FAST FORD VALUES ‘GOING NUTS’, SAY MARKET EXPERTS
Low-mileage Brooklands set to be this month’s second £35k+ Capri
A delivery-mileage Ford Capri is being tipped to sell for as much as £45k when it goes under the hammer on 27 February – barely a fortnight after another low mileage one made £35,500 at auction.
Silverstone Auctions is selling the 1987 280 Brooklands – which has just 936 miles on the clock – with a £35-45k estimate at its Race Retro sale. It’s set to be the second Capri MkIII to go for upwards of £35k in the space of month. Market experts are saying it’s part of a wider price surge affecting fast Fords from the 1970s and ‘80s, including hot Escorts.
The auction house says it has noticed an increase in interest in performance Fords, with blue oval-badged classics getting far more enquiries than other cars on websites like CCW sister site Classic Cars for Sale.
‘The fast Ford market seems to have gone nuts over the last year or so. If this car had come to us five or six years ago I’d say it’d have been a £18-22k car, so cars like these have comfortably doubled in price,’ says sales manager Will Smith.
‘It’s the same for hot Escorts and Sierra Cosworths, and the Escort RS Cosworth is really on the up. It’s not a trend that exclusively affects Fords – it’s more acute with them because they’re so popular with the enthusiast-driven market.’
Regular CCW reader Albert Clarkson, who owns a 1986 Capri 2.8 Injection with just 586 miles on the clock, reckons the price rises will put many of these cars out of reach of grass roots enthusiasts and into the hands of collectors.
‘£35k is silly money for these cars. I remember the Lotus Cortinas and the Escort MkI Twin Cams really going up in price, but now it seems more and more Capris are going for a lot of money,’ he says. ‘I’d never sell mine because I enjoy it too much, but now it’s not unrealistic to think it’d go for a similar price.’
Classics Central, which is selling a 1981 Janspeed 3.0-litre Capri at its 28 February auction with a £35-40k estimate, says both the delivery mileage Brooklands and Anglia Car Auctions’ £35k 2.8i are systematic of a wider market trend for fast Fords going up in value.
‘Capris that are special or particularly well preserved are going up rapidly, as are all fast Fords from the 1970s and 1980s – they are really are dynamite for the market at the moment. You only have to look at what happened with Silverstone Auctions’ Escort RS Turbo, which went for £60k back in November, to see that,’ says managing director Justin Lazic. ‘Mediocre examples haven’t changed that much in price, but rare and low mileage examples that can’t be repeated have easily jumped up. What it doesn’t mean is that a guy’s regular 2.8 Injection is now worth ten grand where it might have been six, a significant car can easily be five or six times the price it was.’