THE RALLYCROSS WORKS CAPRIS
How Ford’s rallycross Capris became TV stars thanks to their four-wheel-drive antics.
How Ford’s rallycross Capris of the late ’60s and early ’70s became TV stars thanks to their Ferguson four-wheeldrive antics.
Iwill never forget those fearsome works rallycross Capris of the early 1970s, even if their traction was a lot more impressive than their cornering ability. It was Henry Taylor, Ford’s competition manager from 1965 to 1969, who invented them. Although the original Escort Twin Cams had made such an impact in 1968, on muddy tracks they were often beaten by powerful front-wheel-drive Minis, so Ford really needed better traction to match them.
Although four-wheel-drive was still specifically banned from rallies, Henry Taylor, at least, to start working out what it could do for him in rallycross, where millions of people were currently watching TV’s World of Sport races. Ford’s marketing people loved the idea of seeing works cars on TV — but only if they were winning.
‘I’m not a qualified engineer,’ Henry once told me, ‘but one of my bright ideas was to put the V6 3-litre engine into a Capri — and another was to try out the Ferguson fourwheel-drive system.’
Well before the end of 1968, therefore, Taylor got his hands on a pre-production Capri 1600GT — ‘just for a look-see.’ Even though this new model would not be launched until January 1969:
‘I knew Tony Rolt very well,’ Henry recalls, ‘he was the managing director of Harry Ferguson Research, so I arranged for the Capri to be sent to him. We knew his four-wheeldrive system, with Dunlop Maxaret anti-lock braking, was too heavy, but we wanted to see what it would do.’
By this time Harry Ferguson Research had already supplied Ford-Dunton with two prototype Capris, complete with V6 engines and 4WD (at a piece price, they say, of around £2000 for the conversion job). It was easy, therefore, to build the very first competition V6 3-litre engined Capri, and in January it was returned to Boreham. To make it more competitive in rallycross, the new car’s engine was given Weslake-modified cylinder heads, and produced about 160 bhp, still running on a single twin-choke Weber carburettor.
Like the four-wheel-drive Sierra which would follow, this Capri used the classic Ferguson Formula/FF layout. Behind the main gearbox, a step-off/transfer chain case moved the drive sideways, to a centre differential, from which the rear propshaft pointed backwards as normal, the front propshaft leading alongside the right of the engine to a front differential mounted alongside the sump.
Amazingly, the front and rear final drive ratios were slightly different — that at the rear being 4.63:1, that at the front being an Escort crown-wheel-and-pinion set of 4.71:1. The different, actually of 1.7 per cent, did not seem to matter at all, especially on loose surfaces where there was wheelspin all the time. Ford eventually settled on a 40/60 split, front to rear, as providing the best balance. This was at the drivers’ request, because it allowed them to start spinning the rear wheels before the front end broke traction — all the better for getting a Capri sideways on loose stuff… The whole installation was heavy — Ferguson reckoned that there was an extra 171 lb of clobber — and a new front subframe was needed to hold everything together.
Simple, effective
On February 8, 1969 — just days after the new Capri range had been unveiled — Boreham sent Roger Clark to contest a rallycross meeting at Croft, near Darlington. A year earlier, of course, Roger had shown off the original Escort Twin Cam at Croft. Quite simply, this appearance caused a sensation. For the Clark/Capri/4WD combination win all three races that it started.
Yet this was still a very simple machine. Specification details included the 160 bhp engine, rough-treaded Goodyear tyres on 7 inch-wide Minilite wheels, plastic side and rear windows, and a glassfibre bonnet, plus Taunus (front-wheel-drive type) front struts.
Four weeks later two Capri 4x4s turned out at two different events. Ove Andersson drove the original car at Croft, while at Lydden Hill Barry Lee was entrusted with a brand-new car, this one with automatic transmission: unhappily, he crashed it when the system kicked-down at an inappropriate moment!
Everything then went very quiet at Boreham, for Roger Clark complained about the car’s handling and its brakes, and demanding that the anti-lock mechanism be disconnected. Henry Taylor soon accepted that the performance of the much-vaunted Dunlop Maxaret braking system could easily be beaten by skilled drivers.
But in early 1969, time was running out, for rallycross was essentially a bad-weather, winter activity. In any case, Henry Taylor soon moved on, Stuart Turner had taken over, and at Boreham the World Cup Rally effort began to take priority.
Rally-round
Later, much later in the autumn of 1970, with the World Cup Rally won, the original Capri 4WD rallycross cars reappeared. For use during the winter of 1970/1971, a total of three four-wheel-drive Capris were prepared and further developed for use in the ITV/Castrol rallycross season, and at Lydden Hill. One of these, for sure, was the original car which had appeared, briefly in February 1969, after which it had been stored at Boreham for some time.
This time, all three cars used fuel-injected Essex V6 engines on which a lot of powerraising work had been carried out: both Lucas and TJ systems were employed. Two cars, for Stan Clark and Rod Chapman to drive, had about 212 bhp (this was later pushed up to nearer 230 bhp), while Roger Clark’s ferocious machine used specially designed aluminium cylinder heads, straight-tube Lucas fuel injection — and boasted a very healthy 252 bhp. This car needed a massive tower on top of the bonnet to hide the inlet trumpets, which rather spoilt the styling of the car itself.
Ford (and this was a typical Stuart Turner ploy to ensure maximum publicity) arranged different media sponsorship for each car — the Daily Express for Roger Clark, the Telegraph Magazine for his brother Stan, and Cars & Car Conversions for Rod Chapman. Rod’s car was not ready for the first meeting of the winter, but joined in shortly afterwards.
Mick Jones (who, by this time, had taken over from Bill Meade as Boreham’s Rally Engineer) would eventually have rude things to say about these cars, but did a great job with what was still a very crude four-wheel-drive installation, which this time was being mated to an early version of the sturdy ZF five-speed main gearbox which had been adopted on the works Escorts. Apparently these were the first 4WD systems ever to use an FF viscous coupling limited-slip device, but nothing was
“THE 40/60 SPLIT ALLOWED THE DRIVERS TO START SPINNING THE REAR WHEELS BEFORE THE FRONT END BROKE TRACTION”
ever admitted about this at the time, for this piece of kit remained secret for some years to come. These, too, were the first Boreham works cars to use Dunlop tyres for some years, for this was a separate Stuart Turner-inspired contract, and the rally team’s unbreakable contract with Goodyear was still in force.
Stars of TV
This was not an entirely successful programme. Cars were entered in two different TV series, which imposed their own regulations. In the six-round Castrol-sponsored ITV series at Cadwell Park, in Lincolnshire, the Capris usually won if they did not hit mechanical trouble, because their 4WD system was not handicapped. If they could harness their superior traction off the line (and this was usually possible) they could arrive at the first corner in the lead, then control the races. In this Championship, the result was a perfect 1-2-3 in the standings, with Roger Clark leading the list, narrowly from Rod Chapman, and with Stan Clark (Roger’s brother) bringing up the tail.
At Lydden Hill, in the TEAC series, the Capris were always obliged to start 5 seconds behind their two-wheel-drive rivals, which was a serious handicap. For it meant that there was always an unseemly overtaking battle to be faced. Not easy, particularly in awful visibility! This, along with the fact that all three cars were unreliable, and it was obvious to us from the sidelines, that they were difficult to drive, meant that they struggled. In the end, Rod Chapman’s car could only finish fifth in the Championship, with Roger eighth and Stan tenth.
The records, therefore, prove that if there were no unfair organisers’ attempts to cut away at their advantage, then the cars did what they were asked to do, but none of the drivers really enjoyed them, and there were many mechanical dramas to cope with. If it wasn’t overheating due to mud blocking up the radiators, it was a tendency to break front driveshaft joints, and all the engines suffered repeatedly from fuel injection problems. Those were the days when Essex V6 cylinder blocks were none-too-strong (Mick Jones once described the material as ‘black-painted Weetabix’), and when revved very highly, several units destroyed themselves.
After one very hectic winter these cars (and their drivers) were virtually worn out, and Ford sold off the remains to Stan Clark and Rod Chapman during 1971. As Roger Clark later wrote in his autobiography:
‘Basically, we ditched them because they were an enormous amount of trouble, not just in reliability, which was dreadful enough, but because they were absolute pigs to handle…’
Jeremy Walton once asked Roger for his comments. He replied: ‘It’s vital to get the car into the right attitude way before a corner. If you can get that right, it’s perfect, but more often it’ll be wrong and you’d just wind up with more and more understeer lock…’
In addition they were heavy, and there was a lot of friction in the transmission system, so they were not as fast as the original forecasts had suggested.
But excitement, and spectacle? There was a great deal of that.