ZAKSPEED CAPRI STORY
With outlandish wings and 460 bhp, 1.4-litre engines, the amazing Zakspeed Capris looked, sounded and drove like nothing else on earth.
With outlandish wings, garish paintwork and 460 bhp, 1.4-litre engines, the amazing Zakspeed Capris looked, sounded and drove like nothing else on earth, reckons Graham Robson.
It was almost as if Zakspeed’s body designers had been sampling mind-expanding chemicals or fiercely potent booze. In their sober moments they must have studied a Capri or two, but none of them could ever have been like this. Wider, lower, faster and more powerful, you’ve never seen this sort of Capri before. And neither, when it appeared in 1978, had anyone else.
Where do you start to describe Zakspeed’s near-unique cars of the late ’70s. Capris or not? Saloons or racing sports cars? Modified production cars or race cars with familiar styling? One thing was certain: no-one but Zakspeed ever built faster or more successful cars carrying the Capri title.
In the ’70s, motorsport was run according to a long list of FIA categories, from Group 1 (showroom standard machinery) to Group 7 (two-seater racing sports cars). In the late ’60s, when Alan Mann’s Escort Twin Cams ran with FVA engines, and Ralph Broad’s 105E Anglias had 115 bhp, we saw just how exciting Group 5 racing could be. Ten years later, when the technology and regulations had moved on a lot, the Germans took on Group 5 for their own national sporting categories. Start with a standard shell, Group 5 regulations stated, but feel free to alter almost everything else. Which explains why non-original fittings like engine transplants, massively reinforced monocoques, turbocharged engines, composite bodywork and extrovert aerodynamics all swept past the scrutineers without challenge.
Take 5
In Germany, BMW and Porsche had Group 5 racing all to themselves at first — Ford and Zakspeed were still committed to Touring Car racing, where more restrictive Group 2 regulations applied. By the mid ’70s, Ford’s works Capri RS3100s were fastest of all, though it was Zakspeed’s RS1800s which won the European and German Championships.
But one morning, Erich Zakowski woke up, decided that he was bored with Group 2, that Group 5 racing was spectacular and he wanted a part of it. Ford-Germany, which had drifted off after its own Capri RS3100s had retired, offered technical, material and moral support. The result, unveiled in mid-1978, was the most astonishing Capri the world had ever seen.
The Capri elements which survived were the front-engine/rear-drive layout, and some features of the style. The much-improved MacPherson strut front suspension was there too, but that was about all. The chassis, engine and component layouts were all vastly different.
This layout was much wider and longer than the road car and stuffed with an aluminium roll
cage, which did more for the chassis than the bodyshell had ever done. With a turbocharged version of the BDA engine, it made a mockery of the lax regulations which applied.
Those were the days when turbocharged engines were allowed to run. The regulations multiplied their capacity by a factor of 1.4:1 which effectively limited a turbo engine to 1428cc so it could compete in the 2-litre class.
Zakspeed, like Porsche and BMW before it, figured that it could produce more than 1.4 times the power by turbocharging an engine. It decided that this really was power for nothing and chose to do it. Capri 3-litre road cars had just 138 bhp, but even the very first of the 1.4-litre Zakspeed cars boasted 380 bhp. By 1980, when a larger 1.75-litre BDA had been installed, there was no less than 560 to 600 bhp. It had four times the power of the road car, which, in a lighter machine, made it handle like a thoroughbred. Zakspeed won races, lots of them. For the 1.4-litre car, the first victories came in 1978. Hans Heyer used one to win the 2-litre championship division in 1979 and in 1980 Klaus Ludwig won six races in the larger division in the latest 1.7-litre machine.
Total dominance
Then came 1981, and the most emphatic victory of all. Klaus dominated the 2-litre division in the 1.4 and went on to win the German Championship. Since this was to be the last season of German silhouette racing, it was the right time for the extrovert machines to bow out.
So how was it done? The original secret, of course, was that engineer, Thomas Ammerschlager, read the regulations extremely carefully. He then came up with a radical solution and persuaded Zachowski, FordGermany and a raft of enthusiastic sponsors to back a drastic restatement of the Capri theme. The whole design was based on the hugely complex roll cage, which doubled as a multitube chassis frame. No less than 80 metres of tubing — some round section, some square section — were involved and that was enhanced with some of the original Capri sheet steel panelling. The screen and side glass was regular Capri and there was a near-standard bulkhead/ front firewall, but most of the rest of the body shell was in composite material.
Ten inches wider than standard and eight inches lower, this car also had extended rear wings. As with the RS3100s, the cooling radiators were sat ahead of the rear wheels, and there were oil coolers mounted nearby. A massive snow-plough front spoiler and a colossal rear spoiler added to the armoury.
These weren’t there just for effect or to provide somewhere for the sponsors’ logos to
go, they were diligently and carefully tested on wind-tunnel models. The rear spoiler was so effective that in 1980 the authorities found an excuse to ban it, and a narrower spoiler took its place.
The size and shape of the front splitter was critical, and the high transverse rear aerofoil had an adjustable blade. Although the regulations would have allowed full underbody ground effect channels, there never seemed to be time to evolve these to their limit.
Not that the detailing of these cars ever stood still. By 1980 they had also grown longitudinal air-smoothing strakes along the bonnet and the front-splitter had also become adjustable for length.
Power? Right from the start, Zakspeed chose to develop its own turbocharged versions of the famous Cosworth BDA, rather than use the RS3100’s normally-aspirated 3.4-litre GA. Why? Because Zakspeed knew that the GA was heavy and could only achieve 455 bhp, while it could probably beat that figure with this smaller, lighter, turbo BDA.
And so it did. Not all alone, but with help from German engine specialist, Dr Schrick, and many rugged reliable pieces from Cosworth of Northampton. By modern standards, not much boost was used — only 1.1 bar at first and 1.5 bar later — but these were meant to be high-revving, high-output engines.
Numbers game
The motorsport development of these cars was intense. There were only four chassis and none were written off or sold while the programme was running. Early 1.4s produced 370 bhp, but by 1980 that figure had been pushed up to 460 bhp and finally rose to 500 bhp. Then, for 1980, a 1.7-litre derivative was created, producing 560 bhp at first, and up to 600 bhp when evolution was finally over. Don’t forget these were sprint engines which needed a rebuild after every outing. But by any standards they were remarkable figures.
Losing all that heat from normal frontmounted water-cooling radiators would have produced blasts of hot air through the engine bay and into the cockpit. Zakspeed’s decision to mount the radiators behind the cabin was very wise indeed.
Even in a road Capri engine bay there would have been space to spare, but in this larger, wider, look-a-like machine, the engineers could make all their own decisions. The squat BDA engine — based on a 1.3-litre iron block — sat vertically, and well back towards the bulkhead. Long inlet tracts were on the right side, stainless steel exhaust manifolding was on the left, and the bulky KKK turbocharger was towards the front left of the compartment, feeding pressured air to the largest air/air intercooler that Zakspeed could find. This was up front where a water radiator might normally be located. By 1980 not one but two intercoolers were fitted.
The ubiquitous ZF gearbox and the broad-beamed live axle were familiar Capri stuff, as was the general layout of the suspension: MacPherson strut at the front, a live axle located by radius arms and a Watts linkage at the rear,
then the adjustable height Bilstein strut and damper bodies. Almost every component was updated, made more specialised and idealised for the occasion.
The cast alloy wheels — centrally-locked BBS split-rims like those on the earlier works RS2600s and RS3100s — were colossal. Fronts were 16 inches in diameter with 10.5 inch-wide rims, while at the rear they were 19 inches in diameter with 14 inch rims. Suppliers, Goodyear, had a hard time coping with up to 600 bhp. The same goes for the brakes — discs all round, of course, and originally evolved by Ate for use on the Porsche 917s of the early ’70s using four pistons per Ate calliper. Water cooling was used on some of the high-speed circuits where hauling the car from high speed for slow corners was regularly needed.
Talking of high speeds, even with the small 1.4 the power and aerodynamics were so good that this Zakspeed monster could be geared to reach more than 170 mph. Later, when the 600 bhp/1.7-litre version of the engine was used, that top speed could be over 180 mph.
But where could these cars even approach such speeds in Germany? Think of the extremely long straights at the Norisring and the Hockenheim circuit (where F1 cars reach well over 200 mph), and this becomes very clear.
Faster than fast
They were incredibly quick in all conditions but if you can’t get your head round the figures, try this for a comparison.
Everyone on this side of the English Channel knows about the Rouse/Trackstar/ Eggenberger style of Sierra RS500 Cosworth. The 1.7-litre Zakspeed Capri had at least 50 bhp more power, weighed about 660 lb/300 kg less,
had effective front and rear aerodynamic aids and a much lower drag coefficient.
Around all 14 miles of the old Nürburgring the highest development of the 1.7-litre Zakspeed was 51 seconds faster per lap than a works RS3100. Even so, a bare description of the mechanics doesn’t tell the whole story. These machines were almost alive and they needed to be tamed and mastered to give their best.
Harald Ertl, Hans Heyer, Klaus Ludwig, Klaus Niedzwiedz and Manfred Winkelhock regularly drove them to their flame-spitting limits.
Since it was the two Klauses who later got together to make the Eggenberger Sierra RS500 Cosworths into such menacing saloon car racers, perhaps we now know where they got their high-per-output training.