This is hell of a nice car! Share with me my story about my Ford Mercury Capri (many pictures included)

Hey Guys!

Within the title of this post I am makin' a probably elusive statement by saying that this one is "hell of a nice car". Perhaps you will understand in the end:)

And I better must say "it was the hell of a nice car" because I owend this one back in 2010.
I just finished studies and did my examination and fortunately had a few month on vacation before my preparatory service on becoming a teacher started.
And at this time I decided to buy my first convertible roadster.
But wait a moment - that was not actually a "decision", it was more a lucky chance because I looked on the cars advertised for sale on a german car website and more like accidently found this one just near to the village I lived back in those days. This are the original pictures of the advertisement, just pay attention to the chicken :-)

As you can see on the second picture, the car has got a body damage on the left side (door and front fender).
But I called the guy for I had never seen this car before (and I've seen many). He told me that it was a "Ford Mercury Capri", so no "Ford Mercury" nore a "Capri" (those cars from the 70ies and 80ies) but a "Ford Mercury Capri" which is so called if it was built in Australia and "Mercury Capri" when it was built in the states. (You can practise this if you like) ;)
However, I was attracted to the car at least now.
He told me that it was not running a while because the generator failed. So I asked him to charge the battery and then I visited him.
What should I say, the Car was mint. It stood in a small gerage and looked and felt almost like new, except the prescribed body issue and the generator problem.
But with the battery now charged it was instantly running very smooth.
So I bought it for around 1100 bucks and bought many spare parts the guy gathered from anywhere for the car like doors, ECUs, rims, interiour parts, mirrors and so on.


Payed another 300 bucks for those and loaded them onto the trailer together with the car.

Now I left the car at the workshop but not without taking some pictures before I went home and had the car checked up.

While the car was in the workshop, I took my time to do some research about this to me unknown model.
It became evident, that the ford mercury capri was based on the Mazda 323(f) and was meant to be the front-wheel-driven and four seats competitor to the mazda miata (mx5) (You can read my post on that car here because I currently own one: https://steemit.com/car/@senzenfrenz/car-flippin-like-or-not-like-the-mazda-miata-mx5-here-s-why-i-am-in-a-dilemma-pictured
The Ford Mercury Capri flopped whereas the miata...well, you know about it. But to anticipate the outcome: In comparison I like the Mercury Capri a lot more then the miata. It's much more unique and especially in Europe it is absolutely rare.
Therefore it is hard to get original parts for it. But fortunately i had bought those spare parts with the car and for it is based on the Mazda 323, you can use some parts of that (f.ex. I once had to change the watercooler and I used a mazda one that fitted well, aswell I did with the exhaust).
This one I've got has 101 hp out of a 1.6 litres engine with 16 valves and two overhead camshafts, just like the miata. It was built in 1990 and theres one soft turbo charged version available too, and - for those who are interested- , that one would have got about 136 hp.

Whilst I was doin my research about the car, the workshop checked everything. But except changing the controller of the generator the car was in technically sound condition. So after I got a pleasent call, I took the number plates with me, put them on the car, put the roof down and drove it for the first time.
What to say, it was amazing. The car was feeling absolutely wonderful. No race-car, but a decent cruiser with a nice handling.
Driven back to my place I first of all gave it a nice clean up and took some more pics:

What I really like about the design is the lovely pop up head lights and the nice back of the car. Really a very unique and adventurous design. Surely not everyones taste (You can tell me what you think about in the comments below if you like) ;)

But now I had to flip the car a little bit to have a even more decent roadster. First of all I had to get rid of those ugly body damage that you can see on the following pictures that I took in order to send them to my body paint workshop:

How well I was to have that nice spare parts, just 300 bucks later I had those parts painted in white and replaced on the car. For the roof was not in best condition I changed it for a nice red "Sonnenland" top, too. That's how the car was looking after I had those things done to it (The scarf in colours of germany was added for there was soccer world championship at this time and the german Mannschaft was doin' well):

I had so much fun driving into the blue or to the countryside with my friends whilst the weather was really nice. When I remember that time I get much desire that those days will come back.

I hope you enjoyed my post about the ford mercury capri just as I enjoyed those days when I owned this one and had so much fun with it. I hope that you can understand my passion for this one by now .

Furthermore, I would love to hear your opinion about this small convertible. So feel free to put it in the comments below!

Thanks for reading my post, please stay tuned,

Cheers,
Senzenfrenz