Having passed my driving test in May 1994, the search was on for a car. My mum had recently bought a 1982, 2.0 GL from a lecturer of mine at Yorkshire Coast College, Scarborough, where I was studying to be a motor mechanic.
My mind was made up… I just had to have a Capri, and in June 1994 I found the perfect car. There she was, sitting just 3 miles away at a local garage. It was as if the car was saying "BUY ME"…. How could I refuse…? I was now the very proud owner of a 1985 1.6 Laser in Diamond White. The clock read only 60,000 miles and she was in absolutely standard trim. Condition wise it was excellent and mechanically perfect.
I kept the car standard for a while, but soon it was time for new tyres. I took this opportunity to upgrade to 2.8 injection Pepperpots with 205, 60 tyres. This made the car much nicer to drive and they also looked pretty good too. I had now finished the course at college and couldn’t find a job locally so I signed on the dole. I managed to save enough money over the next few months to afford a set of Half Leather Recaros from Alan at ASJ in Nottingham.
I had now got the modification bug and decided to give the car a facelift. On went a club front spoiler and RGA side and rear skirts. This combined with the wider wheels made the car look a bit special, this was the look I was after, but only being a 1600 it was a ‘sheep in wolves clothing’. In order to get a bit ‘more’ out of the weedy 1600 engine I binned the VV carb and replaced it with a twin choke Weber from a 2 litre. This, coupled with a K&N filter and a Capri Club performance exhaust system and four branch manifold made it go a lot better and sound superb. It still couldn’t match my mum’s 2 litre GL though. I couldn’t afford to insure a 2 litre anyway.
Having now got a job, I could afford to run the car more often and gradually improve things and save up for some bigger jobs in the future. I replaced the pepperpot wheels soon after, with a set of Compomtive MS five spoke alloys, 7 x 13 front and 8 x 13 rear. These are polished and really look the part.
Having owned the car for 5 years came the biggest job of them all, i.e 2 front wings, a bonnet and a full respray. This work was carried out at Stokesley Motors near Middlesbrough… a GM dealer!!!. I know what you are thinking… "TRAITOR", but they are a Thatcham approved body shop and they do a very high quality job with great attention to detail, so GM is good for some things after all…
The only thing lacking now was performance. The magic words "Two, Point & One" come to mind, but there were other things to do first… 2.8 injection single leaf springs and poly bushes were fitted at the back and what a difference they make… brakes next… up front is a set of 2.8 callipers and vented disks.
Back to the 1600’s performance… or rather the lack of it. I have finally sorted it out in the form of a 205 Sierra block bored out to 2094cc, fully lightened and balanced bottom end with Sierra injection rods. A Stage 3 cylinder head with 44.45mm inlet and 38.1mm exhaust valves, a Piper 285 cam and vernier pulley finish off the engine and fuelling is sorted by a Weber 38 DGAS carb. The car now goes and sounds as good as it looks. On a recent rolling road setup it produced 160BHP at the flywheel.