of the car, aiming to complete it for Dad’s 70th birthday in November 2019.

“Dad had painted the Capri several times previously, now he stripped it to a bare shell and we brought it to my business, PC Motors. It clearly needed new wings, we had it acid-dipped and discovered it also needed new wheelarches, A-pillars and many little perforations required filling. I told Dad this was the point to decide if we repaired it or crushed it — he said we had to restore it.”

Wings and things

“I’ve restored lots of Golfs and Beetles and a TR6 so I thought the Capri would be straightforward, but everyone I phoned

Interior now looks incredible — all thanks to the Challengers’ pursuit of perfection.